Soap experiment semi-successes. It turns out that while if you try to include rose petals in soap, the heat of the melted soap often turns them black, but if you pour and THEN press them onto the surface, they’ll stick and retain color. Sort of. The sticking is not as consistent as I would like, and when you put it in a little bag, some petals fall off and end up on the front, and the overall effect is a little messier than I’d like. But still, not bad: this one is rose-vanilla.
And then for this lime-charcoal soap, it was definitely fun doing triangle layers (tilt mold and prop it up that way, pour, then once it’s set, tilt the other way for the next layer), but I had skipped the ‘spray with alcohol in between layers’ step, so when I tried to cut these into bars, all my triangles promptly fell apart. You can apparently score them, paint with melted soap base, and try to reseal them, but that is beyond my patience — these ended up just bagged as little triangle sets. Ah well!
At least it smells great! And activated charcoal is supposedly good for your skin? So a lot of beauty products claim, anyway. I can’t vouch for that, but it does look cool. 
Happy with this one too, pomegranate-vanilla. It’s a little tricky doing swirls with melt-and-pour soaps, because you have to use a thermometer to make sure your soaps are at the right temperature for swirling. I was aiming for a mix of solid white and swirled sparkly dark pink — ta da! What I also particularly like, though I didn’t plan it, is how some of the swirly bits look like intricate blood vessels. This would be a good soap to gift the medical professional in your life.
I asked Kavi if this “Rescue the Fairy” soap was cute or just goofy. She said it was cool, which is honestly even better. I’ll take it.
I know y’all love the elephant soaps, and yes, they are v. cute, but I actually think this is my favorite of the soaps I’ve made. Unscented glycerin — if I’d had an ocean-y essential oil on hand, I would have added that. But I am mostly madly in love with the colors and the swirl.
I’m calling this one “Heart of the Sea.” I just want to stare into its depths and disappear!
Not all the soap experiments come out! This one popped beautifully out of the mold, 
and then I thought I’d try gilding it with some gold mica. Readers, it was a disaster. I didn’t even take an after picture, because it looked so awful, but trust me, it was v. unpleasant. I ended up rinsing it all off, which left the soap a little shiny, but thankfully, a local who stopped by to pick up her copy of Feast was happy to pick it as her bonus soap. So all’s well that ends well, but sometimes, one should not attempt to gild the lily. Or the phoenix! 