Our guest teacher for the February challenge was Kandra Churchwell, an expert in coloring soaps with natural plant-based botanical.  She has been selling her products via her company Alo Goods since 2011, and recently started sharing her knowledge via her Soapy Friends website.  Her new book, The Natural Soap Palette (2020), is full of her research and information about how to use botanicals in soap.  We are grateful that she taught the Club and provided valuable support in our private Facebook group this month!

The goal of the challenge was to learn to use botanicals as a tea, infusion, or slurry to effectively color our soaps.  The regular category was limited to a maximum of two colors (plus varying shades from light to dark).  The advanced and winners categories were tasked with creating at least one blend from two other colors in their soaps.  Suffice it to say, we all learned so much this month!  If you are interested in learning how to color your soaps with botanicals, the tutorial from this challenge is available HERE.

Kandra has teamed up with Anne George of AnneGeorges.com (who sells plant based botanicals for dying fabrics as well as soap) in many of her projects, so it made sense for Anne to sponsor the challenge this month as well!  Anne’s natural colorants are small batch production, as fresh as it comes, for maximum color extraction and brilliance.  Her company is located in India, but ships internationally.  Many of our members used her colorants for the challenge with excellent results!

AnneGeorges is providing gift certificate and coupon code prizes for our top three voted winners in each of the competitive categories, plus a gift certificate for her Sponsor’s Choice winner in the non-competitive bonus category.  Additionally, Kandra has chosen one entry from each category to receive a digital copy of her book which will be revealed last.

Please check out our winners below!!

Winners Category

Third Place

Name Maya Morag

Location Israel

Link Instagram

Prize 20% off coupon code – AnneGeorges

Moroccan Mosaic Tile

Recognition Awards

Best Use of Color

Criteria Well-mixed, beautiful color palette; unique natural colors, blends or shades

Name Teri Endsley

Location Indiana

Link Facebook

Infusion Study

Advanced Category

Third Place

Name Marty Johnson

Location Minnesota

Link Instagram

Prize 20% off coupon code – AnneGeorges

Dancing Botanicals

Recognition Awards

Best Use of Color

Criteria Well-mixed, beautiful color palette; unique natural colors, blends or shades

Name Mihaela Toselli

Location Italy

Link Instagram

Infusion Study

Regular Category

Third Place

Name Rachel Kendell

Location Utah

Link none

Prize 20% off coupon code – AnneGeorges

Singing the Blues

Recognition Awards

Best Use of Color

Criteria Well-mixed, beautiful color palette; unique natural colors, blends or shades

Name Cecilia Patton

Location California

Link Facebook

Sasquatch @ Sunset

Bonus Category

Teacher’s Choice

Since I don’t have badges for “Teacher’s Choice,” these entries will be recognized with the Sponsor’s Choice badges instead.  Congratulations to these winners!

Bonus Category

Name Will Baczek

Location Massachusetts

Link Instagram

Prize The Natural Color Palette by Kandra Churchwell

Terracotta Tiles

Great job to all our winners, as well as everyone else who participated in the challenge this month!  If you would like to see the rest of the entries this month, check out these links:

Registration for the March & April challenges opens Monday, March 6!  March’s challenge is Soap Top Designs – choose between textured tops presented by me or piping techniques with guest teacher Whitney Schneider of Cheeky Goat Soapery.  These are the soaps we made for the video tutorial with amazing custom fragrances from our sponsor, Stock Fragrance. Check out the Upcoming Challenges page for more information about this challenge as well as the one for April, and sign up to be notified as soon as registration opens.