The soap challenge for this month is "Embed
Soaps" offered by Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks. I can't wait to see the
creations from all the other talented soap makers, I love looking at their
soaps as much as I enjoy making my soaps. Please don't forget to go to Amy's
blog page HERE to enjoy everyone's soap entries,
along with Amy's beautiful soaps.
I love looking at pictures of soaps with embeds. You
may be asking just what is an "Embed", according to Merriam-Webster
Dictionary on its web
site HERE it is described as:" em·bed verb \im-ˈbed\: to place or set (something) firmly
in something else. I have decided that I wanted to make two different
soaps, one for the girls and one for the boys. For the girls I will be
embedding hearts, and for the boys
mustaches. I had to make the embeds for the soaps a few days before I made the
actual soap, that way they had time to
set up enough to get them out of the molds.
The soap I am entering in this month's Soap Challenge
will be the girls soap with heart embeds. I love how the red hearts just pop out in the white
& black swirled soap. I think they will make a nice gift for Mother's Day,
and would be a perfect soap for Valentine's Day also. Recently I read Jennifer's Handmade Soap blog and she wrote a
tutorial on how to make a " Dusted Embed Soap". I got pretty excited reading about how to do
it, it was perfect timing for my heart embed soap. Jennifer gave me permission to share the link
to her blog and her great instructions. You will enjoy seeing her beautiful
soaps and the instructions HERE.
I used a fragrance from Wholesale Supply Plus in this
soap "Pink Berry Mimosa", and for colors I used Titanium Dioxide for the
white and Activated Charcoal for the black. The small heart embed mold I
purchased on Etsy, and the larger heart I purchased from Bramble Berry. I loved
how easy the hearts released from the molds, if you plan on making a soap using
embeds I would recommend purchasing this type of a mold.
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| Embeds in the mold, ready to unmold. |
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| Embeds out of the molds. OK lets get to making some soap. |
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| Coated in the Activated Charcoal. Messy, messy, messy! |
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| Here I have added the first heart embed. Next I will add the last heart embed and the remaining swirled soap. |
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| I added a layer of white soap base and some soap dots, that I will turn into a heart design.... |
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| Inserted my tiny heart embeds onto the black hearts I made with the soap dots. |
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| I love close up pictures of the tops! |
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| Unmolded soap log, I can't wait to cut it and see what the inside looks like. |
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| Very excited on how the soap turned out. |
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| It is so neat that with a swirled soap that every bar of soap looks different, like having their own personality. |
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| Look at the soap on the left, the swirling made a white heart next to the red one, I love it. |
For the man's
soap I used a fragrance from Bramble Berry called "Blue Man". I knew
it would discolor the soap so for the swirl color I chose "Blue Vibrance Mica",
I wanted the blue to pop out in the soap after it discolored. The Moustaches I used Activated Charcoal for the black.
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| Aren't they so cute. Makes you smile just looking at them. |
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| Swirled soap before adding the embeds. |
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I usually have a hard time lining up my embeds so that when
I cut the soap they are spaced equally, so I taped some dental
floss across mold before putting on the embeds, it worked
really well for the proper placement.
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| Unmolded soap, ready to cut. |
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| Cut soaps before they discolored. |
 Here is the final color of the soaps after they discolored. |
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| Don't they make a cute couple :) |
