SMF January 2020 Challenge ENTRY thread - Book Inspired

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This is the Entry Thread for the to the January 2020 SMF Challenge - Book Inspired.

This thread is limited to challenge entries only. Please post all comments in the original challenge thread (https://www.soapmakingforum.com/thr...-challenge-signup-thread-book-inspired.77659/). Thank you.


Please post your entry soaps photos here. You may include as many photos as you like but must also include a photo of the book that inspired it (you can get these from the internet if you don’t own the book). If your soap is inspired by a character or location, a picture representation of that character/location is acceptable. You are welcome and encouraged t0 include any details you would like to share regarding the creation of your entry, such as technique, design inspiration, fragrance, recipe notes, etc.

If you choose to post multiple photos please indicate which one you would like to be used in the voting survey. In the absence of such indication, one of the photos will be chosen as the entry photo from the selection you have posted.

The entry thread and challenge sign up will remain open until January 29 at 11:59 pm CST. A link and the password for voting at Survey Monkey will then be sent to all members who signed up for the Challenge. Voting will be open from January 30 to January 31 and the winner announced on February 1, 2020. There is no prize attached to this challenge.

Good luck everyone!
 
My soap is inspired by the book Exodus by Julie Bertagna. I'll try not to spoil more than the first chapter in my description ;) the book takes place in the year 2099. Global warming has melted the ice caps and sea levels have risen to a point that only the tallest mountains remain as tiny islands. Technology is nearly obsolete due to powerplants and phone cables all be destroyed in the floods. Our main character is a girl living on a quickly-shrinking island, and she uses an antique laptop to explore the graveyard of the internet looking for answers to help her people.

I decided to base my soap off of the colors of the cover.
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The bottom of my soap is blue and grey to represent a rocky shore that water has risen over. I chose a gold mica line near the bottom to represent where the title and author's name are written on the book, but I used gold instead of yellow to represent the laptop that the main characters uses as a tool. For the top part of my soap I mixed in blue tides mica, but didnt mix it in evenly to give the appearance of swirling water. On the top I added the rest of my grey and gold mica and swirled it into the blue.

For the fragrance I used Cashmere by Brambleberry as this smells to me like a very light, fresh scent and I felt that fit the water theme. This fragrance is know to discolor so I added extra TD to combat this.
 
I've been reading some Calvin and Hobbes before bed lately and loved the snowball fights. I've been wanting to do a salt soap rebatch (rebatching grated soap meant for laundry and adding salt+sf) and thought it would be fun to shape the salt soap into snowballs. To make it a bit more on theme, I decided to also make a small soap dough Hobbes doll to play with the snow, the way adults would probably see it from the outside.
I think the salt adds a nice shimmer to the 'snow' and I thinks the rustic, uneven look of rebatch helps make the snowballs a bit more realistic. I used a half round silicon mold and glued the halves together with melted CO. I also added a bit of peppermint, litsea and lemongrass EO's for a fresh, wintery scent. Unfortunately, the rebatch doesn't seem to have shortened cure time, the soap has no lather to speak of yet even though the base I used was over 6 months old, but it was a nice experiment. And now I get to test my patience.. yay..
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Thanks @KiwiMoose for the idea of using a black dress draped over a chair as substitute for a blackbox!
 
The Wonderful Wizard of OZ written by Frank L. Baum published in 1900 and a revised version in 1944. My Mom was reading me the book long before I ever got my first look at the movie.

This soap, is done in CP (My first ever CP batch)

The bottom red band is for the ruby slippers. The black & white bands are the witches legs from under the house, the green piping is her skin of course, and little black witch hat embeds, also done in CP. The white flecks on top and on the hat is actually glitter, which always seems to photograph as white. Scented with Black Ginger & Bamboo

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My soap is inspired by the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin. I chose book 5, A Dance With Dragons because dragons. I used the inlaid design technique where the background soap is made, then an image carved into the soap and new soap or soap dough is used to fill the cavity. I used new soap for this. My vision was to create a fiery sky poured with the Clyde Slide technique. I didn't wait for my batter to thicken up enough, so I have more of a sunset sky. It is scented with a blend of mango and pineapple FOs. I guess my dragons aren't so fierce. Thank you amd for an inspiring challenge.
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The book I chose was Leviathan Wakes, the first of the Expanse series. It's a sci-fi book set on Earth, Mars, in space, space stations and on an ice hauling space ship. The story is told from multiple points of view and involves lots of twists and turns. (The authors were research assistants for George R.R. Martin before beginning this series, so the storytelling has a GoT feel to it.)

My soap is supposed to represent deep space with black, blue and purple. The fragrance I used was raspberry & vanilla because I know it is well behaved.


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Here is my entry:
I chose to do a character from one of my favorite books.
Book Name: Strawberries for Dessert
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Author: Marie Sexton
Character name: Cole Fenton
Character description used for inspiration: Flamboyant, independently wealthy, travelling gay man. Wears bright silk shirts, shampoos hair with strawberry shampoo, has a birthmark near his hairline in the shape of a butterfly, and drinks Arbor Mist wine as a guilty pleasure.

Soap: So I used the shirt - (this one) for inspiration for the color/swirl used
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The shampoo scent was the inspiration for the scent of the soap, scented in a strawberry blend I created, and used a strawberry embeds, and butterfly embed to represent the birthmark.
I have silk mixed in my lye solution to cover the silk of the shirts he wears, and I also used a boiled down simple syrup of Arbor Mist wine for 1 oz of the liquid.
Now for the final reveal-

Strawberries for Dessert inspired soap -

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The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett. Young Tiffany Aching's little brother had been kidnapped by the queen of the fairies and it's up to her to get him back. On the surface, it's a kids novel about this girl on a strange adventure, but underneath there is so much more. That's Sir Terry for you. Anyway, Tiffany is aided by a clan of Nac Mac Feegle who are tiny red-headed warriors, so covered in blue tattoos that it looks like they are blue themselves. They are fierce and loyal and prone to fighting, drinking, and stealing. Here is my interpretation of the feegles in soap. Which is funny, because they avoid bathing at all costs. The round soap is a reference to Horace, an enchanted blue cheese that has been adopted by the clan. It... it makes more sense in the books. To be fair, I should have included lanolin to represent the sheep they steal and for realism I should have made it smell like whiskey. Instead, it's a standard recipe scented with lavender, rosemary, and a dash of peppermint.
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My soap was inspired by a mold I got for Christmas and the book Heidi. It’s the story of a girl sent to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps but later is brought to Frankfurt to get an education and act as companion to the invalid Clara. The 1994 movie was one of my favorites as a child and I’ve recently started reading the book (though there is a new movie coming out this year, according to IMDB)

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My new mold reminded me immediately of the flowers described in the beginning of the book. M&P with a honey base for the bees and various micas in white base for the other colors. The silver bar is cupcake scented (needed to use it up), the blue and dark green bars are lime scent, the light green are lemongrass.

my favorite bar is the silver one, despite the flamboyant scent
 
My entry is inspired by the timeless Lewis Carroll classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Still one of my favourite books. More specifically the colour scheme is from the 1951 Disney animated film which I grew up with and the two are fused in my mind.

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I created a rimmed soap (my first one) using some of the iconic colours that I associate with Alice. The rim is purple with a bit of pink for the Cheshire Cat, and the blue and white of the main soap being Alice's dress

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As part of my soapy goals for 2020 I promised myself I was going to enter every month. So 2020 will be the year of the good, bad and fugly.

I have used the name bookreader451 on the internet since the 90's. Most people don't get the reference to Fahrenheit 451 in my name but, for those who do, it is like finding a kindred spirit. When I first read the book it was the ultimate dystopian hell, I could not ever imagine a world without books.

For my entry I tried to create burning books. I used MP for the books and it didn't stick well for some reason. Just not what I had envisioned but nonetheless an entry.

So here we have Fahrenheit 451

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