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Notes
on the Soaps in the Gallery - IV Embedding
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| General: You may wish to refer to the pages on the Basic Method, Colours, Fragrances and Moulds for more details and information on suppliers. Clicking on the picture will take you to the larger picture of the soap in the Gallery. | |
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| Embedding is fun and an excellent way to use up odd scraps or soaps that didn't work out the first time. | |
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For this soap, which is not in the Gallery but which appears at the top of the Sources page, I made up a small quantity of transparent base and added copper mica. When it had set up I cut it into chunks. When a second quantity of base, coloured with titanium dioxide and a little more copper mica to make it a peach colour had been melted I added the chunks. The copper soap in the picture was a uniform colour before I embedded it but because the light catches the chunks differently it has lovely gradations of colour in the finished soap. |
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Not a very successful soap but I am including this anyway. I found an ice-cube tray in the shape of dolphins and made these first using ultramarine blue, black oxide and white titanium dioxide. Several failed attempts later (they fell over, they were too pale, they were too far away from the surface to show up properly) I ended up taking a slice off them so they would sit flat, upside down, in the bottom of a rectangular margarine tub. I took another failed piece of very pale blue/green soap and cut curls off it with a vegetable peeler which I arranged around the dolphins. The overpour was coloured very lightly with hydrated chromium oxide. You can do much better than this. |
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If you want to know where some of the failed dolphin soaps went, here is the answer. After having surgically removed the dolphins, the rest had a little titanium dioxide added to it and was remelted. I had some left over scraps coloured with various micas and I used these as chunks to embed following the basic method. The finished result glistens beautifully when wet. |
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For this soap (not in the Gallery) I made up several small quantities of base, colouring each with FD&C pigments (the 'unnatural' ones) to make vivid colours. Having chopped them up into tiny triangular pieces I embedded them in a larger quantity of white base. If you use titanium dioxide (or buy a ready-coloured opaque base) the unnatural colours will not bleed into it. |
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I first made two blocks, one of white and one of black and cut each into blocks that were exactly the same size. I set them side by side in alternating colours in a larger mould, wetting the sides of each with distilled water and pushing them together so they would stick, before overpouring with transparent base. Surprisingly it worked. |
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There are several methods that people advocate for embedding
and I suggest you look at tutorials on other
websites and see what works for you. What you are aiming for is
chunks that remain suspended throughout the soap and which don't either
sink to the bottom or float to the top. They need to remain distinct
but cling to the overpour. It is very depressing to cut through a
slice and have it fall to pieces. Ask me how I know. This is what
works for me (usually):
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