New Video! Finding Inspiration for New Soap Designs

I hope you enjoy this new video about finding inspiration. I took a trip to Architectural Salvage of San Diego in the Little Italy neighborhood and went browsing in this wonderful shop full of antique treasures. Enjoy lots of tips and design suggestions as I show you how to translate beautiful details into soap ideas.

Where are some places you feel inspired? I'd love to hear!

The Lights Just Got a Little Brighter in The Soap Lab!

Have you heard of The Bright Side Project? If you receive the Daily Candy emails, maybe you remember seeing their feature. It's a really neat blog that picks an artist and gives readers a chance to win something from that artist by answering a nifty question. It's a fun and easy way to look on the bright side!

Today they chose Soapylove as the artist du jour. Get a chance to win a Typography Soap of your own here. I'll be picking the winner myself, so make your answer a stand out! :)

BTW, more Typography Soaps will be available June 1. We're making them as fast as we can!

Thanks for the love, Bright Side Project!

Come and Get It! Early Bird Discount This Week on New Issue.

The new special edition of Let's Get Soapy is now available! You will love this issue, dedicated to the look of The Soap Lab. Find out how to:

make custom texture sheets
use them for melt & pour AND CP soap
engrave these gorgeous Wood Grain soap bars
get inspired by an amazing packaging design page
learn how to make some great new non-bleeding soap colors
and a lot more

There are 20 pages packed full of great info (21 if you include the printable wood grain template).

As usual, if you order your issue this week you get the early bird special - $12 instead of the regular price of $15. Special price goes up June 1!

For more pictures from inside the issue, you can go straight to the shopping cart page here.

I hope you enjoy it! I think you will! :)

The Amazingness!

Erin Pikor, of Naiad Soap Arts, is contributing a great article for the special June issue of Let's Get Soapy. The above photograph is from her tutorial. She shows how to use the custom texture sheet project, the featured project in the eZine, for cold process soaps. A recipe and great tips are included. It's amazing the amount of depth and detail she was able to get, and it was her first try!

I'm really excited about this issue. It will be available starting on Monday at www.letsgetsoapy.com. If you get yours by June 1, you'll get a special early bird discount, too. Don't miss it!

Psst! The Soap Lab Shop is Now Open!

Since I'm all the way over here in California, I decided to open my shop today so anyone in the rest of the world will find an open shop when it's Monday there. :)

I have added the Writer's Block Soaps and my custom Black Walnut soap dishes to the shop as well. If you have any questions please feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks and happy shopping!

If I Only Spoke French...

I found this wonderful soap making eZine today and I wish I could read French! I think it is written by the author of Mais Kes Ka Fee, who has a gorgeous blog as well. Even though it's all about CP soap techniques, the photos are eye candy for everyone to enjoy.

I plan to spend more time on her site and use Google Translator to read the articles, but I wanted to quickly share the eZine with you first. I hope you like it!

Open publication - Free publishing - More soap

Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie

I was doing some YouTube research on stop action videography and came across this stunningly beautiful music video by Oren Lavie. I love both the video and the music. I hope you do, too!

Good News for Typography Soap Fans

The Soap Lab is a small little blog with a teeny tiny following, so when I see a jump in my hits, I know something is up.

Well, lately I've been seeing a few of these jumps and it's all because of the Typography Soap. Thank you to these sites (mostly graphic design sites!) that are fans of my letter covered bar:

Desktop Publishing Forum
We Love Typography (I think the hits are from a forum that's login only, but the site is so cool!)
Graphism (France)
Phinney on Fonts
TYPO-L
Font72
Quipsologies - Finding the Creative in the Everyday
Steve Mehallo on Twitter
Aaron Bell on Twitter
Stylehive under "Typography"

I am going to produce a limited edition run of these soaps. Starting next Monday you'll be able to buy them in my Soap Lab shop. I will produce as many as are purchased within the next week or two, and then close The Soap Lab doors again (I would love to have it open all the time but with 2 kids, an eZine, my Soapylove biz, etc, I just can't).

So stay tuned and get ready to grab one before they're snapped up by all those letter hungry graphic designers! :)

Interesting Lighting for Photos

Mondays are my "work days", when my husband stays home with the kids while I dedicate some focused time to my projects. One of my favorite Monday tasks is taking photos. When Jim isn't around, the kids are so fascinated by what I'm doing that I'm constantly telling them, "don't touch that!" So I took advantage of my protected workspace today and shot some pics for an article in the upcoming June issue of Let's Get Soapy.

I have learned a lot about taking pictures from trial and error. Lighting is the most important and most challenging thing about good photos. I still haven't made a true light box, but was really excited to find a pair of really inexpensive frosted glass lamps at Ikea that I used in the above pic. For $15 I got 2 of them - tall rectangular boxes with lights inside. Simple and easy to use for uplighting or background lighting.

The article will be about how to create these non-bleeding colors for your own soap projects. I wish you could see the pretty and subtle shimmer they have, but you'll just have to try them yourself and see! :)