Artist Notes - In Elegant Decay

"These deep emotional wounds you've inflicted. They say it takes two."

Last year at Dark Side, the guys from Adoration Destroyed asked me if I could make a soap for them. They gave me some criteria (they gave me the song title, and that it should at least in part, be purple). It got put on the list.

At the same time, our friend Lucas, who happens to be a huge AD fan, was *also* hanging at the BF booth and felt inspired to draw something. After Dark Side ended, I was sent a picture of the drawing.

Since both these things happened at the same time, and I honestly had no idea yet how to design the soap, I asked if I could use his drawing as the design concept. (the soap photo is a prototype, You can ignore that blue fleck in the petal there - that's not in the production bars.)

I had intended to premiere this at Dark Side this year, but the pandemic prevented that, so it's going to be released for the Darksome Online Craft Market.

It's called In Elegant Decay. The scent is a combination of lilac, night violet (which breaks down to bergamot, lemon, cucumber water, violet, and jasmine. cashmere, musk, and sap.) and rose, cognac and sugar. It's a complex, sweet floral. I'm sure the floral fans are gonna love it. Each bar is hand worked and hand painted (all those little lines are carved by hand and then painted - they aren't intrinsic to the mold, so each one is a little different)and then all the highlights are hand painted. It's then poured in stages on the back so it looks a little like a black and white cookie (this takes a little time) so that from the front, the split between the black and the pearl background goes all the way through the bar.

Thanks to both the guys in AD and Lucas for the terrific concept design.

Check out more of Adoration Destroyed's music here: https://adorationdestroyed.bandcamp.com/