OK I cut up my Mimosa cake.  Looks great!!  I forgot to leave aside some natural color soap to pipe the top, so I just piped using the same orange color.  I cut them into rectangular slices, but I did do a couple as a wedge just to see; they are right angle wedges instead of the equilateral wedges that a round cake would give.  The layers stuck this time.  I did gel…

which brings me to the not so good news.  I totally forgot that Champagne FO has a flash point of 140s and the Orange Peel FO is probably even lower than that!  Citrous fragrances are notorious as faders.  I have been trialing using less fragrance for my soaps.  I have used Champagne in the past and used 1 oz per pound of oil (ppo) and it is really strong in the soap. I even gelled that one.  So I have been trying out 0.75oz ppo.  In this Mimosa soap I used 1/3 Champagne and 2/3 Orange Peel. 

Well, the cakes look fab, but the really juicy fizzy orange smell has faded.  It's still there, but when I compare it to the cupcakes and purse soap from yesterday that I did not force gel upon the fragrance is not as strong.  The Champange FO might have been strong enough to withstand gel, but there was less of it than the Orange Peel FO.   And I think much of the Orange Peel burned off during gel.  We'll see how the fragrance holds up as it cures.  Maybe this will be good for people who like light fragrance. 

And the experimental process continues.  Next time I do a cake I definitely will stick to this rectangular cake style rather than the round.  I like it.  This cake probably weighs 3.5 lbs.  My round cake weighed 7 lbs.  If I try this combo of Champagne and Orange Peel again I won't CPOP, so no gel.  I'm hoping that the layers will continue to stick together because the layers were matte and not smooth as glass like the round layers that came out of the round silicone mold.  I think also I will need to add a deeper orange color to the soap.  It's a peachy orange color and I think I want it a bit darker and more orange.

*****

I also made a soap fragranced with Jasmine-Honey, which is similar to Lush's Flying Fox (so I've read).  I love how this turned out! Natural with a purple pencil line, green, then natural dolloped on top.

I love how sharp the line turned out.  I gelled this one too because of the pencil line. I have heard that if you do this (which is lightly sprinkle powder color on top of one color than pour the next color) you should gel  so that the layers stick.  Otherwise the layers could fall apart.  The layers could also fall apart if you sprinkle too much powder color.  But I think I did a good job.  The fragrance withstood the gel is strong at 0.75 oz ppo.  I also made a couple more flower soaps with bears (you can see in the background) with the extra soap.   I love those bear soap embeds.  They are so cute.  I love how they look on top of the flower molds.  Wouldn't those be great as a baby shower gift for the parents or as a favor from a baby shower or a baby's first birthday!  I'll have to make some more.

I just unmolded and cut the Love Spell soaps.

I love how all the colors came out.  The embeds came out good as well.  Each slice has a heart and star in it, in whole or partial.  Depending on where it was cut in along the mold you can see a star, a heart a little bit of both, or nothing.  even the ones with nothing will reveal a heart or star as it gets used.  The extra bits of soap that I plopped into the flower mold came out cute as well.  The ducky is glow in the dark plastic.  Looks like it's floating on colored marshmallow fluff!  Same with the bear.  The bear is actually CP soap as well so all of that soap can be used.   The fragrance is sweet and fruity.  It's supposed to be a dupe of a Victoria's Secret fragrance I think.

I also unmolded the soap out of the purse silicone mold.  I wasn't sure if it was going to turn out.  There's a different flower design on each side.  It's got a lot of detail.  There are stitching lines in the design. 

And for perspective on the size of this cute soap:

I made my this particular recipe a really hard bar so maybe that's why it came out so well.  This is a really great mold, but it's pricey so I only have one.  That doesn't lend itself for production work in CP.  It's better suited for making MP soap, as MP can be unmolded much quicker than CP soap making. 

I'm just about ready to 'frost' the soap cake I made yesterday.  Here are the layers I'll be frosting.  Not very exciting right now.