Soap or Spam

For our midterm we were given an assignment to create a sculpture out of soap or spam, adding nothing (including armature), and using solely the contents of the package. I thought about stepping outside my comfort zone a bit and choosing spam, but I just couldn't do it. The smell of the stuff makes me gag, let alone the texture of it. So I went with soap. I haven't done much carving or sculpting so this should be an interesting challenge for me. I Googled soap sculptures, and there's a lot out there. This was probably purposeful, but it's funny we're using Ivory soap because Ivory has a whole section on their website on soap sculpting. They give you instructions and tips! They also have some examples of soap carvings/sculptures others have done:

It's amazing the details one can achieve. I've thought a little about what I'm going to sculpt, and I think I'm going to make a gnome with mushrooms and entitle something silly like "You Don't Gnome Me." There's a contest, and the winner gets a prize. She said it was sponsored by Flying M. I won't be too concerned if I don't win, seeing as I work at a coffee shop. But I will give it my best!