Soap Challenge Club - Embed Soaps 1-16-14

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.

Embeds in the mold, ready to unmold.

 

 

 

 

 

Embeds out of the molds. OK lets get to making some soap.
 

Coated in the Activated Charcoal.
Messy, messy, messy!




Here I have added the first heart embed. Next I will add the last
heart embed and the remaining swirled soap.

I added a layer of white soap base and some soap dots,
that I will turn into a heart design....
 




Inserted my tiny heart embeds onto the
black hearts I made with the soap dots.



I love close up pictures of the tops!



Unmolded soap log, I can't wait to cut it
and see what the inside looks like.



Very excited on how the soap turned out.

 

It is so neat that with a swirled soap that every bar of soap
looks different, like having their own personality.



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.



Aren't they so cute.
Makes you smile just looking at them.



Swirled soap before adding the embeds.



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.

 



Unmolded soap, ready to cut.
 



Cut soaps before they discolored.



Here is the final color of the soaps after they discolored.





Don't they make a cute couple   :)