Rose Clay Color Change

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Ok, so I added more clay for dark color but as it cured became very light again. So I am thinking it may be as others mentioned ....maybe I gelled the soaps (without realizing it)? I would like to try to gel these milk soap to see if the color pops. In past these bars were soft when I cut them, wouldn’t gelling make them harder to cut?

I have never gelled normal soap and never knowingly did a milk soap. Does anyone have any recommendations on temps to trigger full gel? I saw some suggestions for normal soaps, but wondering how to proceed without creating a glorious volcano. I think the milk in recipe may require the temps and insulation requirements to be lower than normal soaps?
What is your recipe? Oils, butters, liquid, superfat, any additional additives including fragrance oil. Soaps can often be sent through gel anytime within the first week.
You might be able to let your soap saponify for a day or two, then put it in the oven or on a heating pad to gel, reducing the likelihood of it overheating due to saponification.
Or, if you have high Stearic/Palmitic FAs and an accelerating fragrance, that option might be off the table, but you could unmold it, cut it, and later put it back in the mold and gel it via oven or heating pad.
 
Might be unrelated (or not) : I use French Pink Clay in one of my variants, bought from the same supplier for a couple of years at least. Around last year I made the batches as usual but the colour did not come through at all. Obviously stressed me out to no end. I had a bit of the clay left from the previous bag which I mixed with water and compared to the new one. The new batch was light pink while the old one turned deep pink.
After a lot of back and forth with the supplier and sending it back for inspection..... They had mislabeled and sent me calamine powder. :oops:

Safe to say that was never something I anticipated!
 
In my experience, when a high sugar content or high CO content soap overheats and starts to show signs it will crack, simply lifting it up off the countertop or work surface and placing it on a rack will stop the overheating. It even works with 100% CO soap in a smaller loaf mold. The added air flow to the bottom surface of the mold cools the bottom of the mold just enough. This has worked for me with smaller size batches and no resulting partial gel ring with soap that heats up.

I have never put a loaf mold into my refrigerator or freezer, but I have seen pictures of soaps in a freezer volcanoing all over the freezer. I would not want to risk that, unless I had a dedicated fridge - dedicated to soap only. The only option I would use for quick-cooling or gel-prevention for an entire loaf of soap would be the garage in winter, as I do use my extremely cold winter-time garage as extra refrigeration for the holidays. The cold concrete would suck the heat right out of the mold and stop it in its tracks!

You mentioned you got the partial gel ring and want to avoid that. And you want deeper more vibrant color. I think you identified the real problem when you said it is a new bag of rose clay. I would suggest mixing the rose clay with a darker clay, maybe Morrocan clay or Brazilian clay, to try to deepen the color and see if you can get the resulting deeper shade of pink that you prefer. If you are against the use of mica, that is. Mica would give you more predictable results, and if you have any on hand, you could at least experiment with the amount to mix with the clay for the desired result.

But if it is for a special order, mica might not be an option (not knowing the specifics of the order), in which case, I'd suggest mixing with darker clay or possibly experimenting with slightly more of the rose clay, although I don't know how much that would alter your result.

You mention there are variations in sugar content in the goats milk at different times (the nature of natural), but is there any way you can predict which contains more or less of the heating elements of the milk? Are you able to determine which milking is less of a heater or more of a heater when added to soap? That might help in preventing over-heating, too. I probably would never really master those kind of nuances, but as a goat owner and frequent maker of GM soap, perhaps you are in a good position to master them and could adjust your process to those changes when they occur.
 
They had mislabeled and sent me calamine powder. :oops:
I've been wanting to try a bar of soap with calamine powder. How'd the soap turn out?

maybe I gelled the soaps (without realizing it)?
I love to use my French pink clay in a lot of my soaps and whether they have gelled or not they were always a light pink color. I don't think I've ever managed such a rich pink color like your original bar. Jealous!!! I once used a bit of Brazilian red clay (1 tsp PPO) and got your original bar color....
 
Hi, I’m not sure this helps, but I also use goat milk (100%) from my goats and thought your post interesting. These are pictures of some of my soaps made with rose clay .I keep playing around with it. The peace sign also has Moroccan clay mixed with the rose as @earlene wrote and has olive, rice bran , coconut , castor oils and Kokum butter. The squirrel is made out of @Zany_in_CO no slime Castile with rose clay, the bar soap has olive , babassu,sunflower and castor oils. and the layered soap has olive, coconut, hemp, castor oils and Kokum butter. The top of it is the rose clay, then annatto, then Moroccan clay ( which looks brown 🙄) In them all, the lye concentration varied from 30-33%. I used different scents in all of them. The rose pretty much comes out the same as a light flesh to pink as Ive only used 1-2 tsps tops in whatever recipe . I may start using more to see what happens. I make magical morphing soap and I think your soap may be magical morphing soap too 😉
 

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I've been wanting to try a bar of soap with calamine powder. How'd the soap turn out?

My bad! I think my memory fudged the details! I used it in a face pack and not soap. The face packs base had loads of french Pink Clay, so the high quantity of calamine in a face pack was rather unpleasant (chalky,drying).
 
You mention there are variations in sugar content in the goats milk at different times (the nature of natural), but is there any way you can predict which contains more or less of the heating elements of the milk? Are you able to determine which milking is less of a heater or more of a heater when added to soap? That might help in preventing over-heating, too. I probably would never really master those kind of nuances, but as a goat owner and frequent maker of GM soap, perhaps you are in a good position to master them and could adjust your process to those changes when they occur.

This was more of problem in the past when I only had 1 goat we were milking at a time. There are so many variations of what can impact fat and sugar levels (wild plants they are browsing, feed/grain they are on, alfalfa vs grass hay, not to mention the lineage of that goat, etc). I gave up trying to figure it out a while ago. Instead, I just mix milk from different goats into one bucket so it averages out. Plus, I freeze the milk so I can mix it in with cubes from other parts of the year and/or lactation cycles. If all the fails, I can just water down the amout of goat milk I use.
 
Those bars are beautiful! I love the molds. I tried 2 & 3 tsp ppo in small batch to test it out and quantity had minimal impact on color. I even tried mixing in some red mica (that was not pretty). I tried some Moroccan (1 rose: 2 Moroccan) clay and it helped darken it a bit, but not like the original bars. I finally contacted the buyer and asked them if they would mind if it was lighter than original batch. They did not mind.

But after what a few of you guys mentioned, I am wondering if the bag was some other non-rose clay. I bought it off amazon so could be someone miss-labeling it?

My next project will be to try those pull string flowers.
 
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