Winter Wonderland

I've been dreaming of how I could make this soap since we did the Landscape Challenge -- it's the flip side of my neon-bright ocean sunset:

I made a number of versions of it before settling on this particular design, which I'll also try to photograph and post as a follow-up.

This isn't all of them, as I had to make enough bars to participate in the soap swap.

Can you figure out how I made it? 

If you guessed that it's a layered and shaped soap sculpture, then you're right!

               

On the left is the design I made in Adobe Illustrator, and on the right is the area of soap required to make each layer. Pretty nuts, no? Yes.

I cut out cardboard shapers using my Silhouette Cameo, spent way too many hours calculating everything (you should see my spreadsheets!), and played hooky from work one day to make it.

Above are the shapers, and how they look stacked together on the right.

I only remember to take pictures at the very beginning and the very end, so all I can share is the shapers and the colors laid out.

Colors

I didn't even attempt to use natural colors for this. The white is just the soap color, but going from top to bottom:

• Sky: black oxide + ultramarine blue (6g ppo) w/ grated white bits for the stars
• Moon: uncolored center with black oxide + ultramarine blue (3g ppo) encircling it
• Mountain: ultramarine pink
• Treeline: black oxide
• Hill #1: natural soap color
• Hill #2: ultramarine blue + titanium dioxide (1g ppo)
• Hill #3: ultramarine blue + titanium dioxide (3g ppo)
• Hill #4: ultramarine blue + titanium dioxide (6g ppo)

All from TKB Trading, which I adore.
  

Recipe & Fragrance

I'm still rather attached to using lard, and my current favorite recipe is:

• 30% coconut
• 33% olive oil
• 33% lard
• 4% castor oil

It makes a super-hard, white bar with lots of lather, but it's actually a bit too crumbly with all the sodium lactate I like to use:

• 1.5:1 water:lye - discounted to minimize rivers and harden quickly
• 1 oz/ppo fragrance oil - 50% Peppermint, 50% Lavender Luxury (Nature's Garden)
• 1 oz/ppo 60% Sodium Lactate (to harden bars)

So why to I use it? Mostly because I don't have the patience to wait longer than 4 hours before unmolding, but also because it adds hardness.

Phew! 

This was quite a journey -- at least five previous designs, plus fragrance and color tests to figure out what would work -- but I'm happy with the results, so it was worth it.