The second day of the Soap Intensive Weekend is over and we are all leaving tired but enriched. Some of the comments after the weekend were, “I learned so much, my head is spinning. And, that’s in a good way” and “I would recommend that anyone interested in soap and starting a business come here first.”
We started day two of the Soapmaking Weekend Intensive with Cold Process Soap Basics. Alicia Grosso, author of The Everything Soapmaking Book, covered things like fragrance oils, using colorants and mold options before guiding the class through a by-the-books cold process recipe. After a short break, she got right back into it by deliberately trying to seize, rice and otherwise ruin three perfectly good batches of soap. The entire class cheered when she achieved “soap on a stick (blender)”. The goal with Alicia’s Advanced Cold Process class was to push the soap batches to their very extreme limits. It was freeing to try to ruin the soap and a sense of wild abandon accomponied these experimental batches.
Check out the unmolded soaps from Paula’s (PJ’s Soaps) Melt and Pour classes yesterday. These nuggets of artist expression were made by students that had little or no experience in making soap.
They are astouding in their detail. She achieves all of this through her tool kit. It makes teensy little precision work much easier.
After a delightful lunch break, Debbie from SoapyLove taught two soap techniques – Sillouette and Alien SpaceShip Soap. It is a testament to the expertly designed projects that every single student made perfect Sillouettes and Alien Soaps. Debbie’s style is very fresh, modern and fun. She posts her creative musings on her blog here.
We finished the day with a short graduation party, complete with four types of cupcakes and graduation certificates. The Tiramisu Cupcakes went the fastest. I was left with six Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes to take home. The hardship duty didn’t feel very … difficult.
Thank you for sharing the weekend with us in blog and twit-pic history. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll cover each of these projects in more detail, giving you an opprortunity to follow along to create wonderful soapy works of art in your own home.
