Landscape Soap, Great Cakes Soapworks Soap Challenge

After seeing the upcoming challenge of landscape soap last month, I immediately began searching images for inspiration, and having recently made salt bars, I thought of...well...salt.

The Dead Sea, naturally, was my next thought! So I searched and discovered beautiful images. I saved two, and after thoughtfully looking at the pictures, I choose one to focus on.

The main inspiration:

Now, I really liked the mountains and the way the salt was positioned, but for the sky, I decided to embellish on it a little because this sky is fairly plain. So the sky appears different than my inspirational photograph.


The Dead Sea
fragrance- Bonsai by Oregon Trail Soapers Supply
colorants- Micas and glitter by Nurture Soap, and mica by the Conservatorie

Now, for those interested in the process and steps I took to create this, I've outlined it below. At the end is also a picture of my first attempt.
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Here is the salt base poured, with water swirled on top.
I made salt soap with 60% salt ppo, and with snowflake sparkle mica and body safe glitter premixed into the salt, I hoped you would catch glimmers like the sun is bouncing off the salt.

The salt was poured and scored with a knife into 4 soap pieces within under 2 hours to prevent completely crumbling on final cut. I also hoped the salt portion would remain textured a little and not a flat hard slick surface to better represent the photograph.

The water was poured immediately after the cuts were made, and once hardened I scored it vertically and horizontally to help the mountain range stick and hopefully not separate since it would be poured the next day.*The fragrance riced a little, but nothing too bad. It also accelerated some, but was completely workable.

Here I poured the mountain range and the sun. The mountains were such a small batch, I decided to do both at once. The first attempt I had done saw the mountains bow downward at the weight of the sky. So I left the mountains to completely harden before continuing on with the sky.

Here you can see my pen marks I used to better visualize how much I needed to pour and where.

I used a finger and attempted to dust the mountains with copper sparkle mica, and the water with glitter, to create a sun reflection. Unfortunately it didn't show in the final soaps.

I also added Klein Blue mica to either side of the glitter to offset the water from the sky. This did help, I think, but I didn't photograph it, unfortunately.

Finally was the sky pour. If you recall the fragrance accelerated and tried to rice up, so I didn't put it into the sky. This caused it to take eons to set up...I again was trying to avoid my sun causing a bow effect from its own weight. I poured one color, then a second, and then did a quick hanger swirl to mix them together. I then laid down some white clouds, and covered lightly with my third color.

I then did a cpop at 170 degrees for 8 minutes. Voila! It set enough to hold the sun snuggly and firm.

 I finished off with more white clouds and swirly tops.

 These landscapes are quite an undertaking I must admit!!!!


This was a fun challenge! I had to really think about the steps I needed to take to slowly build the landscape. I loved seeing everyone's soaps this month, and a big thanks to Amy, again, for hosting these wonderful challenges!
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Below is my first attempt. I liked the sun much more, but the sides were a little crumbly, and the mountains were bowing more than I liked.

Here is the soap today. It was scented with Oregon Trail Soapers Supply Silver Mountain Water *Type fragrance. I LOVE this smell! It is probably a top fave of mine. It, unfortunately, discolors and this is my soap today. I like the colors! Plum and deep teal and pink...had no clue, but I love this soap now lol!