What the heck?!

[Cirafly24]

Fail!

On the spur of the moment, I decided to make a lilac scented soap tonight. Since lilac fo is known to accelerate trace, I used a recipe high in OO to try to minimize the chance of seizing. This was my recipe:

9.6 oz water
5.15 oz lye
32 oz olive pomace
4 oz castor oil
4 oz PKO

Soaped at 110 degrees.

I've done a few high OO recipes before, and all took 30+ minutes to trace. I noticed right away something was odd with this batch when I got trace after less than a minute.

I was going to use Lavender Labcolor to make a swirl, but since it was tracing so fast, I decided to just color the whole batch. Imagine my dismay when I try out my just-opened Labcolor, and it's turquoise!

I thought maybe they had gotten the bottles switched (I had ordered lavender and pool blue), so I opened the bottle marked "pool blue." Well, that was navy blue! I don't know what happened here, but I have to contact BB about it.

Thinking fast, the only other purple colorant I have is ultramarine violet. I mixed some up with some glycerin and poured it in...what I got was a lovely shade of gray :roll:

I hadn't even added my FO yet, and already I had a gloppy, super thick trace. I was afraid to add it! Luckily, I didn't get soap on a stick, but I had to really glop it into the mold.

*sigh* darn. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up with an ugly gray mess full of air bubbles.

 

[adoptapitbull]

Next time I'd give it a shot and see what the color really is. Maybe it just looks that color in the bottle but colors the soap purple. Then you can take a pic of the color if it is wrong, and have a strong point when you tell the company that the color was mislabeled.

 

[carebear]

Many colorants are pH sensitive, and may look very different in the bottle vs in soap.

As for speed to trace, pomace moves very fast, especially as compared to other olive oils.

 

[soapbuddy]

FD&C Blue #1 will give you shades of lavender color in CP soap. That one might turn peach while mixing, but in the end it will end up as lavender to purple color (depending how much is used).

 

[Cirafly24]

I didn't try it in the soap, but I did put a few drops in a cup of water, and it turned the water turquoise. Do you really think it would have turned the soap purple?

Oh well, it's all a learning experience, right? I'll cut the soap tonight and see how it turned out. Still looks gray in the mold!

 

[soapbuddy]

I didn't try it in the soap, but I did put a few drops in a cup of water, and it turned the water turquoise. Do you really think it would have turned the soap purple?

Oh well, it's all a learning experience, right? I'll cut the soap tonight and see how it turned out. Still looks gray in the mold!

Water is a neutral medium. Add a drop to little water which has had a few grains of lye added. It's the pH that changes FD&C Blue #1 into the lavender color.

 

[PippiL]

I once made a coconut milk soap with bergomat FO, first it seperated,
than it turned into a big glob, the color turned grey....
I also added poppy seeds, it actally looks nice, when a soap looks plane in color, add a stamp design or some gold or silver mica...I stamped some ugly soap wit a tree design, dipped in gold mica, instant improvement.

 

[Cirafly24]

I cut the soap last night. In most lighting it's a light dove gray, but in some lighting it actually looks like a light lilac color. I dusted a little iridescent glitter over the tops and they look rather nice.

There were very few obvious air bubbles...but there are little white dots in all the bars, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. At first I thought they were lye pockets because they looked a little wet...but I did a zap test and just tasted soap.

What do you think they are?

 

[Cirafly24]

I got a response from Bramble Berry about my Labcolors. I had sent photos of the colors both in the bottle and diluted...and they think there's a problem with their stock in the warehouse, because none of the three colors are what they are labelled to be. Because of this, they don't just want to send replacements because they need to investigate the issue, so they sent me a coupon for my next order instead.

I think the spots in my soap are from the Palm Kernel Oil...I think it started to cool too much before I mixed in the lye. There is no zap, just kind of a granular look and the white dots. They actually look pretty nice, if you don't know what I was going for hehe.

I'll try to post some photos later.