Well I think I have found the perfect hobby for this year: soap carving for Covid-19 safe practice! Constant hand washing is built-in to this activity; even with dry soap you need to wash and wash before touching anything else!

I have a few extra large bars of soap purchased some time ago for this purpose, and one carving almost completed when I set is aside last year. It is cheap and quite nice to work with, if you can take the rather strong scent added to this soap! The soap chips do get all over, and could be a bit slippery if damp, but they are not sharp or toxic!

My plan is to cast the carved soap using silicone. This should work pretty well for simple molds using poured silicone. However I don’t even know if I will be able to make a brush on silicone product work directly on the soap. But if not, I will spray a matte clear acrylic over the soap, which should create a better surface. I really hope this works out, as my little figure is not suitable for a poured silicone mold.

The new carving will be another scarab beetle: a friend for Mrs. Beetle casts from my carved alabaster original. Carving alabaster was fun, but much trickier. The piece I was carving was very fragile, full of veins!

So I highly recommend soap carving for Covid-19 safe practice, and for fun. And I hope to be able to recommend it for productive artistic creation also.