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Here's my personal "hack" for CP embeds.
I rebatch one batch of soap, mushing it into a slab mold, and making it the color I want. This will be for the embeds. The reason I use rebatched soap for embeds is because it's just a tiny bit harder than fresh-poured soap, and also because, since it has had more liquid dehydrated out of it, it won't shrink as the embedded bars cure.
Once the slab of rebatch is firm, I use petit-four cutters or whatever cutter I'm using, preferably to make shapes that are thicker than the finished soap bars will be. I use petit-four cutters because they are metal, and you can get them 2" tall.
Then I get everything ready to make my "fresh" batch of CP, which will be the "bar" part of the soap. This is usually the part that has the fragrance, and it will be a contrasting color from the embed pieces.
While the lye mixture and oils are cooling, I set up my slab mold. I measure out a grid of sorts, usually just with pencil marks (though if you're really serious, you can use string, or a mold with dividers like Cyndi uses), so that I know where the embeds will be placed in the bars. If I'm using simple shapes, like, say, circles, then it doesn't matter so much about placement because I don't care if I slice through them when I slice the bars.
Then I mix the fresh CP soap, and verrrrrry, VERY carefully pour it, at THIN trace, into the slab mold around the embeds. If you pour it too fast, it will knock over the embeds. OR, and this is much easier--you can pour the fresh soap and then just mash the embeds into place. WAY easier.
After the soap has come out of the mold, all that's left is the trimming. Slice the bars, and then with a planer or string-cutter (I have a Delsie Soap Cutter), shave off a bit of the fronts and backs of the bars.
Then you wind up with something like this:
