February ‘25 - ¡Qué impresión!
¡Qué impresión!
Impressions - Advanced Entry
This was a very difficult challenge for me because it just looked so easy, and I wanted to try a hundred different things. And that I did! I had more failures this month than I thought possible, but I walked away with a ton of new knowledge.
I started the experimentation early, thinking I’d be done right away, and I could use my only try as my entry. But NOTHING went as expected. My first try was with the mat I bought from Amy’s shop. It was the beautiful flowers and beehive one and right off the bat, I couldn’t decide if I should cut it to fit one of the molds I have or buy a mold to fit it.
I decided to use a simple honey color and sprinkle some gold mica on the flower side to accentuate the flowers. This was a mistake. The mica was too thick and ruined some of the detail that would’ve been crispier otherwise. I didn’t cut the mat, but instead put it at the bottom of the mold and poured the soap in and then folded the piece that stuck out of the mat over the top of the soap. That created a round edge on one end of the soap. I liked it but it’s a detail that would only work on one bar of soap…I only got 3 bars out of the 8-inch mold I used.
First try. Long way to go.
Then I decided I would try to make my own impression. I wanted to try an easy one by making my mat out of a purchased vinyl fabric. The challenge with this one was timing, spreading the soap on the mat without streaks and picking interesting colors. I wanted to go darker with the soap on the mat. The other challenge was cutting the soap evenly as I don’t use slab molds often.
Second try. Not interesting enough for me.
I found Auntie Clara’s impression soap beautiful and her explanation so clear that I thought I could give it a go. This was a total failure with lots of lessons learned but every part of this exercise was a disaster.
First my impression attempt was a sticky mess. I won’t explain much because the images speak for themselves. That was not the only thing that happened. After getting the silicone completely stuck on the fabric, I couldn’t do anything with it.
First attempt at lace impression mat.
So, I attempted to make another impression mat with a plastic doily. Sadly, my soap separated! What I thought was a really hot and transparent gel phase, was really my soap falling apart. The soap was a failure, but the impression mat was also a bust because it didn’t have enough detail on it.
Not gel but separated soap!
Then I went on to try silicone impressions with larger pieces of flowers on different molds. I cast beeswax flowers, then secured them to the freezer paper liners with wax in various molds. None of them turned out well enough to risk pouring soap in them.
Final frustrated attempt at complicated impression mats. The purple you see is wax, not soap.
Finally, I thought simple was best and I attempted my last attempt directly with a vinyl mat. This was almost a success except for the ink that transferred to my soap from the guide I drew to cut the mat to size. I could’ve cut the edge of the soap to hide this, but I didn’t think it was worth risking ruining the soap.
Second to final try.
I took a shot at one final try but also decided to make a couple of changes to the recipe. I wanted to replace the shea butter in the previous recipes with mango butter and cocoa butter with kokum butter, while keeping all percentages and additives the same. I used a different mold, but the same type of impression placed at the bottom of the mold.
And voila! Final (even though not third) try is a charm!