This soaping technique is really easy, it just takes a bit of extra time. You’ll need at least three days; not all of that is active time, of course, but you will be making two separate batches of soap. One for the dots, and one to suspend them in. For this you’ll need to know how to make soap, so check out my tutorial if you don’t.

First off, you’ll make your dot batch of soap. Scent and colour it however you want, keeping in mind that they are only part of the end result. You should definitely colour them so they’ll contrast with the suspending batch… if you don’t, I’m really not sure why you’re even bothering.

Once the first batch has set up (but not hardened fully, maybe 20ish hours after the pour), roll the soap into little balls. You can do a variety of sizes or make them uniform, but keep in mind the size of the bars you’ll be making. I probably made my balls a bit big for these bars—they kind of take over the bar.

Let the balls sit and dry out for at least a day before making the suspending batch.

Suspending batch time! Woo. The only real trick here is making sure your trace is thick enough to support the balls of soap so they don’t all sink to the bottom. You can test this by dropping one of the soap balls into the pot of raw soap. If it sinks, keep blending.

Time to polka-dot! Grab your lined mold and start with a thin layer of the suspending soap. Sprinkle a few of the soap balls in, and then some more suspending soap. Keep this up, being fairly random (but even) with the dot distribution.

Let the soap saponify as usual. Slice, and let cure for at least three weeks. Voila!