Now I've Discovered Soap

AKA Because I Needed To Fill My House With More Crap.

But the upside to this is that I also get to USE a bunch of crap that I've been hoarding! In addition to buying more crap. Hooray!!

So: Microwave melt & pour soap is the jam. It's $20 for the 5 lb. block, so print out the weekly 40% off Hobby Lobby coupon before you leave!

Then: Get you some soap molds. These plastic soap molds:

...do not mention it, but you need to coat them with vaseline before you pour the soap in or else you will break your thumbs trying to get the soap out. Luckily I happened to read that tip in a book, because the one time I forgot to use vaseline was very painful. However THESE:

Silicone molds for candy and cakes, and THESE:

Silicone novelty ice cube trays are AMAAAAAZING. No vaseline, no nothing, the silicone flexes allowing you to easily pop the soaps out. I have just ordered more silicone cake molds off Amazon because Eff that plastic junk. I'm gonna pawn them off on some ignorant sucker. And big thanks to everyone that has gifted us with novelty ice cube trays over the years.

Predictably, I went from Zero to Suspend-Shit-In-The-Soap in under a minute. You will note the purple bat in the first photo. Did I take a photo of the bloody rats? Damn. Well here are some spiders and flies, but the flies wings visually blend with the soap so you can't see them unless you hold them up to the light:

Here's a hippo:

Some aliens:

And I bought one of those overpriced "Toobs" of mythological creatures (use the 40% coupon!):

There's a unicorn, Neptune, dragon, minotaur...it rules.

So what I do is pour some melted soap in the bottom, let it cool for a few minutes, then toss in an alien and let that cool for a couple of minutes (usually while heating more soap), then pour the rest of the melted soap on top.You can't wait too long because the soap poured on top won't blend with the bottom if it's too cool, it will just peel off when it hardens. But if you pour the top on too soon, your alien will just float to the top. I left my husband holding Neptune's head under the soap with a popsicle stick -- "DON'T MOVE" -- for like a minute and half before he would stay down.

After I pour the second layer on, sometimes I stab a toothpick around in there to try to fuse them together just in case. It's not perfect, and it takes a few attempts to get it right. (Don't forget: just like a cake, the part touching the mold will look nicer than the rough bottom, so put your stuff in upside-down if you want it to appear right side up on the good side when you pop it out.)

Then someone gave us one of these new silicone ice cube trays that make giant 2" cubes for whiskey:

And I bought a sack of astronauts and some yellow soap dye.

OH THE HUMANITY!! I like how this one looks like he has a lunch pail and got slimed on the way to work. Sometimes I dropped the dye in the bottom pour, sometimes I waited until the top pour. So they're all slightly different:

This fellow was apparently planning to do some light dentistry. I did not put these guys into the tray upside down, and the little base stuck very nicely to the slightly cooled soap in the bottom. Obviously their heads are too tall for the mold, which I thought would bother me, but it actually sort of adds to the hopelessness of the situation. The poor bastards.

Another benefit of this craft is that it cleans up after itself!! Everything is soap! Hooray! And it's pure glycerin, so I'm not allergic to it, and it's unscented (you can buy scents if you want) so it's basically the perfect craft. Which is good because my husband basically just comes home and says "What now??" I already had to buy a container to hold all my molds and colors and soap blocks. It's ridiculous.