Mix colorant with EO

[phstandard]

Hi! Newbie here, so please bare with me! I have searched the forum, but could not find info on mixing with castor.

I do 2-color swirls and need to buy time after trace, so my colorants have to be well dispersed when I pour them in.

People recommend light weight oils. Will it not work to add my cocoa/coal/other colorant to my EO-mix? I premix: castor, EO, kaolin and rice flour. However castor is not lightweight.
I could divide the EO-mix and mix with colorants.

Another alternative would be to take some of the melted oils (shea, coconut, olive) and pour it in 2 jugs, mix in colorants + the EO batter and then add traced soap and blend.

If I do 1000 g oils, I can put 15 grams in each jug (amount to a totalt of 3 %, which is my superfat). But then Im worried if I don't mix properly, some parts of the soap may be too lye-heavy. :/

I'd rather not just add some "bonus oil", I'd like to follow a recipe.

 

[DeeAnna]

I think the point is to get a powdered colorant dispersed in a small amount of an appropriate liquid, so the colorant blends into the soap batter easier and lump free.

Until your post, I'd never heard the "rule" about only using light bodied oils for mixing colorants. I've also not heard anyone say they disperse their colorant in their fragrance either -- I think you'll have to try it and see.

I sometimes use a portion of the fats from my recipe, and I sincerely doubt a fat blend that's 60% lard would be considered "light bodied". Or I've used glycerin, which works surprisingly well. Or if the colorant is made to be water-dispersible, such as some types of titanium dioxide, I'll use water.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

When I am making multicolor soaps, I use a portion of my melted blended recipe fats, which include tallow, lard, butters, etc., to mix my colorants. As small aliquots of the fats firm up fairly quickly as they cool off, I usually set them on a tray in a warm oven until I’m ready to start making the soap. Other times I predisperse the colorant in one of the base oils, which works fine when there are only 1 or 2 colors in the soap. I gave up on using glycerin mostly because I had issues getting the very sticky glycerin out of the container/off the spoon.