botanical colors, some are good but beware of chlorophyll!!

[green soap]

that indigo blue is gorgeous! does it hold its color over time? and yes, thanks so much for sharing!

have you had any success with woad powder? i made some that was a lovely sky-blue color and is now curing to a dowdy light blue-gray color, yuckaroo, and i had such high hopes for it

Thank you, it is a nice blue, isn't? The color seems to hold just fine so far. I have not noticed any discoloration or decrease in the color intensity. This goes for the dark blue, and the lighter shades as well. I am keeping samples of all my soaps for shelf life tests, so I will check again in a few months and report if I notice any fading.

I have never used woad powder, but recently I have experimented a bit with both alkanet and madder root infusions. I am very pleased with both of those. I will post the results separately and start another thread.

 

[green soap]

I have wondered if the green color from comfrey infusions, ground parsley, infused nettles is from chlorophyll? does anyone know?

In any case, I bumped this thread because I am seeing a lot of reference to using chlorophyll, this innocent looking liquid one can find in the health food store. Beware!

Just warning folks again. When I used a TBS PPO I did get a beautiful emerald-grass green, and I got DOS before the soaps had time to cure! the time it took for DOS to develop was strongly correlated with the amount of chlorophyl I used. If I gelled the soaps with the chlorophyll this seemed to speed up the onset of DOS. I still have the soaps I made with the same ingredients and without using chlorophyll. They are very plain simple soaps but they are still good (no DOS). I can correlate DOS to using chlorophyll without any doubt in my mind. Not the only thing that accelerates DOS of course.

It is possible to get the same beautiful green with indigo and annatto or beta carotene. Woad is another blue colorant that I am eager to try, I want to grow the plant!

I have been looking for pictures of the DOS rancidity mess but cannot find them so I'll post again if I do find them.

 

[robtr31]

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...25CC7CFD4D2CC3DAD3DCC17F1467&selectedIndex=11

 

[hlee]

I can confirm chlorophyll will cause your soap to go bad and I am so glad to see this as I have been wondering about it for months.
I used it for my second batch of CP and it looked great for about a month.
After that the green started turning brownish and about a week later I had to throw it all out, it smelled like a deep fryer.
I didn't think it was DOS because it didn't look like the pictures I had seen of DOS and being inexperienced I have always wondered what it was I did wrong with that soap.
I did suspect the chlorophyll and now I feel better knowing that is likely what happened .

 

[green soap]

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...25CC7CFD4D2CC3DAD3DCC17F1467&selectedIndex=11

Mine looked a lot worse than this. The green turned brown or mustard color all over, and the rancid smell was overpowering. It was like DOS on steroids.

 

[green soap]

I can confirm chlorophyll will cause your soap to go bad and I am so glad to see this as I have been wondering about it for months.
I used it for my second batch of CP and it looked great for about a month.
After that the green started turning brownish and about a week later I had to throw it all out, it smelled like a deep fryer.
I didn't think it was DOS because it didn't look like the pictures I had seen of DOS and being inexperienced I have always wondered what it was I did wrong with that soap.
I did suspect the chlorophyll and now I feel better knowing that is likely what happened .

I have seen both types of DOS. Maybe this chlorophyll induced effect should be called accelerated rancidity since it was an overall thing, rather than spots. I have seen the more benign, slower moving type DOS too, and that one does gets the yellow spots. More of a rusty orange or brown sometimes.

 

[Twiggy]

Hmmmm, that very strange and interesting what are you saying. And new to me. I'm using chlorophyll like crazy in my soaps, and I got DOS once, when I had used to big percentage of some oil – don’t remember now, hemp oil maybe. I left it to cure on full day light spot in summer (how clewer), and I got DOS.
Anyone else had bad experience with chlorophyll?

Edit:To make sure that I’m not making here a falls claims, here are the pics of my 1,5 years old soap scraps. They look bit more pale than on the picture, but after that time I still consider that for good looking green color. All other colors from other scraps I’ve made at that time, are long time bleached out, only green stayed green. I think it depend on what kind of oils are you using, what kind of chlorophyll is in your soaps

 

[green soap]

For those first soaps I used a large % of soft oils, but did not see any problems unless I also used chlorophyll.

However, I am sure it is a function of how much you use, and what fatty acid profile your oil blend has. Chloropphyll might not cause rancidity if you use all coconut oil for example. Or if you have some soft oils but you used only a tiny bit of the chlorophyll. All I am saying is that it will accelerate rancidity. In some cases this will be a small effect, and if you have zero linoleic and or linolenic fatty acids in your blend, your soap might be good for a while. The way I look at it is that since there are other ways to get green that will not endanger the shelf life of your soap, why risk it?

Your picture does not look very dark green, so I am guessing you used a lot less than I did. I used the liquid chlorophyll sold in health food stores (as a food supplement).

Here is an picture of two soaps, one colored with chlorophyll and one using indigo and beta carotene. They were made the same way using the same oils. The one without chlorophyll lasted a long time, the one with it died of DOS (or rancidity) in a few weeks.

OK, for some reason I can't post the picture. Will try again in a little while.

 

[green soap]

The stamped soap on the right was colored with chlorophyll, the one on the left had indigo and beta carotene. Both colors are definitely green. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, you can get many shades of green by varying the relative concentrations of beta carotene (or infused annatto) and indigo.

 

[Twiggy]

Thanks Green Soap! I use a lot of more Chl. just didn’t had any other sample! O well we all have our ways to achieve what we want And I find it good so Thanks again for explanation, I will look deeper into my oils which I’ve used in my green soaps.

Indigo and beta carotene- brilliant idea!

 

[green soap]

I have been asked about my indigo supplier. The information is buried in this thread. I have been giving amounts to use based on the indigo I have. It is partly pre-reduced, which explains its effectiveness.

I also want to mention I crush the crystals before dissolving in the water, otherwise you might get blue clumps. After it is dissolved, the lye goes in. If you put the lye in first and then the indigo it will not work (not color).

http://www.jacquardproducts.com/indigo.html

the above site is the product manufacturer, they describe the products best. You cannot get it from them directly, but can contact them for distributors. The distributor I used:

http://www.dharmatrading.com/dyes/pre-reduced-indigo-crystals.html?lnav=dyes.html

I have observed some of my indigo colored soaps for over a year and see no fading with this product. If anything, less is more. A little goes a very long way. Yesterday I used 1/8 tsp in a 2 lb loaf. It is the color of jeans when they just start to fade. Plenty blue, but not enough to produce colored lather.

 

[soap_rat]

Thank you, Green Soap! I've read this whole thread, but quite awhile ago, making notes. I'm sorry I didn't recall that your supplier was named in here.

For anyone using indigo from Soapmaking Resource, you will want to double or triple what Green Soap uses.

 

[ilovesoap2]

@green soap
I know this is an old thread but did your blue's hold up?
Just thinking I may want to order some of the indigo.
Thanks for your help.

 

[green soap]

yes, the indigo color keeps very well, it fades a bit in goat milk soaps but stays blue (or green) for other (non milk) soaps very well. I bought 8 oz from Dharma trading co, which will last for my whole life, even if it is a long one.

 

[kaliquen]

Thanks for this post...I recently made some soap with a drop swirl colored with chlorophyll and it's doing some pretty funky stuff. Still smells good but not so pretty anymore. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but no I'll know not to use it again!

 

[ilovesoap2]

yes, the indigo color keeps very well, it fades a bit in goat milk soaps but stays blue (or green) for other (non milk) soaps very well. I bought 8 oz from Dharma trading co, which will last for my whole life, even if it is a long one.

Thank you.
I'm ordering 2 of the .75 oz.
8 oz is a lot for the amounts we'll use each time.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Hmmm. I have a storebought soap colored with chlorophyll... I wonder how they got it to behave? Maybe adding it later in the process, after all of the oils had saponified?

 

[green soap]

If the soap has a lot of saturated fats chlorophyll will speed up rancidity, but it could still be a long time - for example a sea salt soap with 100% coconut oil would probably stay good for months. Also, adding rosemary oleo extract will counter - to some extent - the effects of the chlorophyll.

 

[seven]

Hmmm. I have a storebought soap colored with chlorophyll... I wonder how they got it to behave? Maybe adding it later in the process, after all of the oils had saponified?

just a guess, but it's possible that the soap was french milled. that way the chlorophyl was added long after the saponification has finished.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

just a guess, but it's possible that the soap was french milled. that way the chlorophyl was added long after the saponification has finished.

Well, they claim it's "triple milled", not sure if that's the same as french milled. And that is why I suggested they added it after saponification had occurred. It makes me wonder if adding tricky colorants to HP after the cook would help. *eyes some beetroot she bought before she realized the color didn't last in cp soap*