fd&c's...throw them out?

[Mommy]

Hi! These boards are amazing, thanks y'all for saving me time and money and keeping me from losing sleep about my soap fails- it's so easy to find out here what went wrong!

Question: I have a few super concentrated fd&c pigment powders that I bought when I was a newbie from a food store (who knew there were soap colorants?) that seem to be water-soluble only- they just look like suspended dots when I blend them in oil, but turn to bright color when added to water.

I used them the other day in a test batch of CP black white and pink layered soap, where black and white were oxides and the pink was the water-based colorant...and the pink just won't set up, it's too wet. :x

Should I give up with these? Is there a place in CP or HP for water-based colorants or will it throw off the recipes every time? I also suspect they bleed or look blurry, but then again I have never been able to use them properly, maybe when used properly they can be vivid and distict?

Thanks so much!!

just to elaborate-
-I know by now that only soap products should be used, I'm just wondering whether these are salvageable
-I've heard that glycerin may be good for dispersing colorants, but since I don't use it for anything else, I'm not looking to stock it just for these colorants which I will never re-purchase anyway. So my question is are they viable/salvageable as oil or water based colorants if I'm looking for distinctness in the result?

Thanks!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

If you want to try something before giving up on them, take a recipe that you normally use and then mix the colour in as much water as is needed and take this amount of water from your main water amount. For example:

Your recipe needs 200g water and your colour needs 50g water. Take 50g of water, mix in the colour and stir it in to the oils. Take 150g of water and mix in your lye. That might work, but of course the colour may well react with the lye over time anyway.

I only suggest mixing the colour with water rather than lye solution purely because of the issues when adding colours directly to lye solutions!

 

[Obsidian]

How much water are you using? I have a couple FD & C reds and it only takes a few drops of water, maybe 1/8 teaspoon to dissolve the powder. I also use water to dissolve my oxides with no issues.

I rarely use mine since they color the lather too much but I suspect you are right about bleeding. You could test it by making a white soap with a tiny spot of color, see what happens.

 

[AnotherBozo]

I use them in glycerin. I don't know how ideal they are, but it's inexpensive. I'm using a very small amount now. My lesson learned from my first batch is that only a fraction of a teaspoon is needed.

 

[MorpheusPA]

Red #40, Yellow #5, and Blue #1 are favorites of mine. The blue morphs to a very pretty purple in CP.

As noted, only minimal amounts of colorant are required, just the tip of the teaspoon to far less per pound. Otherwise the lather turns color as well. It's usually best to start on the low end and add it slowly, evaluating as you go, but that only works well on a slow-tracing formula.

Discount your water in the soap to account for the amount you add to the colorant. That'll get rid of any excessive wetness.

Regular colorants bleed. Lakes are less likely to do so, but still bleed a bit over time.

One trick I came up with is to pre-dissolve the colorant in a dropper bottle. Since so little is required, you only need a dropper full per pound or so, and a minor water discount is enough to account for that.

 

[dixiedragon]

I use them. What I do is set aside a teensy amount of water - a teaspoon or so - in a disposable Dixie cup. Then I add the color to the water, then add the water to the soap batter. Then throw the cup away. That keeps you from getting little crumbs of color EVERYWHERE.

BTW, FD&C Blue turns purple in CP.

 

[cmzaha]

I love Blue #1 for purple . I also use some lab colors from B&B that are water diluted without having any problems

 

[Mommy]

Thanks to all who replied! Great ideas about discounting the water, and looking back, I used too much water- more than needed, and it was on a 2 lb test batch, with no water discount to account for the colorant.

Question for the ones using them- do you achieve clearly defined swirls, like peacock swirls or butterflies? Or are these colorants more for cloudy soaps?

p.s. Nothing against cloudy soaps:clap:

 

[dixiedragon]

I've achieved clearly defined swirls.

 

[Obsidian]

You know what, I have a pretty orangy red that I've not actually used. I'll make a in the pot swirl with it and the pinky red I have, see just how they behave.

 

[MorpheusPA]

Thanks to all who replied! Great ideas about discounting the water, and looking back, I used too much water- more than needed, and it was on a 2 lb test batch, with no water discount to account for the colorant.

Question for the ones using them- do you achieve clearly defined swirls, like peacock swirls or butterflies? Or are these colorants more for cloudy soaps?

p.s. Nothing against cloudy soaps:clap:

Clear, defined swirls. Over time, the colors can migrate a bit, though, making for more of a feathered swirl.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Clear, defined swirls. Over time, the colors can migrate a bit, though, making for more of a feathered swirl.

You could say that they might well 'morph'?

 

[Obsidian]

I just poured my test batch colored with red food dyes. I used red #33 which made a nice deep rosy reddish pink, used about 1/16th tsp water with maybe half a matchhead of dye added, this went into 4oz batter. This particular red will go crazy neon pink if too much is used then gelled.

The other is red #40, its a very bright beautiful orange at pour. Used the same amount of dye/batter as I did with the #33. I'm preventing gel to see if the colors stay true through saponification. Wish I had enough to gel a sample, maybe I can scrap enough out of the bowls.

 

[Mommy]

I just poured my test batch colored with red food dyes. I used red #33 which made a nice deep rosy reddish pink, used about 1/16th tsp water with maybe half a matchhead of dye added, this went into 4oz batter. This particular red will go crazy neon pink if too much is used then gelled.

The other is red #40, its a very bright beautiful orange at pour. Used the same amount of dye/batter as I did with the #33. I'm preventing gel to see if the colors stay true through saponification. Wish I had enough to gel a sample, maybe I can scrap enough out of the bowls.

Thanks so much! Please keep us posted if the color changes/migrates. How can you soap 4oz? I didn't know a recipe could be so small.

 

[Obsidian]

I made a 16 oz batch and separated out 4 oz to color.