Food Colouring and Fragrance oils

[danielle22033]

I have two quick questions, Can I use wiltons food colouring for HP soap and after my HP soap is done when do I add the fragrance? Is there a certain temperature that I have to wait until to add it? I have read a bit about fragrance oils flashing, however I am not sure what the temperature is.

Thanks a lot

 

[Lotus]

Hey, I don't know about HP, but I do have some advice about food coloring with CP. My first batch, I used every color except red, and my soap turned out pink (red). So, do understand that food coloring is not necessarily going to do what you want in soap. I'd try a small batch with HP, before I went headlong into it.

 

[Rachelmf]

I used food coloring in my first batch (HP). It actually did work out. I'm not sure if I just got lucky though. I'd suggest using color made for soap. If nothing else, it will behave more predictably.

As for fragrance oils, they all have different flash points, so you'd have to look those up separately if it's not somewhere on the bottle. For what it's worth, when I've done HP, I stirred in the fragrance right before pouring.

 

[VanessaP]

Flashpoint refers to the temperature at which the oil would catch on fire when exposed to a spark/flame, not at what temperature the fragrance would get burned off in the soap. I've made plenty of HP with low FP scents and all of them have stuck and no I didn't just get lucky with the scents LOL

Food coloring isn't made to be stable in soaping so many times it will morph in CP due to the pH of the lye. Now, HP has a better chance of retaining the color because the lye should be dead by the time you're coloring it, but handmade soap has a higher pH level to begin with, from 8 to 10.5, naturally, so even then some of the colors can morph. Always worth a shot.