little globs of ultramarine

[Missjulesdid]

Ok, so I never used anything but herb colorants but I wanted to try an ultramarine, I read the instructions carefully and took reserved a litte bit of oil then mixed it with the powder.. When I was stirring it in the soap I noticed that the pigment had not mixed with the oil.. THEN I REALIZED I WAS READING THE WRONG INSTRUCTIONS, and that the ultramarine should be mixed with water.. yikes.. I unmolded and cut the soap yesterday. There are very tiny globs of colorant speckeled in it. I think the soap is pretty, it just bothers me because I know the globs are unintentional. The soap smells fabulous and I love the marbling that I did with this soap. I tried a sample rebatch of two bars and although the colorant was absorbed I'm not liking the way this rebatched at all...

So, I took a bar that had the largest globs and used it.. It didn't stain my skin and I didn't see any color going down the drain.

My question is this: Since this soap looks nice (at least to me) Smells nice, and performs very well even at only two days old, Is there any reason why I shouldn't sell it/give it away provided it continues to perform well at full cure?

 

[Missjulesdid]

follow up question, the instructions say to dislove the powder in the lyewater, but I want to do swirls, Can just disolve some in a little water and add it to a small portion of soap at trace? I don't want to mess up with this stuff again

 

[mcleodnaturals]

ah ha! Learn something new every day! I never received instructions with my ultramarines and I always mixed them into a little almond oil or something. DUH! No wonder they never mixed in smoothly!

THANK YOU!!!

I don't see why you couldn't mix a little into plain water and then swirl with it? Especially if you do HP, then it wouldn't matter at all I don't think. But I'm no expert (OBVIOUSLY! :roll: )

 

[Missjulesdid]

I'm rebatching this right now. I was just so paranoid that there could be a pocket of oily ultramarine somewhere in one of the soaps. (and it's a good thing I did because two of the soaps did have large globs in them that oozed color when I grated it!) Oh well, I have all the time in the world to make beautiful soaps... At least it will be a "good bar"

 

[IrishLass]

I use Ultramarine Blue and Ultramarine Violet all the time and I have very good results making a slurry out of them with a little vegetable glycerin.

What I do is measure out the amount of Ultramarine powder that I'm going to use for my batch, and then I dump it into the largest measuring spoon that I have, along with just enough glycerin to make a smooth, liquid slurry out of it.

If I want to swirl with it, I first remove the proper portion of my still unscented and well-emulsified soap batter from my soaping pot with a ladle, and I pour it off into a separate measuring cup large enough to accomodate my stickblender. To this I add the colorant/glycerin slurry and stickblend it in. It works great at de-globbing and giving me a well-incorporated, smooth and uniform color. When the soap in my main pot is ready, I then swirl with the colored part.

If I want to swirl with more than one color, I just make as many colored slurries as I want to use in my soap, and then ladle out just as many portions of still unscented, emulsified soap into however many measuring cups I need for each color, and stickblend them into their respective cups. I wipe the stickblender off after stickblending each color so that the colors are not contaminated with the other colors. The most swirls I've done in a single batch is 3.

If I want to color the whole batch with just one color, I make the same kind of glycerin/Ultramarine slurry and then stickblend it into my oils before adding the lye. One note about this: With Ultramarine Violet, I've found that the color comes out much better when I add it to the soap pot after the lye is added, instead of before. It prevents the soap color from taking on a grayish hue. I never have that potential problem with UM Blue, though, just the UM Violet.

Anyway, I have great coloring results when doing it this way. HTH!


IrishLass