Trial by Fire red mica line?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 5, 2018
Messages
3,532
Reaction score
12,060
Location
Minnesota
Soapers, I have a design that calls for a red mica line. I love using Nurture Soap's Trial by Fire red mica to color batter BUT I'm wondering how it would look in a mica line. In the jar it looks really pink. Let me know if you have experience using it as a line. Thanks,
 
Soapers, I have a design that calls for a red mica line. I love using Nurture Soap's Trial by Fire red mica to color batter BUT I'm wondering how it would look in a mica line. In the jar it looks really pink. Let me know if you have experience using it as a line.

You'll never know until you try. I'd do a test batch...maybe enough to fill a couple of small cavity molds?
 
If you use it as a mica line it's going to be messy, smear, and color your lather. Trial by fire is a mix of dye and mica so it won't react the way a normal mica.
I am so glad you told me this and I appreciate the tip! I tend to use micas more than any other colorant and am always forgetting to check the ingredients of certain "micas." Thanks for the reminder.
 
Maybe you could get the same effect by finely grating or pulverizing red soap, I Dream in Soap does something like that to make tiny soap pieces for dark ”mica” lines. As I recall, her lines look a bit more chunky than the usual mica line. Now that I’ve written this, I think may try it with some leftover chunks of soap I have in other colors.
 
Maybe you could get the same effect by finely grating or pulverizing red soap, I Dream in Soap does something like that to make tiny soap pieces for dark ”mica” lines. As I recall, her lines look a bit more chunky than the usual mica line. Now that I’ve written this, I think may try it with some leftover chunks of soap I have in other colors.
How fine do you think you could get soap if you used a coffee grinder? Would it just clump up? Do it in stages of grating to dry it out? Maybe make the colored soap with less water? Cool idea though!
 
I’ll add that not too terribly long ago I used a microplane grater to grate up a bunch of white soap that I plan to use as snow. The starting soap was about the consistency of parmesan. After some air drying, the little grated pieces were easy to crunch into smaller bits with my gloved hand. This is why I think it might be possible to turn finely grated soap into smaller, flattish bits that could pass as a mica line without looking like little chunks. When I blitzed fairly dry soap in a coffee grinder, I ended up with small chips of varying sizes and soap dust. I separated the chips out with a fine mesh strainer and used them to decorate the top of a new batch of soap. I didn’t try to use the dust for anything because it looked grey (original soap was multicolored), but it may have been a good size for a faux mica line.
 
Sounds like it's time for an experiment!

1634700885006.png
 
I’ll add that not too terribly long ago I used a microplane grater to grate up a bunch of white soap that I plan to use as snow. The starting soap was about the consistency of parmesan. After some air drying, the little grated pieces were easy to crunch into smaller bits with my gloved hand. This is why I think it might be possible to turn finely grated soap into smaller, flattish bits that could pass as a mica line without looking like little chunks. When I blitzed fairly dry soap in a coffee grinder, I ended up with small chips of varying sizes and soap dust. I separated the chips out with a fine mesh strainer and used them to decorate the top of a new batch of soap. I didn’t try to use the dust for anything because it looked grey (original soap was multicolored), but it may have been a good size for a faux mica line.
Still a cool idea for a design feature even if not a fine grind. I wanna try!
@Zing - yes it does look pink as a powder, and even though I don't know for sure, i would trust @CatahoulaBubble when she says it will smear and smudge. It's all over my kitchen, so I know this for a fact. Still finding bits of red stuff here and there.
 
Last edited:
Garlic grater with little pressure works reasonable too, as a first step. If the soap is hard enough to start with.

Bright colours shifting to pastels with milling grade is expected (due to extra surfaces), but it will go away when covered with new soap batter (less light scattering). Think of stones that get darker when wet.
 
I've never had trouble with Trial By Fire but I don't like it much. It's a very orange red so I don't consider it a true red.
 
Back
Top