Gorgeous Melt & Pour Geodes

Difficulty Level 1

Wow your friends with these gorgeous realistic geodes. They make wonderful presents, especially for Christmas, and whilst a little messy to do, they are super easy and stunning look at.

RAW MATERIALS

453g Clear Melt & Pour base (*) To make your own, see feature on Make your own M&P soap

Iridescent cosmetic grade Glitter

20 drops Essential Oil or fragrance of choice

1/2 teaspoon Purple Mica

1 tablespoon Activated Charcoal

EQUIPMENT

Wire cake cooling grill

Extra large microwave bowl

Microwave

Very sharp knife

The base is Clear Melt and Pour which you can buy but you can also make your own using the cold-process method.

If you’d rather not use your microwave for this project, you can use the bain-marie method to melt the soap base down.

The Process

1. Cut about 113g of M&P soap base into small shard like shapes and cut another 113g of M&P soap base into large shard like shapes. Try to achieve long triangular shapes for a more authentic “crystal” shapes, similar to those shown in the photograph to the right.

2. Melt around 52g of M&P soap base and cool it until it is comfortable to handle

3. In the meantime, sprinkle a couple of pinches of iridescent glitter over the small shard shapes making sure they are well covered with the glitter.

4. Pick up all the small shards and start gently working them together to form a small ball shape. Drizzle some of the cooled soap over the shards to help them stick to each other.

5. Now start adding the large shard shapes to the ball, drizzling more cooled soap to help the larger shards stick to the ball. You might need to melt a little more base but keep increasing the size of ball shape by adding the larger shards to it.

6. This is going to get even messier ! Melt another 113g of M&P soap base in a large heat proof container, big enough to be able to dip the ball of shards into. Add 1/2 teaspoon of Purple Mica and stir in well. You might wish to create 3 different tones of purple to give your geode a more authentic look. If this is the case, then separate the melted base into a further 2 containers and add smaller/larger quantities of purple mica into each and stir well.

7. Add in your fragrance and stir in well

8. Dip your “geode ball” into the purple base and place it on a rack to cool slightly before going back in with another dip. Keep dipping and try to achieve 4 to 5 layers, cooling each layer before the next dip. You might need to melt more base.

9. To the remaining purple base, add a full tablespoon of Activated charcoal and dip the geode into this just once to get a shimmery black coating that’s a little bit sheer.

10. Let the geode harden for about an hour before cutting into it.

11. Before cutting, you need to know 2 things:

1) you need a very sharp knife

2) you need to warm your knife under hot, hot tap water to ensure that the knife slices through the soap well to obtain a clean, drag-free slice.

By not doing so, some of the packed shards in the middle of the geode may be knocked

loose.

12. Well done ! Because of the high glycerin content in the soap, it will attract moisture from the air if left unwrapped. It may feel slightly greasy/slimy but this is a good thing as the moisture will transfer to the skin's epiderm to hydrate and protect with a non-greasy film. Wrap your soap in food grade cling film.

Happy soaping !