I'm about ready to toss this technique out the window. I think I am having a frustrating run of soaping. I'm trying to focus on the positives of this one. It smells lovely (an essential oil blend that smells soft and floral but not grandmotherly). It soaped well so far and I don't THINK I will have separation like I did last week. The downside of stirring enough to make sure I hit trace, (the pudding like trails that signify everything is blended enough) is that it doesn't give me a lot of working time to do any fancy techniques. I think I do better when I just dump everything in a pot and let the soap's behavior dictate the design rather than trying to plan the design ahead of time. Sometimes, it just doesn't want to cooperate.
Maybe I am a perfectionist, but to ME, this looks like a Hot Mess instead of valentine hearts. It's freaking impossible to get them down in the form of little dots (AFTER you've transferred the soap to squeeze bottles, which seems to tell the soap to start hardening immediately) and then pull through the circles to make hearts without just leaving troughs in the now mostly thick trace soap. ARGH. Some look better than others:
And some look better in isolation from their neighbor bars:
But overall I was left feeling like this technique is designed to make me wanna throw my soap bucket, bottles, and the rest of it right out the window. The literal kitchen window. I think the amount of cursing that came out of me as I was frantically trying to get this to look right would fill a swear jar full enough to feed a small village. Did I mention I had trouble getting the dividers in and dropped one right smack on the right side?
I need to find my soaping zen again. Next time, I'm going to let the soap tell me what it wants to do and just follow it. Expectations for designs are just leading to the invention of exciting new curse words. So, Happy Valentine's Day, you @#&*^$#*^&@s!
