botanical colors, some are good but beware of chlorophyll!!

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Soap made with inserts (embeds), all colored using 'natural' or plant based colorants.

Photo credits to DH, who enjoys my soap and keeps asking for eucalyptus scents.

Since this is only my second post, let's see how this goes....and I'll post more.

OK, let's try again:

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soap embeds inserts3 by rosetalleo, on Flickr[/img]

i can't see your pic, it tells me it's set to private

this is an improvement, you click in the link and the photo appears.

I would like to post the photos here directly though. Let me try again with another one:

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will this work?

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natural colored embeds1 by rosetalleo, on Flickr[/img]

Errm...why beware chlorophyll?

I had really bad DOS problems when using chlorophyll.

green soap said:

I had really bad DOS problems when using chlorophyll.

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Thank you green soap , sorry about the DOS

Woah...what did you use to get that gorgeous royal blue? Really nice colors!!

bakingnana, the royal blue, or midnight blue was obtained with a teaspoon of indigo disolved in the lye water. All my measurements are for a Kg of oils or a 'duck' of soap, which is what I make and the size molds I use. The base oils were Soy and coconut oils. Soy does add a tan pinkish hue.

The color of the soap with inserts (the part that is not inserts) I got by blending blue and yellow. The blue I got from 1/8 tsp indigo (for 1 kg weight oils) and the yellow by using 5% of my oil as yellow coconut oil, made yellow from beta carotene. The base oils were OO and CO. Another time I used the exact combination but using SO instead of the OO and I got a celadon green color, rather than the aqua color I get with pomace. Both are beautiful to me.

The green (forest green?) shown in the picture with the soap strips was obtained with a mix of chlorophyll and instant green tea. I also added rosemary EO, and for this one I only used 1 teaspoon of the liquid chlorophyll (as can be purchased in the health food stores). Also, I did not gell that soap. The result was that it lasted the longest before getting the DOS. I think this was a combination of not gelling, using very little chlorophyll and the anti oxidant effects from the rosemary oil. I am doing a shelf-life test on all my soaps and this one is still OK after 3 months, let's see if it makes it to 6 months. Even if it does, I won't use this colorant again.

However, when I used a good amount of chlorophyll (1 to 2 tablespoons per duck of soap) I got the DOS rather quickly (within 3-4 weeks). This was a lot worse (the soap went bad more quickly) If I gelled the soap, and the worse was at the highest gelling temperature. This was really obvious, since I do make the soaps with inserts and I knew which strips had gelled at higher temperatures and which had more or less chlorophyll.

Chlorophyll gave a beautiful green color, was easy to use, and this is why I used it at first. I will never use it again, I learned my lesson. It is the manganese molecule in the chlorophyll which apparently wreaks havoc with the residual superfatting oils. I wanted to post this here as a warning, since I had to discard a lot of soap, which is not good news for anyone.

In any case, using a combination of different amounts of indigo and beta carotene (from the coconut oil used to make pop corn) I can get any shade of green I want. I just made one that looks like my tuscan kale! (eucalyptus green?)

I would post more pictures, but need to figure out how to get them to post here directly, the linked ones are not as user friendly.

Let me try posting again (after reading about it in the FAQ here)




oh well, no luck yet.

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two types of soap curing by rosetalleo, on Flickr[/img]

Two of my infused soaps curing. Lemon-rose hips (colored with infused rose hips and 1 tbs tomato paste (per duck) and my infused garden blend with 1/4 tsp indigo. Garden blend was infused with rose, lemon verbena, borage flowers, sage flowers and rosemary. Without the indigo it would have been a very light sage green.

It looks like I can post pictures now. I use Flickr, so I had to find the right settings for posting on message boards.

Very nice colors!! Indigo, eh? I'll have to look into that one.

Beautiful colors! It's generous of you to share your results with everyone on the forum. I appreciate it and I'd like to try infusing oils or adding colorants to the lye water.

How cool. I'm sorry about the DOS. :cry: I have a question -- I read somewhere (who knows where, and I wasn't really paying attention to it at the time!) that there were health concerns with Indigo and Alkanet. Is there anything to that? Sounds like you know your colorants pretty well!

I cannot speak for alkanet but as for indigo, it is pretty safe as far as I know. I have used indigo for dyeing hair and have never once heard about any hazards regarding health. I can only guess that when it is used as a dye, any fixative mixed in might lend to precautions. In using indigo, you need such a tiny amount too.

Like I said i am not familiar with alkanet - only ratanjot BUT with both alkanet and ratanjot, you are using so very little of it....in an infusion I only use 5-15% of total oils and you don't need all that much to infused either.

How funny. I have a blog post coming up about using Chlorophyllin from Camden-Grey and major dos/rancid soap. I made a batch and split it. Part colored with chlorophyllin and part not. The plain part is fine. The part colored with the Chlorophyllin is NASTY.

http://www.camdengrey.com/essential-oil ... yllin.html

I'll send them an email tomorrow and let them know. I'm waiting for it to get really bad so I can get some good pics for blog. lol

I had my only DOS so far on a batch with chlorophyl from TKB. It was a three color layer and only the green layer got the funk. It is fun to see how bad they get. I should post a pic for your viewing pleasure.

debbism said:

I cannot speak for alkanet but as for indigo, it is pretty safe as far as I know. I have used indigo for dyeing hair and have never once heard about any hazards regarding health. I can only guess that when it is used as a dye, any fixative mixed in might lend to precautions. In using indigo, you need such a tiny amount too.

Like I said i am not familiar with alkanet - only ratanjot BUT with both alkanet and ratanjot, you are using so very little of it....in an infusion I only use 5-15% of total oils and you don't need all that much to infused either.

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That makes sense. This has been a facinating thread! I'm grateful for this information.

Do you think the reason why chlorophyll batches DOS faster because of the iron content in it?

After seeing how Indigo can be incorporated into a yellow base colourant to get green, I'm so tempted to try it. I'm going to go hunt for some beta carotene capsules.

However my experience with Indigo/Woad (I'm not sure) was not that interesting. It just came out like denim blue and if I don't put a grey soap next to it, it looks grey by itself. Mine in time, the sides turned slightly purplish pinkish (maybe from soap becomes less alkaline?).