Hot cold, big small, tall short, happy sad, vibrant dull, opposites all – in just a few minutes one can come up with so many. This month’s soap challenge is embracing opposites – the idea was to portray your chosen opposites in soap using a loaf mold.
The first idea I had was to see how many opposites I could get into one design. What came to mind was horizontal and vertical, cool and warm colors and then I wondered if there was such a thing as opposite fragrances. A quick Google search came up with a fragrance wheel – much like a color wheel the opposite fragrance are supposed to blend. I am posting a copy below in case there are others like me who didn’t know this existed. Also including a warm/cool color chart here and will explain why.
When I showed my finished product to my son who is an accomplished artist he commented that my green was really yellow green so it is really a part of the warm side. What- green is green – isn’t it? Okay that didn’t quite work out for colors. But happily the fragrance combination did – soft oriental and citrus using Sandalwo0d and Blood Orange. It is a lovely scent that seems to be improving. Here my first try:
So with the green being off and the horizontal stripe needing some improvement it was off to another design. This time I settled on winter and summer. For winter I wanted a pine tree in a snow storm (a rather simple design) and for summer the idea was to create a wild flower meadow with a blue sky and wispy clouds (a complex design). I used is Peppermint essential oil for the cold winter and although I wanted to use a real flowery scent I decided to go with just Lavender essential oil to allow time to pour.
These challenges are always learning experiences for me. If I had time to do the summer/winter soap again I would definitely use squeeze bottles for the flowers and pine tree. My squeeze bottles are huge (probably 32 oz) and since I only needed a small amount of soap batter in these design features I decided to try it free hand and use a spoon to dribble the soap. Had I used the squeeze bottle I think the lines that formed the pine tree would have been a more consistent thickness and the colors of the flower field would have been more distinct. Also I thought I was being very careful in removing the divider but I must have tilted it a little at the top.
Nevertheless I am still pretty pleased with the way the summer/winter soap turned out and that will be my enter this month.
I love the way these challenges push me outside the box. This month was particularly fun – thank you Amy!
