January Soap Challenge

So this is a lesson in why you don't wait until the last minute to do soap for a soap challenge! Back in Dec Amy messaged me to ask if she could add a link to my original geode soap in IG and let me know that this was going to be part of the Jan soap challenge. Now a little back story..... when I made my 3 geode soaps it took me 3 days to complete 1 and I swore I would never make them again! Fast forward to this Jan soap challenge and I debated whether or not I was going to do it. I decided on Jan 22,2021 that I was going to do it, end of the challenge is Jan 26,2021 haha! I had in mind that I would create a full geode and embed it inside the soap. It did not go well! 

The first thing was to make the crystals out of melt and pour. I started with the darker colors and gradually ended up with clear and glitter. I used phoenix blend bio glitter from Fizz Fairy, hearts desire, shamrock silver, mystic red and starry night enviro glitters from Nurture soap, artic sparkle, dragons delight, chunky blue opal and chunky green opal from The Good Glitter, cascade pure bio glitter from Eco Star Dust, sparkle me blue, red and aqua bio glitters from Mad Micas and finally super sparkle diamond mica from WSP! A WHOLE LOT OF GLITTER! This will come back to bite me!

The next step was cutting the loaf and cutting them into crystals. These where cut in various sizes with the darker colors at the top.

I then formed the geode using the clear/glitter combo and dead sea salt as the base of the geode. Clearly I did not think that one through! Initially, the crystals were to tall so I had to take the crystals all apart and redo the geode, this turned out to be a good thing!  Once I cut the ends off of all the crystals, I redid the half geodes. 

I formed the full geode and sealed the sides. However, once it was done and I cut the ends off I quickly realized that the full geode idea wasn't going to work as once cut you couldn't see the crystals at all well :(.  So I cut the halves open at the seams and once again revamped my idea. 

My next idea was to use both halves in the soap. One half inside against the wall of the mold and the second one on the top opposite the inside one. I also wanted to use up all of the pieces I cut off of the crystals inside one part of the soap. I went with black pearl mica and silver mist from Nurture soap with the grey(note here silver mist is a strange mica, it morphs to purple, blue or silver and I never know which)  part having the crystal shreds inside it and scented it with Moonstone from Bramble Berry. I poured in black first but had to wait for the soap to thicken, but I put the side embed in to soon and had to get my husband to hold it in place while I worked the black in order to secure the side embed! Once the side was secured I poured the grey in then the rest of the black. At this point I put in the top embed and pushed the black onto the rounded part of the embed and mounded the rest of the black. This non embed side got the rest of the crystal shards. 

So, patience is not one of my strong suits! Lets just say making soap tests me REPEATEDLY hahaha. The next morning I took the soap out of the mold and was going to let it sit for a while before cutting. Also due to the fact that there is melt and pour throughout this soap I was going to hand cut the soap. After about an hour I decided to cut the soap with my wire cutter, I reasoned that at least I would know where to cut with the knife :) after I broke all my wires. Well surprise, surprise no wires broke! I did lose a couple of the crystals on top but was able to put them back on. This is where the glitter came back to bite me in the backside! All that chunky glitter in the melt and pour caused drag lines both from the wires cutting through AND while trying to clean the bars!  

All in all I am happy with the way it turned out and will be calling this Black opal! The moral of this very long story.... DON'T WAIT TILL THE LAST MINUTE TO ENTER THE SOAP CHALLENGE hahahahaha lesson learned!