This is great news! Thanks for all your experimenting. I have several colors drying out right now. Hoping to use them soon! 
Clays colored with plants
- Thread starter szaza
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Almost 3 month update.. the colors are still bright, but are starting to fade a little. I tried the soap and it was absolutely disgusting. I used a high oleic recipe and I normally start to like this recipe around the 3 month mark, but this was just slime and sludge galore. Apparently the high amount of clays attract more moisture and the soap just doesn't dry between uses.
I also did another soap colored with clays, about a week ago.
Pink is just regular pink kaolin clay, used at 5g/100g oils (or +-1.5Tablespoon ppo).
Blue was 5g white kaolin clay with a pinch of indigo powder mixed in (my scale doesn't measure reliably for weights under 0.15g, so not sure how much I added exactly).
Grey/purple was 5g white kaolin clay soaked in 24g of alkanet infused in isopropanol and left to evaporate (2.4x as much as last time, though I used less of the clay -> 5g/100g instead of 7g/100g). I was hoping that using more infusion in making the clay would give me a darker, more saturated purple with less clay.. that doesn't seem to have worked out very well.
The purple in the new soap seems to stay more grey after a week of cure. Maybe it's the recipe -which is very different in FA profile, see below- maybe I shouldn't have used less clay soaked in more infusion.. I'm just not really sure. I do hope this soap will turn out to be less slimy than the other one!
I now know I can use indigo powder straight up mixed in clay if I want to incorporate blue into the design and I really don't need much to get a deep blue (it looked rather pale when mixed in clay, I'm sorry I didn't take a picture)
Lastly, weird enough the pink seems to look a lot more orange in the new soap than in the old, that could be because I used a bit less (5g/100g vs 7g/100g) or maybe the recipe plays a role and high palmitic/stearic brings out more of the orange tones while high oleic brings out more pinkish/reddish tones.
These are the recipes I used: the first test (in this picture on the right) was 25% coconut/75% HO sunflower - my go to recipe for tests, because it's cheap and I still like how it turns out after a reasonable amount of cure. The last soap was made with 50% (refined) shea butter, 30% RBO and 20% coconut oil. This one also accelerated like crazy and I'm not sure if it was the RBO, the clays or the EO blend (50% amyris, don't have enough experience to know if that one accelerates) or all of the above - I know it's not the high amount of butters, because I'd made a perfectly behaved batch of soap with 50% butters just the day before this one.
I also did another soap colored with clays, about a week ago.
Pink is just regular pink kaolin clay, used at 5g/100g oils (or +-1.5Tablespoon ppo).
Blue was 5g white kaolin clay with a pinch of indigo powder mixed in (my scale doesn't measure reliably for weights under 0.15g, so not sure how much I added exactly).
Grey/purple was 5g white kaolin clay soaked in 24g of alkanet infused in isopropanol and left to evaporate (2.4x as much as last time, though I used less of the clay -> 5g/100g instead of 7g/100g). I was hoping that using more infusion in making the clay would give me a darker, more saturated purple with less clay.. that doesn't seem to have worked out very well.
The purple in the new soap seems to stay more grey after a week of cure. Maybe it's the recipe -which is very different in FA profile, see below- maybe I shouldn't have used less clay soaked in more infusion.. I'm just not really sure. I do hope this soap will turn out to be less slimy than the other one!
I now know I can use indigo powder straight up mixed in clay if I want to incorporate blue into the design and I really don't need much to get a deep blue (it looked rather pale when mixed in clay, I'm sorry I didn't take a picture)
Lastly, weird enough the pink seems to look a lot more orange in the new soap than in the old, that could be because I used a bit less (5g/100g vs 7g/100g) or maybe the recipe plays a role and high palmitic/stearic brings out more of the orange tones while high oleic brings out more pinkish/reddish tones.
These are the recipes I used: the first test (in this picture on the right) was 25% coconut/75% HO sunflower - my go to recipe for tests, because it's cheap and I still like how it turns out after a reasonable amount of cure. The last soap was made with 50% (refined) shea butter, 30% RBO and 20% coconut oil. This one also accelerated like crazy and I'm not sure if it was the RBO, the clays or the EO blend (50% amyris, don't have enough experience to know if that one accelerates) or all of the above - I know it's not the high amount of butters, because I'd made a perfectly behaved batch of soap with 50% butters just the day before this one.
Thanks for the update @szaza! Still looks very promising!
My experiments have gone pretty much the same as yours, although I'm still working on getting the amounts amounts and infusion type consistent. Some plants don't do well it seems with alcohol and have to be infused in oil. Sadly, the one I want the most, alkanet, needs the oil to draw out the color.
My experiments have gone pretty much the same as yours, although I'm still working on getting the amounts amounts and infusion type consistent. Some plants don't do well it seems with alcohol and have to be infused in oil. Sadly, the one I want the most, alkanet, needs the oil to draw out the color.
Belindasuds
Well-Known Member
I did another soap with 30% RBO and realized it discolors the batter to a yellowish cream color, which is probably the reason why the pink clay in the second soap is more orange and might also contribute to the alkanet staying more greyish instead of purple
Dawni
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the updates!
It seems annatto is a winner as far as natural colorants go, with spirulina coming in second.
I wish my pink clay gave that much color lol
It seems annatto is a winner as far as natural colorants go, with spirulina coming in second.
I wish my pink clay gave that much color lol
Haha I wish my green clay would actually be green
Annatto is a winner, but I'm not sure if the whole alcohol extraction and evaporation process has a benefit compared to normal oil infusion. I like the color of alkanet in isopropanol and clay better than what I get with oil infusions, but it fades, so a bit of a trade-off (at the same time, oil infusions are somethimes stable and sometimes not, no idea why, it's finnicky stuff this alkanet).
I think spirulina is holding up pretty well with this method compared to just adding at trace, so it might be an alternative to green clay.
Just as a side note, I used a 75%HO sunflower /15% CO recipe for this soap, because it's cheap (my go-to recipe for test soaps). Somehow the clay makes this recipe way more slimy than it usually is. The base recipe is a bit slimy, but usable with pretty nice lather from around 3 months cure (for my taste at least), but with the added clay it's a horrific slimy mess even after 6 months cure that I refuse to use or give away. Silver linings: I'll be updating for quite a while still
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