Well this month for The Challenge Club our brief was Winter Wonderland!

That title just screams Snow, Christmas and all things festive to me. I had to get my thinking cap on to plan, design and execute what I had in my head and put that into my soap.

 I have had flu and had to stay in bed 1 day so I decided to write a poem, which my soap is based on. First the poem, so here it is, then to make the soap to match.

One snowy Christmas Eve, when all was calm and still,
Santa set off in his sleigh, up and over the hill.
Along with his trusted deers, higher and higher they soared,
A cup of hot choc in hand, that Mrs claus had poured.

All of a sudden a bang! “What the elf was that!?”
The dodgy left phalangee or the cylinder head gaskat!
Smoke came from the sleigh, thick, smelly and black,
Houston we have a problem! There’s no way I’m going back!

There is only one thing for it, we will have to make the jump,
Out of the ride, into the snow, they landed in a clump.
WOW! that was a close one, “I nearly lost my head”,
But instead they landed softly, in a cold white frosty bed.

Rudolph did you grab the sack? on your bumpy fall,
NO PREZZIES FOR THE KIDS!, I don’t want to make that call!
Luckily Rudie had grabbed it, along with the other deers,
At least they had the toys, tonight there would be no tears.

The moral of this tale, always check your sleigh,
Mechanic elf at the ready, working for his pay.
“I suppose it is on foot lads”, tonight is going to be long,
So jovially they walked, singing this merry song….

Snowbells ring, are you listening?
In the lane, snow is glistening
a beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight,
Walking in a WINTER WONDERLAND……

So we have the plan, now to start on the soap!

Firstly, I grated a whole bunch of soaps to make embeds for the top and inside my soap. I wanted to hand craft them rather than mould.

My plan was to have Santas boot bottoms and Rudolphs nose in the snow. Antlers, Santas hat and the sack of gifts on top sticking out of the snow.

My idea was to make long tubes that went right through the soap so that when cut you would see them as the nose and the bottom of the boots. That was all I needed for inside the soap, now just to make embeds for the top.

These are the little Santa Sacks complete with gifts.

These Antlers were a nightmare to craft! They took me 2 days to finally get to something that resembled an antler, before they looked like chicken feet and I had to get them right.

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These are the finished embeds, Santas hat I would pipe on with wet soap…. hopefully 🙂

I chose Christmas forest Fragrance. I mixed Brazen Hussy, Brick House and Voodoo micas from mad oils to get a better red and used Titanium Dioxide to whiten the main soap.

I poured the white into my mould and layed the boots and nose embeds through the middle, I then poured the rest of the white but kept a little bit back to pipe on the top.

So that is the soap made. Reindeers, Santa and the prezzies, all fallen from the sleigh and into the snow in a heap!

I just had to wait to see if my plan had worked once I cut it 🙂

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This is the cut bars. They were huge and I hade to shave them down slightly but I will put them all into another project 🙂

This definitely was a fun challenge and my husband thinks I’m a little bit crazy but I think he knew that already 🙂

I’m looking forward to the swap too this time. These soaps are just too big to fit in the mailing envelope so I am sending last months Taiwan spinning swirl soap which I won the challenge with. Hope you like them x

Thanks Amy for another fab challenge, now to go and practice for next month. See you all soon.

As always, Love form Spain.

Carolyn x