July Soap Challenge

​The soap club challenge for July is to make either a realistic marble or river rock. I decided to do the river rock category. As far as I was concerned river rock is boring and bland mostly being browns and grays. I asked a friend of mine if she had any suggestions of a river rock that was actually pretty and she told me about Puddingstone! This rock is a conglamorant of rocks that through pressure and heat over time are formed all together. It is found all over the world both on land and in water including rivers. When I saw the pictures I was stunned! You can find out more info about puddingstone here https://jewelryjake.com/blogs/michigan-living/what-is-a-puddingstone-where-do-you-find-it
​

The British called it puddingstone because it reminded them of Christmas pudding! I chose a color scheme of light gray base with orangey red, black and white for the rocks inside. I am doing soap dough so that I can “knead” the color chunks into the gray. Because the sponsor for this challenge is Mad Micas I decided to use as many of their micas as I could, so I used spicey red tomato, here comes the bride, wicked and satin grey pillow along with black oxide and red orange neon. The fragrance is from WSP, Black Salt and Cypress. I used my regular soap recipe and made the various colors and covered it all so the water wouldn't evaporate. Should have only did this with the grey hahaha.

This turned out to be a multi day process! I allowed the soap to sit in the molds for a few days before getting them out. I discovered that in order to cut the black white and orange ones into chunks I had to let those ones sit out and harden so I could cut them. UGH! So a couple of days sitting out and then I was able to cut and shred the soaps.

After another 2 days of allowing these to dry out, it was time for the forming of soap rocks. It is quite the arm work out to make these things! First softening the gray then adding and kneading in the various chunks. I also had to make sure that the chunks on the inside where evenly distributed through out the soap as I was cutting one of them open for pictures as this is where the magic is in the real stones.

After allowing the rocks to dry a couple of more days, I cleaned them up using a sponge to get the smooth river rock look and took pics! 
For more info on the Soap Challenge club check out Amy Warden's site ​soapchallengeclub.com