What is an embed? It's soap inside of a soap. There are several ways to do this. You can make a new batch of soap in a particular color and pour it into a special column mold like a star or half moon or full round. Or you can make soap balls or chunks that can be cut into smaller pieces. 

You can also use a previous soap and cut it up into slivers or chunks or triangles. I save the beveled ends of my soaps. Sometimes if the soap is still soft I roll the bits that I have shaved off into soap balls or if they are too hard I save them for confetti soaps. 

This month Amy, of Great Cakes Soap Works, has made the challenge about using these embeds in a new soap. I used my soap balls in a soap last summer that turned out nicely - below is the photo. 

You can see the little soap balls that were supposed to look like a landscape with sand.  Since that is the only time I tried to create a soap with embeds I was glad to see Amy's challenge so I could use the other soap balls I have been saving! 

Here are bags of soap balls in varying shades of browns, yellows and greens. I decided to do a layered soap using four different colors: cappachino mica, copper mica, green moss pigment and yellow oxide. 

It was time to mix up the soap using a simple soap recipe of olive, coconut, palm and rice bran oils, divide the soap into four containers and using the colorants. I poured the layers from brown, to copper, to green to yellow adding the soap ball into each layer. You can see in the photo below the copper color with the soap balls in the mold.

I finished the soap off with the remaining colors and swirled them around the top just a bit. This one is scented with a blend of amyris, cedarwood, rose geranium and patchouli essential oils. 

This how it looked after taking it out of the mold and cutting the bars. The name I had thought about using really didn't fit so I decided to do a contest on my Facebook page. Put your choice down under the photo on Facebook and they will be put into a blog poll so they can be voted on. The winning name will get a bar of the soap!

Of course I am never satisfied to do just one try batch of the challenges. I think that is part of the challenge for me - to do another one! This time I decided to use some pink and turquoise colored embeds and do another layer look with the same colors and scent it with a blend of Lavender, Rose Geranium and Bergamot.

Once I get busy putting the soap together I forget to take photos. Plus I tend to get a bit messy and I would hate to get soap on the camera! I added a bit of glitte to the top too. You can see the soap sitting on my Bud cutter. I really like the colors and how the soap balls and bits and pieces worked with the swirled layers.

I had enough time to go for one more batch before the end of the challenge. This time I cut up a couple bars of soaps to use for the embeds with reds, oranges, greens, tans and browns. with a blend of sandalwood fragrance with orange and patchouli essential oils. At first I was going to do a one color soap then of course I got distracted... I divided my mold into three sections first. Then I split a batch of soap into three colors (cappachino mica, clementine mica and fizzy lemondade).

This time I may have over thought my process..  I was going for crazy quilt look. So I poured layers of the the three colors and alternated within the dividers.The embeds were for various quilt pieces. We will see how this one looks tomorrow! Oh, and I thought a Taiwan Swirled top should work for the quilt's edge. 

Here are the final results. Which would you choose as the final challenge soap? 

Thanks again Amy for a fun challenge! You can go to Amy's blog page to see the winners from this challenge as well as past challenges. You'll also get a chance to see some of Amy's awesome soaps! Her link is:
http://www.greatcakessoapworks.com/handmade-soap-blog/