My latest hobby Melt and Pour soap

A while back on my felt group (Fun_2_Felt on yahoo) someone said they tried to make soap and it didnt work out and ideas were given how to do it correctly. That got me searching to see if it really was that easy and came across Melt and Pour glycerine soaps - you buy the base and melt it, colour it and fragrance it and pour into a mould and its done (well you do have to wait for it to cool and set but you know what I mean).

These are my first ever soaps - I bought a kit off ebay to start out with and to see if I liked it (yeah ok so I did and Im hooked!) They are all glycerine clear base - green is lime fragrance oil (FO) the orange one is peach FO and the grassy looking one is lavender essential oil with lavender flowers in it (the grassy looking bits)

the next ones I made were rainbow soaps using some new base (clear and white glycerine base) and new pigment dyes that dont bleed into each other. I made it in a silicone cake tin and you do each layer one by one waiting for each to almost set before pouring the next. I ended up with lots of soaps - we use these at home as we seem to go through soap rather fast here and that is why I started making soaps - as a craft and to save having to buy soap! Not sure it saves any money but I do have fun doing it!

I got some more moulds - silicone ones are so great and easy to use - you can buy soap ones or just use cake ones which can give you some interesting desings like the gingerbread men. 

 Now I decided to get a bit more adventurous! This mould I bought from FreshSoap Ideas in Brisbane - she had done a soap in yellows and gold but I realised it could look like an African Violet if I did it in the right colours. So I bought some micas there too and poured the colours carefully to make this soap. What do you think? I love the micas as they give it a lovely glittery colour in the clear soap. I do the background in a plain colour over white base.

The next soaps are more experimenting - the pink ones are using a clear stamp in the bottom of the mould to give an impressed pattern and if you do it right and get the coloured layers correct it can turn out very well - better than mine Im afraid! 

The blue one is an embeded soap using some left over bits placed into a clear layer

The gold soaps were ones my son suggested as he wanted to try the gold mica and see if you could make a "gold bar" not quite but very pretty.

 This is another new mould - a silicone brownie tray - made lots of flowers in all different fragrances and colours - lots of fun!

bought some more muffin tins in silicone - this time hearts and the tiny ones are icecube trays! So did some embeded soaps - tiny ones inside the big hearts. I will use the other tiny ones later

I bought a set of cookie cutters in the shape of flowers and made the embeds for these soaps with a thin layer of soap cut out with 2 sizes of the cutters and a hole punch for the yellow centres. I then fitted them together and placed them inside the silicone flower mould 

Similar thing with the rectangle ones above too but a simpler flower

Here are some more versions of the flower and leaf mould - you can do any colours you like really! Im thinking of having these on the craft table at the African Violet show in October. 

Hope you like all my soaps and when I do some more I will do another post.

 

ok what is with the live feed thingy Feedjit Live?

Just for fun I put one of those live feed thingies on the side of my blog (>>> see it over that way?) to check who visits my blog.
Well how come it cant work out where I am from when I sign in? So far I have been from The Leap in Qld (which apparently is up near Mackay) from Fairfield (which is the other side of the city and about 30 mins drive away) At the moment Im from Montville which is near the Sunshine Coast and a good hour or more away from Brisbane and the suburb where I actually live!
Not sure how it works but unless my IP is floating around all over the place I have no idea where they get the info. Makes for interesting reading though and it looks like I get to travel around without actually going anywhere!

My Emma bear finished

Well late last night I finally finished my bear made from the free pattern by Emma of Emma's Bears and she has turned out lovely. I used a thick pale blue acrylic fur and wool felt for the pads and inner ears. I needle felted flowers on her foot pads and embroidered around them to define. She has quite a lot of glass beads inside her for weight - I like my bears to be heavy! She has glass eyes and a dark grey embroidered nose (Im not too good at embroidering noses). I have named this bear Emma after her designer. Hope you like her!
She is my 26th bear I have made since 2008 when I started my bear making adventure. Most of my bears I have either made for myself or to give as gifts and a few I have sold at our African Violet Society show - 2010 show is Oct 16 and 17 at the Auditorium Brisbane Botanic Gardens - Mt Coot-tha Brisbane.

Free pattern by Emma's Bears

free pattern by Emma's Bears

Im trying out a free pattern by Emma of Emma's Bears - the bear is called Gracie and its a nice easy one to make, so try it out. Im making mine from a thick pale blue acrylic fur and she is turning out rather good. Photos as soon as Im finished and that shouldnt be long! Ive done the head and body, done some flowers on the foot pads and just have to sew up the arms and legs and join it all together and stuff it (LOL). I hand sew all my bears so they take a little while to do and I ran out of the strong thread I use for hand sewing (C Lon nylon thread) and had to order some more. It was just as easy to order from the UK than drive down to the Gold Coast to the bear/bead shop I usually get it from. Anyway photos soon!

This is Gracie by Emma so you can see what the original looks like

My Bumble Bear finally finished!

Well I finally finished my Bumble Bear a week ago and wanted to show you the photos. He turned out really nice after all - wasn't sure I liked him till I trimmed his nose and then he started to look cute. I changed the original pattern so that the muzzle was 2 colour instead of one. I changed the body so that it had stripes. Im happy to say the changes worked and he wasn't misshapen like I thought he might be.Hope you like him!

We die 3 times

I heard that on a TV show "we all die 3 times" - first is the body dying, 2nd death is when our body decomposes back to the earth and the 3rd death is when our name is spoken for the last time. Isnt that sad that some of us will die for the 3rd time while others will be remembered for all time and their name will go on. I guess if we dont keep track of our family tree and have names written down then some of us do disappear. I have been doing our family tree for many years now so at least in my family our names keep going and therefore we keep going for a bit longer now.
I just thought I would share this with you all (all 2 of you at least who follow me)

Fireball doll - Drossel von Flugel

I just bought myself this little poseable doll - called Drossel von Flugel from the Fireball anime series - see Youtube to see episodes (they are quite funny -subtitled from the Japanese). She is only 10cm or 4inches high and everything moves! You can pose her in almost any position even on one leg, so I can have her doing something different every day. I saw one on a blog for Little Bearies and just had to get one myself. Kids think Im mad but I like her on my computer desk! I think you can get larger ones that are made from metal and plastic - mine is only plastic, and the larger ones sometimes come with the different heads - my Drossel is the "fighting" one something to do with the head wear. Her usual get up is long pigtail type things but I liked this one the best. Have a look on eBay under "Fireball Drossel" if you want one. Mine was only a cheap one from the USA but its got the Disney name on it so Im pretty sure its genuine. My only worry is that the thumbs are movable but fall off if you do try and move them and unlike the other pieces they are so tiny that if you dropped one on the carpet you would never find it again and she would look weird without a thumb so I might supaglue them on...