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slipknott76

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I've tried moving away from color chips and more toward the natural ways to get color in my cp soaps recipes. I read some where that someone used chlorophyll to make green. So I gave it a shot, between 5-20-15 and 6-19-15 I made five loaves with the chlorophyll in them. Somewhere around that time I noticed the green fading in the first recipe. Now it's almost a brown and the rest are starting to show signs of the same. I'm pretty sure I just cost myself 400 dollars. Question is has anyone else ever used Chlorophyll to color cp soap if so did you get better results than me, if so how, what did I screw up. Recipe is pretty standard olive, coconut, Shea butter, palm kernel, verge shortening and castor oils and essentials were eucalyptus and peppermint.
Thanks Neil (Link removed)
 
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I have not used chlorophyll yet because i have been scared of it turning brown on me. But i have seen really pretty colors made with it and wonder what the trick is! I only use natural colorants so i am always trying new things. I recently made a pretty lime green by doing a small amount of annatto infusion and adding wheat grass powder to the oils. The color has held up well after two months!
 
I've heard others suggest spirulina powder as a nice green colourant, in small amounts to avoid the smell. I hope someone who has used it comes along to pitch in! There's also clays to consider.
 
That was very funny! I didn't spend 400 on chlorophyll but 5 loaves equals 60 bars at 5 dollars a bar. Is $300 in lost sales plus materials is another $100, give or take $20.
Like i said I read about other soap makers using it so I tried it. It looked so nice I made more. I should have tried one and waited but I've used other suggestions from other that have worked out great, this one not so much. Oh well. I'll just make more.
 
If it's just the colour that's wrong, could you try selling them as seconds, or not-quite-perfect bars? I'm sure it's not just money down the drain. :shock:
 
I'm to new to sell anything less the perfect right now. Maybe when my following is a little bigger. But right now I'm at a farmers market with 8 vendors and 2 are soap makers. The woman is well established so I wouldn't want the few repeats I have to see the off color bars. Not going to threw them away, my family won't mind using them.
 
This is another reason why waiting is key - any unknown element needs to be thoroughly tested by you before it enters your line. Even if it looked okay for 3 months, that is 1 month of cure and a soap can easily sit around with people for much longer after it is bought. Then it goes bad and the customer is annoyed but you don't know that it happens at 4 months because you didn't wait that long with a test batch before selling the soap.

A lot of the good, established sellers will keep a test batch of anything new for a very long time to make sure they know what it will do after the customer has it and only when they are happy will they put it to market.
 
Can't all be the smart guys you are. I saw it work for someone else so I assumed it would for me too. If I would have known that you are the perfect soaper I just would have asked you before I did it. Maybe next time I get a dumb idea.

They aren't in my line that's why I will lose the money in the end. I always wait 8 weeks on new recipes and use as many members of family to test as possible. Doesn't change that fact it's brown.

I have a little heart shape mold I got off eBay. Every soap I've ever made has one heart shaped soap that sits in a clear bin right next to my work area. But I can't wait 6 months to sell a batch of soap, jeez at least a third of the scent would be gone in six months
 
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You don't sell the test batch - it's a test batch so that you know the soap inside out before it is sold. Only needs to be 500g or so, a few bars.

I am far from a perfect soaper, but I am also not so daft to assume something and then make a load of batches before I actually know how it will be. Especially when this could cost me customers with a fledgling company.

By all means, run your business how you like and enjoy it while it lasts
 
chiming in on the chlorophyll coloring issue....while I didn't use chlorophyll I did use spirulina to color a bunch of shamrock soaps I made for St Patrick's day...
well, there's some leftovers and I just checked on them...as green and beautiful as the day they were unmolded...
Don't give up...we all hit those bumps in the road !
 
Thanks CTAnton I'll switch to that. I'll do a small test run and watch it for 3 or 4 months meanwhile I'll go back to what know works til I'm 100% sure the new recipe is el perfecto. See I can learn too.
 
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As for the soaps that turned brown, felt them. You won't lose the sale that way. Or sell them as seconds. People LOVE seconds if it is just a cosmetic issue. When we sell seconds, they sell out immediately.
 
Slipknott76-how long have you been soaping? The reason I ask is that if you have been soaping for a while, then you would have run across MANY "this did not work out like I planned" issues. It happens to all of us. Changing anything in a recipe is risky. And we have all wasted ingredients and resources. I would suggest also that you get a 1.5-2 lb mold to make test batches that you can hold on to for a year so that you know what happens to those bars over time before considering making larger batches for selling. It would be a shame if something like DOS happened on a big batch say right before Christmas or whatever your biggest selling time is. It is a good money-saving idea.
 
I don't sell, but do give things as gifts. I sometimes find that a simple creative name change can rescue a warped color and turn it into something unusual and fun.

That nice hue that warped a sickly purple and I did with apple scent? Rename it to Witch Queen Apple and it suddenly becomes incredibly popular!

Browns aren't necessarily a bad thing, just give it a rustic name and run with it.

Here's a link on chlorophyll: https://books.google.com/books?id=s...8_#v=onepage&q=chlorophyll soap brown&f=false

Or, the reason I've never tried. Chlorophyll definitely isn't stable in light, which is why plants keep producing the stuff constantly. It breaks down and stops photosynthesizing, requiring continuous replacement. Even in (very dim, extremely low UV) room light that's going to happen, it just takes months instead of days.

Spirulina can produce a nice green, but mind the smell. For greens, I tend to use "like natural" chromium oxide, but some people don't like that. For brighter greens, ultramarine blue plus yellow #5--but the yellow is definitely unacceptable under any definition of natural colorant.
 
Slipknot? If you've read any of the stickies on the tops of the forums here, especially this one: Are you ready to sell your soap, you will see that the general mantra, or "tone" of this forum is for those who plan on selling soaps is to get a good long time of soap making under their belt, and a good long time of testing the soaps they plan to sell. This allows them time to do research, and also to see how their soaps behave over time, in order to provide a superior product. EG wasnt being rude, he is simply following the general theme of this forum - the forum you came to for help.

Now, any search on this forum for "chlorophyll" or "natural colorants" might have helped you out in your research. Lots of colors and scents only stay for a while and then fade or morph. And you know that LOTS of recipes on the general internet are uhm, not exactly as described. So yelling at EG for simply stating the obvious to many of us only makes you look childish. YOU are a seller of soap, and expected to be an expert, right?

That said, I've made a recent soap with spirulina, the green has held well for a month so far. Its a 100% olive oil castile and will be ready for use in 6 months, Ill report back on how the color stuck then. Oh and the scent is rosemary and lavender EO - since Ive already tested that one for a long cure, I know it will last.
 
SERIOUSLY? What is your problem? You came to a free site and asked for help from a bunch of strangers that have no reason to help you other than they like to share their knowledge and experiences and you insult and vilify someone because you don't like the free and accurate information you were given. No one was being rude to you and you had no cause to be rude to anyone. Common sense tells you to experiment with new formulas and additives before trying to make a large batch and/or sell a product. That's what R&D is all about: research and develop a product before sale to the general public. It's nutters like you that give good soapers a bad name. I feel sorry for anyone buying your products. You don't seem to care to make a quality product. You seem to care to only make a buck. Sad...
 
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