My first HP

[Sanguine]

Hii,
Today I made my very first HP soap. I received my slow cooker (with an english plug, sigh...) yesterday and I just had to try it! I made a late christmas soap with:
10% cocoa butter
10% shea butter
10% avocado butter
10% castor oil
10% palm oil
10% coconut oil
40% olive oil
I felt like using some butters today... The process went well but there's a scent I'm not a big fan of, it even came through 25 ml of christmas spice FO (on 1kg). Will this scent dissapear?
Also the color red seems to hate me; I used 5ml of liquid soap color, in a previous cp batch (bought at crafts store), on 200gr of soap and it didn't become red. (bottle says 10ml is for 5kg of soap)
Today I used food coloring, a lot, and all I got was pink. I wanted a green, red and "white" batch. No problem with the green though, now I have an ugly green-pink batch...
Any advice on how to get a pretty red christmassy color?

Thanks in advance!

 

[krissy]

red is a color that is hard to achieve. let us know if you find one that works for you.

 

[Fragola]

Cute recipe ... I was going to say - if you started with 10% percentages, why didn't you go all the way down

If we're talking about soapy smell, I fear the smell won't disappear ... well, while the soap is hot the smell is at it's strongest, it fades during cure, but gets stronger again during use.

I was successful with red food coloring for CP and HP, green was more problematic: what did you use for green ? If it's only pink, maybe you didn't use enough ?

Also, I would be apprehensive about red and green touching.

 

[IrishLass]

... but there's a scent I'm not a big fan of, it even came through 25 ml of christmas spice FO (on 1kg). Will this scent dissapear?

Chances are very good that it will cure out. I've found that soap can have all kinds of weird off-smells when newly made, but they all usually cure out. As a result, I never judge how my soap smells until a at least few weeks have gone by.

Also the color red seems to hate me;

Welcome to the club! Just as another member here mentioned recently-red is the soaper maker's holy grail.

I used 5ml of liquid soap color, in a previous cp batch (bought at crafts store), on 200gr of soap and it didn't become red. (bottle says 10ml is for 5kg of soap)

Generally, the colorants that are sold in many craft stores are only good in melt & pour-type soap. The higher pH of lye-based soaps causes them to morph.

Today I used food coloring, a lot, and all I got was pink. I wanted a green, red and "white" batch. No problem with the green though, now I have an ugly green-pink batch...

Food coloring can change in the higher pH of lye-based soaps, too. In my forays on the many soap forums, I've learned from others that yellow is about the only one that seems to be fairly stable in CP or HP soap (using McCormick brand food colorants). Red will turn pink at first, and then will turn gray, blue will turn purple and then morph into gray, and green will eventually turn brown.

It's best to use colorants that have been tested to stay true in the higher pH environment of lye-based soaps. I use ultramarine and oxide colorants because they stay true in my soaps. Some micas will, too, but not all.

Hopefully others will chime in with what they use.

Any advice on how to get a pretty red christmassy color?

Like I mentioned above, getting a good red in lye-based soap is a pretty elusive thing. The best red I have ever used is powdered Colorana Bordeax mica mixed with a little Tomato Red liquid colorant, both from TKB Trading. They work great for coloring a small portion of my soap to do red swirls- I get nice blood-red colored swirls that lather white, but when I color my whole soap red it's a bloody disaster- quite literally, in a sense, because my soap bleeds red lather. It sure is pretty sitting in my soap dish, but showering with it reminds me of that infamous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie, 'Psycho' where you see the blood stained water flowing down the drain. Not exactly a pretty sight.

It would be so nice to find a bright red that can color my whole soap with and not have it bleed.

IrishLass

 

[Sanguine]

Thanks for all your answers, they are very helpfull!!
The green I use is wilton food coloring (I bought a whole range of food colors because I'm about to make bath cupcakes).
I have a nice range of oxides but I just forgot to order red...
Maybe a green-white soap could be christmassy to? 0

The strang scent is, well, strange... I don't know, it doesn't smell strong or sharp, it's flat (don't know how else to explain) it even seemed to take over my lovely FO. Maybe with some luck it might change a bit when fully cooled down and a few weeks old.

About the recipe: the olive oil gave it a nice conditioning level 10% wouldn't have been enough and rice bran made the iodine go to high. I keep having the idea that you have to use "special" fats (instead of grocery oils) to get a good soap that while with OO, tallow, CO, castor and sunflower or rice bran you also seem to get good stats. Maybe I should just try the grocery oils out...

 

[IrishLass]

I've found that many grocery oils are perfectly fine and make wonderful soap.

IrishLass