Okay, I am going to humiliate myself with this picture. It is so nondescript, which would be fine if I were making a simple natural soap, but I was going for something completely ornate and wonderful and elegant- white on one side, golden yellow on the other with a streak of 24 carat gold down the middle. This is the one I did with the dowel. You are allowed to laugh out loud.
http://img80.imageshack.us/i/img2445e.jpg/
Now, people on this forum are pretty much unfailingly supportive, but seriously, if anyone says that it's really nice, I'll scream. There are times that it's okay to be honest and honestly, this is a bomb of a soap for a mantra swirl. Admit it.
However, to redeem myself, this is the other soap I did last night which came out like a mantra swirl is supposed to. I did a variation, with teal on one side, blue on the other, white in between and then a gold strip between the blue and the white and an orange strip between the teal and the white. So teal, orange, white, gold, blue in order from the bottom of the bar to the top. Some sort of effect like this is what I wanted the top bar to have, which will help you see why I said it's a bomb.
http://img691.imageshack.us/i/img2442w.jpg/