What a fantastic month this has been!  Aruna Padmanabhan of Suffuse Soaps was our guest teacher, showing us how to create beautiful transparent soaps from scratch.  We had so many people who were excited about this technique (and still are!)  In fact, if you are interested in getting the downloadable tutorial, it is already available HERE.

The goal of this challenge was to create a transparent soap with excellent clarity, and remelt the soap to add color and design that shows off the clarity.  The final soap could only contain the transparent soap made from scratch, soap colorants, glitter and optional scent.

Our sponsor this month is Making Soap Magazine. Filled with formulating, small scale production, product packaging, herb knowledge, techniques, ingredients, interviews and reviews, Making Soap is a bi-monthly magazine that celebrates the ever increasing interest of making handmade soap, cosmetics and candles.  Originally known as Saponifier Magazine, they have been publishing cutting edge articles for our industry since 1998.  I have personally kept up my subscription since 2006!  They are providing digital subscriptions to all our winners.  Speaking of winners, here they are:

Starting with the Experienced category, congratulations goes to Edgar Kameraki in Mexico for his fantastic Sunset Paradise transparent soap!  Edgar is an expert when it comes to transparent soap and did such an amazing job preserving the clarity of his soap base even after coloring.  The design is completely amazing as well!

Sunset Paradise by Edgar Kameraki

Edgar wins a 3-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – so awesome!  The photo is linked to his Instagram post where you can read more about it and see the excellent clarity of the base soap.

Second place goes to Tiziana Cherubini in Switzerland for her beautiful Light Flowers soap, inspired by the designs made with gelatin and the 3D jelly soap challenge.  Tiziana did such an incredible job using micas to painstakingly creating each petal, stamen and leaf in these soaps:

Tiziana’s prize is a 2-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – wow!!  Check out her Facebook post with more photos and information about her soaps, linked to the photo above.

In third place we have Angelique Heiligers, also in Switzerland, who has transformed her transparent soap base into a themed set called “Wedding Rose.”  Taking inspiration from molds for epoxy wax, she built her soaps in many layers.  The results are stunning!

Wedding Rose by Angelique Heiligers

Angelique wins a 1-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – way to go!  This photo is also linked to her Instagram post showing more photos of her process and information about how she made it.

For the Sponsor’s Choice award in the Experienced category, Kathy Tarbox, editor-in-chief of Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine, has chosen Crystal Teardrop by Maja Zuvela-Aloise in Austria.  Kathy was very impressed by the soap’s originality, shape and color usage.

Crystal Teardrop by Maja Zuvela-Aloise

After taking a year off from the Challenge Club, this is a great way to get back into the groove! Maya wins a 1-year subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – woo hoo! Click on the photo for more photos of her process on her Facebook post!

Next up are the Recognition Awards for the Experienced category.  Best Technique goes to Rebekka Kegel in Switzerland for her stunning Stormy Coast soap!  Not only is the clarity amazing, but the texture created in the soap by the various colorants is just fantastic!  It truly resembles stormy waters:

Stormy Coast by Rebekka Kegel

Awesome job, Rebekka!  The photo is linked to her Instagram post with more information and photos of more incredible soaps she made with her transparent soap base.

The Best Use of Color Award goes to Vicki Chase in New Hampshire for her Bubble Trouble soap.  The overlapping colors make for interesting designs and create a variety of blue and purple shades while maintaining the transparency of the soap.

Bubble Trouble by Vicki Chase

Be sure to click on the photo for more fantastic photos of her soap on her Instagram post!

The Best Presentation Award is for an entry with awesome photography and beautifully displayed soaps.  As you might imagine, transparent soaps are quite difficult to photograph!  This award goes to Teri Endsley of Tree Marie Soapworks in Indiana for the photo of her Crystalline soaps.  Teri has found the perfect balance of light and shadow without too much of either one.  The soaps are well-focused and presented in an interesting arrangement, showing off their transparency and beauty.

Crystalline by Tree Marie Soapworks

Click on the photo above to see Teri’s Instagram post with more photos and information about her soaps.

Let’s take a look at the winners from the Beginner category next!  Only those who have been making soap for less than a year or fewer than 50 batches could enter this category.  Congratulations goes to Heike Sedat-Schmidt in Germany for her grand prize winning Floating Lines soap!  She did a fantastic job coming up with a design that shows off the clarity of the soap and creates a 3D effect:

Floating Lines by Heike Sedat-Schmidt

Heike wins a 3-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – how cool is that?  Click on the photo to see how she made this beautiful design, linked to Instagram.

Second place in the Beginner category goes to Lauren Conn in the U.S. for her multi-layered kitties in the window soap!  She used all natural colorants, which is very impressive, as it’s not easy to maintain the transparency of the soap when adding plant matter.

Contentment by Lauren Conn

Lauren’s prize is a 2-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine!  Great job!!  Be sure to click on the photo to see her detailed process information and photos on her Facebook post.

In third place we have Kazuki Tsuchiya in Japan who did an excellent job creating her Autumn Wind soap!  The colors and textures come together perfectly to mimic the look of fall leaves and a blustery wind:

Autumn Wind by Kazuki Tsuchiya

Kazuki wins a 1-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – hooray! Be sure to click on the photo to see her Instagram post with more information and photos!

The Sponsor’s Choice award in the Beginner category goes to Robin Grieco in Arizona for her Blue Skies soap.  Kathy likes this one because of the great depiction of the sky and gradient usage.

Blue Skies by Robin Grieco

Robin wins a 1-year subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine – yahoo! Click on the photo if you’d like to check out her Instagram post with more information about her soap.

Now we get to do Recognition Awards for the Beginner category!  For the Best Technique, I have chosen Mingos at Sunset by Sheanne Mulholland in Scotland.  I was very impressed by her double ombre technique with the flamingo embeds.  It’s a great combination of opacities and really shows off the clarity of her soap!

Mingos at Sunset by Sheanne Mulholland

Click on the photo to see her post on Instagram with more lovely photos of this soap and information about how she pulled it off.

Next is the Best Use of Color Award.  I have chosen Rainbow Fluorite by Beth Hulley in Australia for this award.  Beth has done a tremendous job of creating beautiful layers of texture using color to build her gemstones!  It’s such a wonderful spectrum of complementary dark and light hues:

Rainbow Fluorite by Beth Hulley

Just spectacular!  Be sure to check out Beth’s Facebook post with more information about her soap and methods by clicking on the photo!

For the Best Presentation award, I’ve chosen The Art of Today by Elena Tan in Malaysia.  Photography is definitely one of the most difficult parts of this challenge, and I was very impressed by Elena’s photo of her transparent soap!  I really love the lighting, the spacing of the soaps and how they line up in such a beautiful way to highlight the modern art piece that this soap is:

The Art of Today by Elena Tan

Elena has more excellent photos of her soap at various angles on her Instagram post which is linked to this photo.  Be sure to check them out!

Finally, we have the Bonus Category Sponsor’s Choice award!  This award goes to Irina Beketova of IB Organics in Texas for her Autumn Breeze soap.  Kathy says, “Striking color combination. Depicts the lovely autumn season perfectly.”  Indeed it does!

Autumn Breeze by IB Organics

Beautiful job, Irina!  She wins a 1-year digital subscription to Making Soap & Cosmetics Magazine!  Be sure to click on the photo to read more about this soap on Irina’s Instagram post.

The rest of the entries for the Experienced, Beginner, and Bonus categories are at the bottom of this post!

Registration is NOW OPEN for the October through December challenges!  For October, we are getting out our soap scraps and creating beautiful new designs with a variety of techniques.  Baraka Shea Butter is back to sponsor this challenge with awesome gift certificate prizes.  If you are unfamiliar with this company, you should know that every purchase provides the dignity of income to hardworking rural women in Ghana, and provides you with pure, natural, handcrafted ingredients. Baraka has the strongest and most authentic community impact connection of any shea butter producer in the world.  The quality of their products is truly fantastic!

Various ways to re-use soap scraps

You’ll have the option to sign up for October only, or the next three months.  Check out the Upcoming Challenges page for more info and to get registered by Monday, October 4th at 2pm CDT!

The rest of the Bonus category submissions can be found HERE.  Check out the Experienced and Beginner submissions in the order they were voted below:

Experienced Category

Beginner Category