Go home, soap. You're drunk.

I made some bar soap this week. I made the formulation I used to test EG's "lard is as good as butters" theory:

45% Lard
35% Olive Oil
20% Coconut
2lb oil
Scent: 50% cucumber FO, 50% canteloupe FO, 1oz total.
Things started off fine. I mixed up my lye, then measured my solid oils. Then took a break to get my toddler ready for bed. The melted my oils, added the olive, etc. Both containers were at about 105F when I combined them. Bringing the soap to trace was no problem. I separated the oils into two pitchers. Added titanium dioxide to one, and green mica to the other.This is where things get wonky. In just a few minutes, the green batter turned a brownish orange. I knew that sometimes colors morph, so that was disappointing, but not completely shocking.

I poured the soap into my mold, the first use of a rectangular loaf mold I got from Michaels. I had an extra liner from a column mold, which I cut into reusable liners for the loaf:
My original swirl plan wasn't working, for a few reasons including the fact that I was trying to pour a little early, so I just poured from both pitchers at once and let the swirls fall where they may. Once done, I had an orange and white batch of soap. (It was also leaking, because I forgot to tighten the sides of the mold back up. Oops.)
It was too soft for cutting after 24 hours, so I came back after 48. To find that the loaf had mostly gone back to being green!
(If anyone can explain that, I'd love to hear it.) The soap was actually probably still a bit too soft, but I cut it anyway. It's definitely not being sold at this point. In the final little "up yours," when I cut the soap open I found that it was... purple.
On the upside, the swirls look pretty nice.

a lot of natural colors are pH dependent. If a color morphs, that would most likely be the reason.

InNae

Aw, you have a toddler....I love toddlers.

Sorry the soap didn't turn out they way you wanted, but I like it. It reminds me of the ominous skies before a big storm in the Midwest....swirls of grays, blues and a little green mixed in.

If it was sellable, you could call it Stormy Sky. Hmmm....I may have to figure out how to make my own version of it.

The green mica I have from WSP did something like that! I used it along with their blue mica (both of them were known to morph in CP soap) in one of my superlye batches, and got some funky results.

Just after pouring.

Couple hours later.

When I finally sliced it.

InNae said:

a lot of natural colors are pH dependent. If a color morphs, that would most likely be the reason.

InNae

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That would certainly explain the way it shifted this way and that over time.

I wonder if that means the center will get more green again as it cures? I'll have to update this thread.

Ooooh, I think I bought the same mold from Michaels this week! Is it Artminds? Is it holding up well? I searched the brand on this forum, and one person reported hers warping, and one person said hers was great, so I am excited that yours looks like it didn't warp.

I'm sorry your soap didn't turn out as you hoped, but yeah, the swirls turned out great!

I messed up my colour too, thinking I was so smart to use beet root powder to make my soap red. Of course, it was gorgeous until I added the lye, which made all the pretty red disappear. Beet root powder is only red in acid, and changes in an alkaline environment. Lesson learned. I get a lot of lessons like this, in my soap journey.

I can't see the images at the moment, but I look forward to it from the descriptions! Hope it cures out to a nice colour

I love the title of this thread. That soap really doesn't know whether it's coming or going.

sorry our soap didnt' turn out the way you had intended. the cut pics almost look like a mood ring. maybe it'll all come back to green once it hits the oxygen? still looks good to me.

The color will probably come back as it cures. I've had a couple do that even with tried and true colorants which I can't figure out. I too can't see the photo but hope it works out for your.

songwind said:

That would certainly explain the way it shifted this way and that over time.

I wonder if that means the center will get more green again as it cures? I'll have to update this thread.

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I think you're probably right that it will shift back to green since the top has already that is a good sign.

Good luck.

InNae

Orange, green, purple...what's the difference? haha That really is quite the morph though! Will be interested to see how it cures.

One of my very first batches of soap I made, I added puréed cranberries and the instant they hit the lye everything turned a very bright blue then morphed into a neon orange (I think that was the sequence...it's been a while, plus, I didn't take pictures). After they cured, it was just a brownish/tan color. Sometimes soapmaking is just one experiment after another

I ever made yogurt honey batch. First time I pour to the mold, the color was light yellow. After 24 hours, I unmold that batch and I found my soap was light orange.
And then, after 48 hours, that was at the time I cut that soap, it became light brown already :neutral:

overall, that batch is good :-o

Just to touch on an earlier comment. I have the artminds mold from Michaels. When you say warping do you mean that the sides bow outward slightly? Mine does that if I tighten the wing nuts on the bolts too tight...or tight at all, lol! If I tighten them just enough to prevent leaking the sides stay perfectly straight. All-in-all, not a great mold in my opinion. The funny part is that I had a pretty good idea that it wasn't a very good mold before I bought it but bought it anyway as I had accidentally broken my homemade wooden mold a couple days prior, hadn't had the time to fix it yet, and was really jonesing to make some soap. I know, I'm totally lame and hopelessly addicted but I suspect there are others here that might have done the very same thing in my position, lmao! I'm not a huge fan of HDPE in general though. I really like wood molds. Something rustic and comforting about them. Don't like lining them so much but I'm too impatient to wait the extra time it requires to cleanly unmold silicone log molds so lining is a necessary evil for me. Luckily I have found that my amazing and "much more patient than me" GF doesn't mind lining the molds at all and has happily taken over that duty provided I supply her with a steady stream of bath and body products in all her favorite scents, lmao! Seems to me it is more than a fair trade. I do use the michaels mold for my small test batches though and it performs respectably. Way too expensive though at $30. Jeez!

I do suggest to not cpop in the Michaels HDPE molds. They are to thin and will warp. Tightening bolts on any hdpe mold to tight will tweak the mold. I need a small mold for test batches and picked up one of the Micaels mold for 10 bucks it was missing the bolts! I found the pieces on the shelf and found a manager to see if she would make it down. Since I only use hdpe molds I have lots of bolts.

Forgot to mention I soap a lot with lard and have had it turn purple when using green coloring even with just green cucumber, celery juice. I have a cut batch that the pinky purple around the edges never did turn back to light green

......To find that the loaf had mostly gone back to being green!
(If anyone can explain that, I'd love to hear it.)

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Colourants and Lye are weird participants in a play.
NaOH is nasty stuff, and a lot of colourants lose the battle with NaOH:
they'll morph or disappear totally.

Pigments and oxides usually are stable in CP soaps. Stable, meaning that they don't morphe and stay put in the soap.
As said, most pigmnets don't seem to suffer at all from contact with NaOH, but...
there is a third group: at first the colourant gets injured (morphing from green to orange for example),
but it has this auto repair power, and manages to morph back ones again to the original colour.

A cute example is the "blue FC&C no 1" colourant, with CI number 42090.
In HP soap it is a beautiful azure (peacock blue)
When used in CP soap it morphs to orange and eventually to purple.

CI 42090 morphing from orange to purple in CP soap


Saltbar with HP embeds; same colour in CP


HTH

OR the pH matters in the expression of the color and when the soap is above a certain pH, you get one colour, and as the soap cures, and the pH drops, you get another. (A feature used in pH indicators, as we know)

CanaDawn said:

OR the pH matters in the expression of the color and when the soap is above a certain pH, you get one colour, and as the soap cures, and the pH drops, you get another. (A feature used in pH indicators, as we know)

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Thx for the reminder - forgot about that.
like red cabbage and alkanet

It says HP, but it was CP

Alkanet CP and HP (light purple kept in the dark)

eucalypta said:

Thx for the reminder - forgot about that.
like red cabbage and alkanet

It says HP, but it was CP

Alkanet CP and HP (light purple kept in the dark)

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I have dyed eggs with red cabbage and a bit of vinegar to get that gorgeous deep blue color, and tried to figure out how I could color a soap the same color. If you don't mind my asking, did you use red cabbage juice or a powder?