Do you like making soap balls?
It appears to me that people enjoy making them and turning them into fun and creative soaps. I do make soap pucks from fresh trimmings but that’s just one or two at a time. I give them away or use them as kitchen hand soap. I stopped collecting scraps to make into a whole new batch because the couple of times I did, I was not too happy with the way they looked. Maybe I’ll revisit it in the future.
Last month I made a batch of soap that accelerated trace and simply didn’t cut it. I decided to grate some of the fresh soap while it was still soft and I made them into ball embeds. The first few balls were fun to make, but rolling 40 of them? I don’t know how others do it, but I was getting tired compacting and rolling the soap into neat little balls. I feel though that all that work paid off with the way the soap turned out, but seriously, I don’t wish to make more!
Sweet Dreams
Some of the reject soap also ended up as cube embeds – my preferred style and the more practical approach – but I have to say that the ball embeds are rather cute and fun. 🙂
Bamboo Grapefruit
SoapJam 
Silvia:
Such Beautiful Soaps! I especially love the colors in the Sweet Dreams….what scent did you use?
And I love the packaging – it looks labor intensive, but lovely!
I’ve never been successful in rolling nice balls – maybe because by the time I get around to it, the soap is not that soft. I have 3 ball molds (from Brambleberry: small, medium, & large) that I pour my bits of left over soap into and then when I have enough of them, I make a batch of Polka Dot Soap. (The tops of the balls are a bit flat, but I place them in the loft mold so that the flat end is 90 degrees to the bottom of the loaf, that way when I cut the loaf all the balls look completely round.)
The soap was popular for the first couple batches, but not so much after that. I am thinking either it was just a fad or it might be because I have found when I use the soap and it gets very small, the balls tend to fall out and the whole sliver of soap falls apart. I don’t know if that happens to all soaps like this, or if mine have more of a tendency to do that, since the balls are fully cured by the time I get around to making a batch and they don’t really fuse with the main soap.
Love to hear anyone’s experience with this.
Thanks for the great blogs!
Thank you, Sylvia! It is a soft and innocent scent combination of Bedtime Bath type and water lily and jasmine.
Whenever I make soap embeds, I use soaps that are not yet fully cured- the fresher the better – and they adhere pretty well.
SO cute! I love the look but I agree, rolling 40 soap balls is not my idea of fun. I have seen spherical molds – that may be a lot easier to work with.
I just hope I rarely ever have the need to make embeds – balls or cubes! But so far it has not been the case. I like trying new scents and colors and making them in full-sized batch. gasp There’s always that risk of failure. 😀 I guess that’s my version of living dangerously. Hahaha!
Gorgeous, Silvia! ‘Sweet dreams’ soap looks so good and elegant! I adore that white colour! Congratulations!
Thank goodness ugly soaps get a second chance with embeds. 🙂 Thank you, Nat! 🙂
Ohhhh…Sweet Dreams looks so dreamy {couldn’t resist the pun}. I’m not big on embeds either. I made 10 the other day and just have up. I’m a cubes girl I think. Seeing your results however, I may give it a go next time.
It’s good to try the ball embeds at least once because they’re just so cute. But like you, I’m a cubes girl too. 🙂
That’s why I roll the logs, not balls. Luckily, don’t have to roll that often, 🙂
But, I admit, due to being cut at different points, balls give calottes of different diameters, which you can’t get with logs, so it’s more interesting. Good work, Silvia, they both look so clean and neat!
I actually tried to form logs, but I had a hard time doing it. Do you have a special technique for this? 🙂
You have way more patience than I ever would Silvia. But that patience pays off in the end result as your soaps are gorgeous. Sweet Dreams is so pretty! Like balloons floating into the clouds. Bamboo grapefruit is adorable too, and such pretty colours.
Thank you, Monica!
I love the soap balls in the first soap! It looks light, airy and feminine. I might have to give that technique a try 🙂
Thanks, Deirdre! It’s a great way to use soap trimmings, but it’s quite labor intensive. 😀
It sounds like the soap balls are a lot of work, but I love how they look in your soap! And the embeds are really cool, too. I’ve been trying to save more scraps lately by scraping my soaping bowls before washing them. I’ll have to do some sort of confetti embed loaf someday.
This soap is very pretty and fresh, as all your work! I like rolling
balls, I turn on a good podcast and keep my hands going automatically!
Oooh these are pretty Silvia! A really nice combination of colours. I have to agree with Maja though, I definitely find it easier and quicker to roll logs than balls. Sometimes I do all the same thickness to get a polka dot effect, and sometimes I do different thicknesses to get a bit of variety in the size of the circles in the soap. I don’t have a particular technique, I just take a lump of softish soap and roll it in my hands as if I’m making a playdough snake!
It is time consuming, but I love the effect. I think I’ll be making some again very soon 😀