Matcha Tea soap

[Bari b]

Here’s another soap made with Matcha tea infused OO (July 2019), with one of the original photos and one taken today. The green has gone olive, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable for a soap made with a natural colorant. I double underlined “infusion” in my notes, so I don’t think this one had any tea powder. Maybe I was suspicious after having made the hemp oil and matcha powder soap a few days earlier. An interesting thing is that the top “sky” layer has a lot of TD in it. It wasn’t enough to mask the green at the beginning, but that layer is very white now.

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Beautiful soap!

I'm cleaning up my soap room today and came across another soap from last summer that has matcha, spirulina, annatto, madder, paprika and indigo colorants. The greens have faded, but I still like them. The indigo was very pale from the beginning. The soap was made in July 2019, so 10 months ago, and has been stored in a box in the dark.

July 2019 - the colors are very bright.

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May 2020 - The indigo sky has a pink hue to it, but less so than it appears in the photo. The cloud has clay and possibly some TD (my notes are unclear). The color in the lower green layers is from matcha and spirulina infusions, mixed except for the palest layer, above the red, which is just matcha infusion. The upper blue-green layer had spirulina powder added. The red layer was colored with madder tea, madder powder, some paprika powder and some annatto oil infusion.

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These are beautiful! I love the after pictures as much as the fresh cut ones!

I am amazed at the patience you all have to keep soaps around for a year to see what they do! Since I have just started making soap and am doing small batches I either use it or give it away as soon as it is usable! I have "hidden" one bar from each batch so that I can test them in a year, but to keep whole batches that long isn't happening yet!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

As much as I love the colors of green botanicals in soap, the fading is definitely an issue. So, now I am determined to match the color using clays and oxides. Here's my first try. Bubbles aside (argh) I'm pretty happy with it. I used 1 tsp. French green clay, 1/8 tsp. green oxide and 20g annatto infused oil, all added at emulsion, for 1000g of oil. The clay and oxide were mixed together with enough water to make a slurry. Next time I may add a bit of gold clay, instead of the annatto, to see if I can warm it up a teensy bit more.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Beautiful soap!



These are beautiful! I love the after pictures as much as the fresh cut ones!

I am amazed at the patience you all have to keep soaps around for a year to see what they do! Since I have just started making soap and am doing small batches I either use it or give it away as soon as it is usable! I have "hidden" one bar from each batch so that I can test them in a year, but to keep whole batches that long isn't happening yet!

Thank you!

I encourage you to start saving a bar or an end cut of each of your soaps. If you're going to keep making soap, it's the only way you will know how the soap fares up over time. Months after I made them, I started seeing a little bit of DOS in a few soap from batches I made last summer. I was able to determine from my notes that the soaps all had olive oil and were made in a window of about a month. That led me to conclude that I probably had a bad batch of oil, and also to start using ROE and a chelator.

 

[KimR]

I love your soap! I'm a newbie and have just started to try oil infusions. I am going to try yours this weekend. Below is a Matcha Green Tea Soap I made with BB Ginger Lime FO. Love the smell and other qualities of the soap BUT the green is nowhere near as pretty as yours from the oil infusion. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I love your soap! I'm a newbie and have just started to try oil infusions. I am going to try yours this weekend. Below is a Matcha Green Tea Soap I made with BB Ginger Lime FO. Love the smell and other qualities of the soap BUT the green is nowhere near as pretty as yours from the oil infusion. Thanks for the idea!
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Great soap, great color! I hope you will keep us posted on your experiments.

 

[Jersey Girl]

I'm cleaning up my soap room today and came across another soap from last summer that has matcha, spirulina, annatto, madder, paprika and indigo colorants. The greens have faded, but I still like them. The indigo was very pale from the beginning. The soap was made in July 2019, so 10 months ago, and has been stored in a box in the dark.

July 2019 - the colors are very bright.

View attachment 45734

May 2020 - The indigo sky has a pink hue to it, but less so than it appears in the photo. The cloud has clay and possibly some TD (my notes are unclear). The color in the lower green layers is from matcha and spirulina infusions, mixed except for the palest layer, above the red, which is just matcha infusion. The upper blue-green layer had spirulina powder added. The red layer was colored with madder tea, madder powder, some paprika powder and some annatto oil infusion.

View attachment 45733

Beautiful!

 

[szaza]

@KimR I love that color!!

 

[atiz]

These are really beautiful @Mobjack Bay and @KimR.
I use French green clay sometimes, but never thought of mixing it with annatto (or anything else), and it usually ends up a somewhat muddy green color. This is a great idea to brighten it up!

 

[TashaBird]

Thank you!

I encourage you to start saving a bar or an end cut of each of your soaps. If you're going to keep making soap, it's the only way you will know how the soap fares up over time. Months after I made them, I started seeing a little bit of DOS in a few soap from batches I made last summer. I was able to determine from my notes that the soaps all had olive oil and were made in a window of about a month. That led me to conclude that I probably had a bad batch of oil, and also to start using ROE and a chelator.

What is ROE and a chelator?

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@TashaBird

ROE stands for rosemary oleoresin extract. It acts as an antioxidant to protect the oils in the soap from going rancid, which shows up as DOS (dreaded orange spots) or general discoloration. You can read more about ROE, and how to use it, here: Soapy Stuff: Rosemary oleoresin (ROE)

DOS can also be caused by minute quantities of metals in soap. A chelator is an effective way to protect soaps from DOS due to metal contamination. You can read more about chelators, here: Soapy Stuff: What is a chelator

I use tetrasodium EDTA, which is described here: Soapy Stuff: EDTA or citric acid to create sodium citrate, which is described here: Soapy Stuff: Citrate

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Here’s an update on a soap made back in July 2019 using 20% OO from a matcha tea infusion. It’s been stored in a brown paper bag inside a closed box.