Pictures!

Forgive the semi blurry shots on some of these.

Here is a shot of bars from my first four batches and the calico soap ball I made with the shavings from the first three.

From upper left: Arabian Spice, Calico ball (made of Arabian Spice, Black Tea, and Frankincense and Myrrh) and two day old Vanilla Bean.
From bottom left: Black Tea and Frankincense and Myrrh.

I know, fairly boring for the most part. I did three batches before I started to play with color. Let us take another look at that 2 day old Vanilla Bean, shall we?
But wait, it got better. :-)
Here it is after it's cured for about two weeks. I was expecting that deep, deep brown (natural discoloration for vanilla) over most of the bar...it seems I over blended just a tad. Forget I said that and pretend I did it on purpose, ok?

Not going to have pictures for the next couple of batches. The vanilla scared me a bit and I didn't try swirling colors again for a while. Not until I did the batch of Dragon's Blood...and the FO discolored so much you can't even really see the swirl, so I didn't bother taking pictures. (At least it smells lovely, and lathers like a dream.)

Before the soap darkened though, it looked pretty decent, so I decided to try it again. This time I was going for a white background with green swirls. I also played with doing swirls/waves on the top.
Here is the Moroccan Mint, still in the mold. I almost didn't want to cut it. Of course, an eight pound bar of soap would have been a bit awkward in the shower...

Here are a few of the cut bars laid out on my carrying tray waiting for transport from the den into the drying racks in the bedroom (which smells great, by the way.) I didn't get quite the look I was going for; the white wasn't even throughout and the natural cream color of the soap comes through as a vein throughout all the bars. I think I know what happened and it's another "ooops" that I think I might try to duplicate at another time.

I really need to go start that batch of lavender soap. I'm going to try the same technique I used with the vanilla, but with a bit more control this time. *fingers crossed*