Soapmaking 101

Lesson 3: Ingredients

Colorants

To color or not to color? Many of the base oils and additives such as essential oils and herbs will naturally color your finished product. Part of the allure of handmade soap is the interesting variations in color and texture that can be achieved from pure and organic ingredients. My favorite body bar is flecked with calendular petals which also give it spots of warm honey color.

However, you may wish to add additional colorants to your soap either for variety or to highlight a certain ingredient (e.g. I add powdered chlorophyll to my rich shaving bar made with avocado oil to produce a pale green soap evocative of the flesh of the avocado). When it comes to coloring your soap, you have to decide between sticking with all natural colorants, or moving to synthetic colorants. Personally, after going to all the trouble to obtain high quality, pure, organic oils for my soapmaking, I am hesitant to add synthetic colorants. However, natural colorants just don't have the "pop" of synthetic ones and can be time consuming to make. They also can be quite variable, so if you are looking for color consistency from batch to batch you may need to investigate synethic colors.

Before I move on to a rather lengthly discussion of making your own natural colorants, I want to briefly cover using synthetic colors. First, ensure they are recommended for cold process soapmaking. Saponification can drastically affect some colorants. Second, be sure they are appropriate for use on the skin, for example, check to see whether they are marked either cosmetic or food grade. To quickly and easily experiment with synthetic colors, use food dye you already have in your cupboard for cake decorating.

NATURAL COLORANTS

Your kitchen cupboard and fridge may already contain a wealth of products that can be used to dye your soap naturally. These dyes can easily be extracted from fresh produce such as beets and cabbage, spices such as turmeric and even your morning coffee! Here are just a few of the ingredients I have used and the resulting color:

red onions - red brown yellow onions - orange beets - pink cumin - light golden brown red cabbage - blue turmeric - gold chlorophyll - green nettles - gray green coffee - brown

Making dye from organic ingredients can be time consuming (and a little smelly!), but I find it worth the effort. Essentially, dye is extracted from plants by simmering the plant material in water until you have a concentrated color, or from dried herbs and spices by dissolving the herb in hot vegetable oil. Here are my instructions for each of the natural dyes I have experience preparing from organic ingredients:

• Red onions - use only the skins. Remove all of the dry skin and the first layer of moist skin. Bring two cups of skins to boil in three cups water. Remove the skins when they begin to look washed out - the liquid should be a rich red which will produce a red brown color in your final soap.
• Yellow onions - use only the skins. Remove all of the dry skin and the first layer of moist skin. Bring two cups of skins to boil in three cups water. Remove the skins when they begin to look washed out - the liquid should be a rich yellow which will produce a light orange soap color.
• Beets - cut beets into half inch slices. Bring three cups of beets to boil in two cups of water. The color of the dye should be bright purple and depending on the strength, will produce a pastel pink to a deap red pink soap color. If you can, buy beet powder from health food store and use it instead. Follow the method below for obtaining color from dried herbs and spices.
• Red cabbage - shred one head of cabbage. Boil the cabbage with two cups of water until the cabbage is a pale washed out blue. Remove the cabbage. The inky blue dye will produce blue soap, from a pale pastel to a deep Wedgwood blue denpding on strength.
• Nettles can be found growing wild or from herbal suppliers and when boiled in water can be used to dye soap a natural gray green. I have never tried this, but have been told it works.

You can reduce the water in these dyes by boiling the liquid further for more concentrated color. Remember to stain the liquid through cheese cloth or a fine sieve before using. I have sucessfully substituted some or all of the water in my recipes with these dyes. If they are especially concentrated, I may chose to add them at trace. Or I save them and use them when I handmill a plain batch of cold process soap.

Using spices to color your soap results in some of the most beautiful natural looking bars I have ever seen. I often get asked whether one can just dump the powerdered spice into the soap at trace. You can, but I have found that it results in a speckled effect whereby the individual grains of the spice is spotted throughout the bar. It does not produce an overall colored effect. If you want to actually color a bar using spices, follow these steps to produce a dye with an oil base:

Dissolve 2 teaspons of the spice into 4 tablespoons of oil and microwave for one to two minutes. Strain through a fine sieve (a coffee filter liner works well too!). Alternatively you can heat the mistute on the stove on high for two to four minutes.

Here are some of the results I have been able to achieve with various spices:

• Turmeric - most supermarkets will carry this aromatic spice. This dye will produce a pale but vibrant gold to a heavy antique gold.Cumin - this dye will produce a pale golden brown to a robust golden brown.
• Chlorophyll - produces a nice clear green.
• Beet powder - this dye will produce a pale pink soap bar.
• Paprika - for a more orange effect, mix it with tumeric, otherwise the result is more of a rust brown.
• alkanet root - if you can find it, produces a red dye, but just a pink soap. I have heard that if you crush and boil a large amount of the root, you can acheive a more robust red color.

I like to create these oil based dyes using the additional oil(s) I intend to add at trace to superfat my soap. This means I don't have to worry about effecting the measurement of my base oils. If you intend to use them before trace, make sure you use an oil you will be using in your recipe, and that the final weight of the oil (with the dye in it) measures what the recipe calls for.

Some essential oils can also be used to color soap. Blue german chamomile and blue cypress oils can be used to produce a mild blue color.

Remember, no results are guarenteed. After all, so many things can effect the final result when you are using natural colorants. I think it is part of the fun!

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