I am carving another beetle from soap: Mrs. Beetle II perhaps. I have large 400g. blocks of yellow Lirio laundry soap bought for the purpose a couple of years ago. Unfortunately any soap dries out over time, so I now have to coddle my piece along with damp wraps and warming it as I go. Carving relatively fresh soft soap is pretty easy, but still requires a plan, care and attention. But when the soap has uneven dry harder parts, it is harder to deal with. Old soap becomes brittle and crumbly; so carving it get tricky and you can ruin your piece quickly.

I am making this scarab beetle larger than my first, alabaster, carving. And I wanted the idea of legs on this one, which will probably end up being more like human arms in a sphinx like pose.

I don’t have much interest in the soap carving as such; my plan is make silicone molds that I can cast in epoxy and polyurethane resins. I want to have a small family of different original scarab beetle molds eventually.

I don’t see any reason that a poured silicone mold should not work, unless this soap has sulfur in it. TBD! A brush on silicone might well prove to be a slippery problem over soap! Anyway it remains to be seen if I am wasting my time carving another beetle from soap!