Soap Color Went to Hell and Back!

[Cherry Liu]

Ok first of all, hello everyone...this is my first post on this forum, hence I just wanted to make a post to say hi. I've been soaping since just the beginning of this year and I'm addicted

However, I did just have a very interesting experience with my soap colorant. I used cherry red matte and ultramarine blue color pigment powders from DreWhitsSoap on Etsy (I highly recommend all her colorants). I loved the vibrant colors that I achieved with a horizontal and vertical feather mantra swirl (using a hangar tool), and I had soaped at 90 degrees because of the complex design since I was using an unknown fragrance oil. Thus, I decided to CPOP it in an oven preheated to 175 deg F and turned off, with another silicone mold to cover it and prevent bubbles.

Before CPOP:

After an hour, I took it out and all the colors had faded!! (I don't have a picture of it, but it was ugly!) To a dark blue and dark red...I was devastated that all my pretty colors went away even though you could still kind of see the design. I decided on a last ditch effort to save my soap from its near death experience by popping it into the fridge for another hour. I think it worked!

After 1 hour in oven, followed by 1 hour in freezer:

I've learned that temperature can really affect colors, but was misinformed that CPOP (aka going through gel phase) always makes your colors pop...I can see that's not the case. Perhaps that's only for light colors, and gel phase always makes things darker? What's your experience with colorants and CPOP/gel phase?

 

[Marilyn Norgart]

I think your top soap looks like that cuz its wet. wet soap to me always looks more vibrant.

 

[dibbles]

Your soap may have been in full gel phase when you took it out of the oven. This can make the colors appear darker. Once the soap cools off, the colors look as they should. I gel, or try to, all of my soaps.

 

[JuliaNegusuk]

I too was under the impression that cpoping improves colours, particularly of natural colourants - or at least maybe not cpoping itself but as a means to an end to achieve full gel. But my orange soap made with 5 fold orange eo plus ground orange peel is a nice medium pale orangey yellow when not gelled, quite a bright colour, but came out positively brown looking when cpoped. Similarly my lemongrass and poppyseed soap coloured with calendula petals seems to be a much darker, duller colour after cpoping. Trouble is for this particular soap, if I don't cpop it I get terrible ash affecting the bottom corners and edges of the soap (no not the top!) Other soaps like the ones coloured with madder root, green tea wax and cocoa powder don't seem to be affected and look much the same as when I don't gel. So like many things, it just depends, different colours seem to behave differently.

 

[Cellador]

Is it a discoloring FO?

 

[Cherry Liu]

I think your top soap looks like that cuz its wet. wet soap to me always looks more vibrant.

Hey Marilyn. No, it actually looked almost BLACK it was so dark. If you notice what I wrote, I didn't take a photo of it during that period...I think I was just too mad lol. Just took it out of the fridge (where I'd left it for a couple hours after an hour in the freezer), and I'll be cutting it tomorrow. I'll post pix!

Your soap may have been in full gel phase when you took it out of the oven. This can make the colors appear darker. Once the soap cools off, the colors look as they should. I gel, or try to, all of my soaps.

That makes sense! Although I think I read on another thread that gel phase can make colors darker as well. I do prefer gel as well, but usually just do it by wrapping a towel around and placing it near the heating shaft. I only CPOPed it this time since I started at 90 deg F. I'll pay attention to different colorants in the future, but I'm a little turned off by CPOP at the moment.

Julia, I agree...like I said to dibbles, I'll be watching how different colorants behave as I usually use one colorant for more than one batch of soap. To Cellador, no it didn't change color until after I popped it into the oven and it didn't seem to discolor when I added it to the soap batter initially.

For the record, I did use a FO called "Black Cherry" so maybe I deserved it lol. I will be cutting my "Cherry Berry" soap - yes, named after myself, which is a bit narcissistic until you consider it's my 44th batch of soap - tomorrow and I'll show you guys. Thanks so much for the helpful feedback, it makes me want to use this forum more.

 

[cmzaha]

To me, it looks like a typical color when the soap is no longer wet. I will tell you that Nurture Soap Supply and Micas and More have beautiful micas that are much less costly than you are paying

 

[Dawni]

Love your hair @Cherry Liu!

I can't help with the micas but I know gel a bit, because all my soaps are gelled hehe. I HP mostly. Natural colorants are finicky but I did notice that they're slightly more subdued/pastel when I use em in CP (mine never gels and I'm nit bothered to force it lol) compared to when I HP.

Having said that, color morphing is an entire arena. Wines that turn green, then blue when it's supposed to be purple. Orange that fades to yellow. Yellow that's more brown. Green that's even more brown lol Like @JuliaNegusuk says, you just never know lol

Micas will give you more control over your soap colors for sure

 

[Cherry Liu]

To me, it looks like a typical color when the soap is no longer wet. I will tell you that Nurture Soap Supply and Micas and More have beautiful micas that are much less costly than you are paying

Sorry, to clarify again...I did NOT post a pic of the darkened soap (kinda wish I did now). The after pic is normal, you're right, but it wasn't until I stuck it into the freezer to cool. Not sure if it would've gotten that way if I'd just set it on the counter after CPOP as dibbles suggested, or it required a temperature intervention.

Love your hair @Cherry Liu!

I can't help with the micas but I know gel a bit, because all my soaps are gelled hehe. I HP mostly. Natural colorants are finicky but I did notice that they're slightly more subdued/pastel when I use em in CP (mine never gels and I'm nit bothered to force it lol) compared to when I HP.

Having said that, color morphing is an entire arena. Wines that turn green, then blue when it's supposed to be purple. Orange that fades to yellow. Yellow that's more brown. Green that's even more brown lol Like @JuliaNegusuk says, you just never know lol

Micas will give you more control over your soap colors for sure

Thanks Dawni, so sweet of you yeah my hair, like my colorants (lol) have faded to more of a strawberry lemonade now. The sunset hues were done in January, when I first started soaping actually! I totally hear ya on that color morphing arena. I especially see that with lye water replacements such as juices/sodas/coffee/tea etc. I'm doing a coffee soap soon, so I'm excited to see what happens with that. I think every time you use a new ingredient, you learn something new, hence why I like to experiment with new ingredients every time I make a new batch...the combinations are literally infinite.

Ok guys, I literally could not wait...also, *sodium lactate* So the soap turned out amazing, if I may say so myself...but if you take notice, the bottom blue layer is a deeper blue than the top blue layer. I think they complement each other, but I would say I was going for the deeper blue. So I think because it gelled first (being more deeply embedded in the soap), it was more vivid...so basically gel phase DID cause my colors to pop more. However, how dark it got during CPOP really gave me a scare! So I popped it into the freezer, which gave me the sort of partial gel (although you can't really tell except for the two different blues).

With Flash:

Without Flash:

 

[Lin19687]

I think it looks fine
I only buy from M&M as she tests all the micas.