Soap Makers Help!

[Morgaine]

Do you gel your soaps? I do, and if you don't the colors are different. I did a small 1 # batch of cucumber melon and didn't gel. The soap didn't have that transparent like look to it. It was duller and I thought more olive-y toned than the gelled which I thought was more vibrant. Be careful too if you use honey. I did a 1 # batch in the milky way mold and the honey heated it up and turned it brown with a green cast. Not real pretty.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Quote:
I do gel. I'm doing 125 ounces of oil in a log mold (old desk drawer), so gel happens pretty easily. You can see by the transparent looking sections of the soap I just posted that it goes through gel. I think it would be more opaque otherwise. When I've done soaps in smaller molds, it doesn't gel.

I've only used honey once, in the OMH batch. It did heat up! I think I took that batch outside into the night air for a bit.

What did you do with the brownish green soap?

 

[Morgaine]

I tossed them in as freebies to some of the teachers with their orders. The honey added a little scent s well. I really do like the liquid chlorophyll. The one bottle is lasting for ever. I've used maybe 1/4-1/3 of it.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Great idea!

I like the honey scent. Again, nice and natural!

 

[Morgaine]

I have some olive oil I infused with, comfrey, nettle, calendula, rose hips and chamomile. It is super dark green. I was going to a salve from it, but I think I might try making some soap too and see what color I get.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Quote:
Cool! Let us know how it turns out!

 

[NanaKat]

Hey BB and Morgaine, thanks for letting us eavesdrop on your "color full" conversation.
BB - That's a great website on natural colors.
Morgaine - how long did you infuse the comfrey, nettle et al and did you heat the oil during the infusion process.

Both of your soaps with sirls are lovely.

 

[Morgaine]

I used my crock pot to infuse them. I don't really have amounts. I just put the herbs in the crock and poured olive oil over it. Set it to warm and left it over night. I think I'm going to use that oil when I soap the green irish tweed scent. Right now the oil is a dark hunter green.

 

[NanaKat]

Thank you...that gives me a starting point.

I used crushed chloretta powder in one of my soaps posted earlier. It made a nice green.

BB posted that website and I'm itching to try the rhubarb root powder for a burgandy/cranberry colored soap. I have some rose FO to go with it. Haven't made a castile soap in a while and may use that recipe.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Glad you liked the website, NanaKat! I like when you can actually see the photos of how a cp soap turns out with natural herbs and such for coloring. There is just so much variation in how a color is described and how it could turn out so it's good to actually see it.

I have plans to make two more batches this week if all goes as planned.
* Yuzu Grapefruit with poppy seeds and a bit of grapefruit peel. I'm not going to do anything to color it. If I had some pink clay, I might have tried that.
* Vanilla Cream. What I decided to do with this one was add some cream for part of the liquids, pull out some of the soap, then put the fragrance in only part of it, then attempt a swirl. As highly as this Vanilla was rated, I'm still not entirely hip on the idea of a fudge brown soap. Think that'll work?

Then I'd like to do the Energy soap. I'm thinking that something in the yellow to orange range would be nice, but I don't think that an earthy orange like you'd get from carrot, pumpkin, or such is the right idea. I don't have enough petals on my calendula to do anything with that. I'm eyeing all the flowers in my garden and going, hmmmmmmmm. I have both bright yellow and bright orange nasturtium in my garden. I also have tons of chamomile. Has anyone tried either of these for color?