Need help making new soap.

[doapsoapgroup]

Hello all,

New to this forum and to soapmaking! A couple of my friends and I were trying to make a fun soap for a chemistry project. We wanted to try something unique, and thought using wine (due to this being an in school project we have to use dehydrated wine powder) would be interesting. Is this possible, and if so, how would we go about doing it?

Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Wine-Extract-Polyphenols-Powder/dp/B008X8QCRG?th=1. This is what we have.

In addition to this, we wanted to put these additives below in it. Is this too many additives? Would some of these perform negatively with one another?

• Rosebuds
• Activated charcoal
• Rosemary essential oils
• rose pink clay

Thanks for reading! Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[not_ally]

If you've never made soap before, you should keep it as simple as possible, a plain Jane soap with no fragrance and color. Both of those (especially fragrance) are likely to make your soap more problematic by speeding trace (the speed at which the soap batter thickens) which you don't need for your first batches. Same with activated charcoal, rosemary EO, clay and alcohol.

You can put some rosebuds on top if you want (I don't because I don't them to clog up my drain when they fall off), but if you put them in the soap batter they will turn brown, as will almost all plant matter. If you are bound and determined to use color, I would use some kind of mica in a pastel tone, those are the ones least likely to include pigments/oxides or marines, which are also likely to speed trace.

 

[AliOop]

Welcome! And ^^everything she said. I do think your dehydrated red wine extract is probably fine to use, as it likely contains no alcohol. However, it would still be good to try a small batch or two without it first, to help you get the hang of things.

Good luck on your school project. We’d love to see some pics along the way!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

If you make a plain test batch or two to work out the methods and then stick with everything in moderation, you should be able to make a successful soap with those ingredients.

The wine powder is a bit of a wild card, so I suggest that you use it in one small portion of the soap (see below). Rosemary essential oil should behave fine as long as what you have is truly the unadulterated essential oil. For color - instead of trying to color the entire soap with clay and charcoal, consider coloring small portions of the soap batter (5-10% of total for each) and then gently swirling the colored batter into the uncolored base batter just before you pour the batter into the mold (we call this an "in the pot" or ITP swirl). For 1/2 cup of soap batter you will need about 1/4-1/2 tsp each of clay or charcoal mixed with just enough water to make a slurry. If you're set on using the wine powder, you could make a third small portion of batter using a pinch of the wine powder mixed with water. Chances are good that the wine powder will turn a color, possibly brown, in the soap batter. If you're set on using the rosebuds, consider adding them after the soap has saponified.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out some of the basic soaping videos, e.g. by Soaping 101, on YT and to keep good notes.