Question about coloring soap.

[HandCrafted]

Hi Everyone, I am a new soaper. I started about a month and a half ago and I love it! But I'm full of questions.

I want my soaps to be primarily olive oil based. The problem with this is that I would love my soaps to have great colors as well. The first olive oils I have used are too green or dark yellow so naturally the oil keeps my colors dull and darker than I would like. I tried a lighter colored olive oil, but I still get very muted colors. I have tried TD which lightens the batch, but I cannot get the color white enough.

I would love to here your experiences and how you get the brighter colors. Is there a certain olive oil I should use? Is it the colorants? I have tried oxides,but have purchased some micas to try. Oh, BTW I am doing CP.

Rai

 

[Bumbledumplin]

if you want to stay as natural as possible try using goats milk instead of water in the lye mixture. or yogurt and even ground oatmeal added to the oils will work... google and youtube are a HUGE HELP....KEEP FOLLOWING DIFFERENT LINKS!!!! look at soaps that are for sale and check the ingredients list for ideas, you will find answers all over the net!!! good luck

 

[CarolynD]

Rai, I have the same questions! I just made a batch of lavender oatmeal soap that came out great except that the purple is such a gray color. And it's much darker at the center where it gelled. I also have a previous swirled batch that I used oxides and ultramarines to color, but they came out very dull, like you're mentioning. I see these great, bright color swirls online and I'd love to achieve that, but I haven't figured it out either!

 

[thefarmerdaughter]

If you use milk in place of water, and it carmelizes you will end up with a brown/orange soap. what are your usage rates on your colorants? maybe you are not using enough.

 

[Tiffiny Shea]

Hi - I'm somewhat new to soaping also and am trying to experiment with color. I made my first batch with color last night, and I actually only colored half of it and then swirled it in. However, I am seeing that there are many different ways to add the color, and I have some questions about which to do / what is the best way. I'm using powdered color (Ultramarine).

Last night I just added the powder to the soap I wanted to be colored at light trace. It seemed to work although it got thick pretty quickly afterward.

So, what is the best way to apply the color - I'm seeing stuff that says to add it to your oils before you begin heating them, other places say add it as a powder at trace like I did, some say to add to a tiny portion of your oils to make it liquid before adding to your soap, and some even say you can add it to the lye/water mixture before you add that to the oils.

Does it matter? Or does it change depending upon something I'm unaware of? There's a lot of information about what colorants you can use, but not much on the methods for adding the color and why choose one method over another. I'd be so grateful to find more info on this!

 

[HandCrafted]

Hi Tiffiny Shea, I am also using the ultramarine colors. They make pretty good colors but rarely do they come out the way they look in the jar. I am looking for suggestions in coloring too. I have tried mixing the color with the oil before adding it to the batch. I found no big difference in the colors, but I think the titanium dioxide did better;less lumps.

Let me know if you come up with something else.

Thanks Rai

 

[Relle]

If you are using any powdered colour or clays - ultramarines, oxides, TD, I wouldn't add as is, the best way is to put some in a small container, add a little oil - just enough to make a slurry and mix to get all the lumps out - make sure it has become saturated with the oil. I add at trace, but the TD I add in with the oils as I find it incorporates better. As for coming out like what's in the jar - pink and violet ultramarine are pale anyway and you won't get a bright colour with those but the blue will be bright. Oxides should turn out the colour that they are in the packet. You might not be adding enough - I just judge what I think looks right so I'm no help to give you quantities. Why choose one method over another? It all depends on how you are making your soap - if you are making a single colour - I would add with the oils, if you are separating out colours to swirl - then add at trace. Gelled soaps will be darker than non gelled.

 

[HandCrafted]

Relle9, Thanks for the tips. I have tried mixing them with oils and found that it gave me the best results. Is there such a thing as using too much TD? I am not looking for a pure white color, but I would like to achieve a nice creamy color sometimes. I am afraid to ruin a batch with too much TD.

Rai

 

[HandCrafted]

CarolynD, I totally agree. Are you using olive oil as well? I think that is the biggest issue here, because it is so yellow. It is going to naturally dull out the colors I think. I do come up with some nice colors and TD makes a nice creamy look. I just never know what I am going to get.
Rai

 

[CarolynD]

Yes, usually my recipes have had olive oil. I did get one nice pale batch from a lard soap, but for that one I used the lightest colored olive oil I could buy at the store. It was great for the soap, but expensive to buy it that way. Usually I buy the big jugs at BJ's Wholesale, but unfortunately the color of those is very greenish.

 

[judymoody]

Costco's Kirtland brand (store brand) olive oil is cheap and pale yellow. It will not discolor your soap appreciably. When I first started soaping, I used pomace OO and while it is greenish in the can, it did not make a dull looking soap. EVOO will make your soap a pale grayish green.

There are so many variables - your fragrance can also discolor your soap. Recently I made a soap for my daughter that was to be pink and green. However when I added the EO blend (folded orange, litsea, and lavender), the pink turned orange. I had tried to compensate for the yellowing/orange from the EO but I was pretty dismayed. Happily, after it gelled and saponified, it reverted to pink.

Oxides and ultramarines tend to stay pretty true to color. Micas, however, can morph in soap. I also find with the micas that you may need to use more than you think. For oxides and UM, a little goes a long way.

Are you gelling your soaps? Gelling will make the colors pop.

As mentioned earlier, for oxides and micas, I disperse my colorant in a small amount of olive oil. A mini latte frother will break up those lumps. For TD (I use the oil dispersible kind), I keep a small bottle of TD mixed with oil on hand. I give it a good shake periodically. Adding even just a small amount to my soap batter will brighten it up so the colors are more vivid.

Hope this helps!

 

[new12soap]

I haven't really used a lot of different colorants for my soaps, I am still trying to work through some of these questions myself, but I wll share my experience with you FWIW. I use samsclub house brand regular olive oil, and yes the higher the EO the more yellowish tinged my colors are. BUT! I see that the the OP has only been soaping for a month and half and I have to say be patient. Over time high olive oil soaps cure lighter and lighter to an almost white, 6 months minimum, so that may help some.

Titanium dioxide does help tremendously, but it is a powerful whitener. I find it is absolutely the best thing to use to get a true lavender/purple color instead of having it turn greyish. BUT! If you use TD because it is such a powerful whitener you will never get a deep dark vibrant color, only lighter colors verging on pastels. Yes, it is very possible to use too much TD and you will know it if you do. It can cause a crackling effect, streaks, or spots in your finished soaps, or in cases of using waaay too much in can even cause your soaps to be crumbly. Did I mention that TD is a powerful whitener? You really don't need much at all. I would not recommend going over 1 tsp ppo and often you need less than that. I would say start with 1/2 tsp ppo and see what you think. My TD is both oil and water dispersible, so when I use TD, I put it into my warm oils before I add the lye solution. I sift it in through a fine mesh strainer to get out all the lumps and then I stick blend it to disperse it. Works beautifully.

As for the colorants themselves, I haven't tried micas yet, so far I have used oxides and ultramarines. I pre-blend them so they are ready to go when I want them. By that I mean that I look up each color on the website where I purchased it (or I go to MMS, or just use google), and find out if this particular colorant is best dispersed in oil, in water, or in glycerin. The ultramarines (so far) have been best dispersed in glycerin, so I use a bottle with a dispenser top and put ultramarine and glycerin in it in the recommended ratios, shake it up, and let it sit until I need it. When I need it I give it another good shake, then squirt out a few drops or so into my soap and stir, repeat until desired color! Well, as close I can get to desired because they NEVER look like I want them to when I make the soap, but in a few weeks they always look better!

If you are going to try micas, as Judy said some can morph, so make sure you are using ones that are CP stable.

As for those intensely brightly colored soaps you have seen, I have yet to master that technique. I am sure many people are good at that, but the ones I have personally used like that tend to bleed color into the lather and all over my shower! I haven't tried them all, or even most of them, of course, but that has been my experience. They aren't worth the mess they make to me, but that's JMO.