Questions about using dark colorants in soap

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awi

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I want to try making some different soaps with the powder style colorants. My question is how do you avoid having the colorant show up on your skin when lathered up? I see so many colored soaps with bright colors and was wondering if these do this or is there a special technique to doing it. I tried making some soap a couple of weeks back with red swirls in it to resemble peppermints. Thought it would be cute for stocking stuffers! I has issues with my color not going all the way through, but I will work on that. I tested a small piece of this soap today and the lather was slightly red. I don't think my customers would be very happy with this. Any suggestions?
 
Red is a really tough one - enough colorant to make a good red results in a psycho shower scene.

Black oxide is another toughie - enough to make black leaves you with black lather and sludge.

Otherwise the colors rarely transfer to the skin except if you go way overboard with the oxides or some clays.
 
Paprika won't make the soap smell like baked chicken or something? It's light enough to let the other scent come through?
 
No it doesn't smell at all...at least I can't smell it even with a rather faint pumpkin smell. I haven't tried it with anything else yet :)
 
That's great! I'm trying to do soaps with no artificial scents or colorants, just essential oils and natural colors, so knowing that there are things out there that can be used as color and won't affect the soap is really helpful.
 
LOL! If you put [*img] (without the asterisk) before your image url and [*/img] (again without the asterisk) after the url, you get the image to show.
 
Has anyone done tumeric? A friend of mine is pushing the qualities of tumeric and is not so subtly trying to get me to make him some (the value of my 1 lb batches).
 
Psalm 23 said:
Paprika makes a wonderful orange...I tried it not long ago with pumpkin pie scent...It lookes JUST LIKE pumpkin pie!

for pumpkin color, why not fresh pumpkin?
my fresh pumpkin pie soap. fresh cut out of the mould.
with fresh pumpkin, some cocoa butter, other oils, chocolate and pumpkin pie FO. smells like a chocolate pumpkin pie. yummy
not to mention the benefits of pumpkin for the skin is amazing.
pumkin-1.jpg

pumkin2-1.jpg
 
hmmm. Your soap is very pretty Layne. Does the pumpkin add to the scent at all?

Sunawaken, Sorry, I haven't ever done tumeric :D
 
I have used tumeric for my lemongrass scented soap. It turned the soap a light yellow color. I still have some that I made in July and it is now a golden color. I try to color my soap using natural colorants.

I made a batch of Dragon's blood and I wanted it to be a darker color because I wanted it to be a manly fragrance. I used tomato paste. It turned a dark chocolate color. I am not sure if the fo that I used had much vanilla or the scent discolors, but anyway it turned a nice chocolate color, very manly color.
 
I used turmeric but didn't manage to dissolve it completely. Looked like DOS... :lol:

I also used dark chocolate and cocoa powder in one (with CO) and it smelled like chocolate pancakes. Not sure why, but it was super nice.
 
Psalm 23 said:
hmmm. Your soap is very pretty Layne. Does the pumpkin add to the scent at all?

Sunawaken, Sorry, I haven't ever done tumeric :D

yes it seems so
had a strong fresh pumpkin smell before i added the FOs
so veary little FO was needed to kick it up a touch for the chocolate pumpkin pie scent
the pumpkin is veary dominate and veary nice
like a fresh made pie out of the oven
 

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