Advice in colorants/oils

Hello all,

I will be making another batch of hot process soap and am wondering what is the best colorant to use? I was looking around the web at mica and fell colorants but am not sure what I'd recommended for use with hot process soaps. Buying oils can be expensive and I'm curious if anyone here buys oils in bulk and if so where? What are your preferred oils? Also, if I decide to color my soaps naturally for example with hibiscus tea will the soap have a chance of going bad?

Thanks

I don't have that much experience with colours in HP soap but I'm pretty sure micas and oxides would work fine regardless of when in the soap making process you add them. The same with clays.

You can put quite a bit of foody additives, including tea, in soap without it going bad, e.g I heard of one, and I'm planing to try it myself, that used avocado puree as the water. The most important is that there is no big lumps in the puree because they can grow moldy.

Most plant based colorants will turn brown in soap, including all forms of hibiscus. The ones that doesn't go brown and keep their color, I think it's best to add them to your HP soap when it's done cooking, since I'm not sure how well they tolerate the heat in HP.

To achieve vibrant pink in your soap micas or oxides would be best, you can try infusing your liquid soaping oils with madder root but it tends to turn more of a greyish purple or mauve color in the finished soap. At least in CP soap.

I don't know how long you have been soaping but buying in bulk is really something to wait with until you are sure soap is something you want to make a lot of for a long time.

I don't know where you live but surely you can get some oils at a decent price at your local grocery store? You absolutely do not need all fancy oils in the world, olive oil or sunflower oil, coconut oil and some type of hard oil, shortening/ lard/tallow/palm is more than enough to make a decent soap. My first soaps were literally one third each of coconut, olive and rapeseed oil, all easily and cheaply available at my local grocery store.

You can use any colorants in hot-process soaps just as long as they are body-safe and have been tested to survive in lye-based soaps, be they mica, ultramarines and/or oxides. Most vendor sites online that sell soap-related supplies will note in the description of their colorants whether or not they are safe to use in CP/HP, or lotions or make-up, or else are only safe to use in MP.

In regards to buying oils in bulk, I agree with Nao- if you are new soapmaking, I would wait until you are sure that soap is something you want to make on a consistent basis, otherwise it won't be worth it. Not only will it will take up space in your house, if you don't use it all up in a timely manner, it may expire before you have the chance to use it all up.

But if you know this is something you want to do long-term, buying in bulk is a wonderful thing and so much less expensive in the long-run. I myself buy a lot of my oils in bulk online from Columbus Foods/Soaper's Choice out of Ohio. They are a wonderful company to work with and lots of soapmakers buy in bulk from them.

When I first started soaping 11 years ago, I bought everything locally at the various stores around me- coconut oil and lard from Walmart, olive oil from Costco (I actually still buy my olive oil from Costco), rice bran oil from my local Asian market, avocado oil, castor oil, Spectrum-brand palm oil, and cocoa butter from my local health food store, lye from Lowe's, etc....


IrishLass