New crafts...a certain way to make me happy!

I made soap! I had been curious to try it for a while...so I got some melt and pour soap, some colourants and some scents and away I went. It was slightly expensive because obviously these kind of things are heavy and therefore more costly to ship...and for some reason the VAT on them was killer as well. I think I'll stick to good old eBay for my melt and pour bars next time. 

This is strawberry cheesecake soap - and believe me, it really DOES smell like one! I melted down the chunks of melt and pour soap in the microwave in 30 second blasts until it was completely liquid. After that I halved the mix. In the first one I added just a few drops colouring and in the second one I added considerably more so it would be a much darker red.

I poured the lighter red/almost pink half into a soap mould (but you can use any ordinary baking tin if its a silicone one...probably metal too, but for some reason the idea of liquid and metal makes my hair stand on end!) and then waited a few minutes until there was a skin on both batches of soap. With the darker one I turned it out of the plastic tub it was in and started to roughly chop it up with a knife into cubes. I then added these into the batch of lighter soap, pushing them down gently so they sank into the liquid. 

You have to remember at this point to spray the soap with rubbing alcohol. I didn't have this in a spray form but only a gel form so I used some vodka in a spray bottle which worked just fine as well. Due to the alcohol content of vodka it's pretty much almost the same as vodka. Yep, think about that when you next drink your glass of vodka - you're basically drinking what they use to wash their hands in hospitals! 

A sprinkle of strawberry seeds on top of the soap and all that was left to do was wait a few hours for it to set. I guess it took about 4 hours or so before mine was set and it turned out with no problems at all. Adding those cubes of colour gave a nice effect and once it was chopped up into blocks the effect was really fantastic! For a first attempt I was really, really proud of this and I can't wait to make some more soap.