Let's talk colors...

It's been a very long time since my last blog post.  In the last few months I've moved to the country and began a new chapter.  Looking forward to what the Universe has in store for me...  :)

I thought I'd blog a little bit about soap colorants.  There are many ways to color cold and hot process soap.  You have natural colorants which are, not usually, as vibrant as synthetic colors but lovely in their own right.  You can achieve beautiful shades of pink, violets, browns, greens, oranges, yellows and many others, from plant materials, clays, minerals etc.  There's always been a certain romance to the idea of 100% natural soap, made of nothing but what mother nature shares with us, stirred with a wooden spoon in our grandmother's worn apron.  For years a good couple of spoonfuls of cocoa  or allspice was what soapmaker's used to get a lovely deep brown, or some alkanet root to get muted shades of violet.  These natural elements are still used and often preferred by today's soapmakers.

One can also utilize a vast array of pigments such as micas, ultramarines and oxides.  Until the FDA stepped in and took issue with the purity of mining these pigments, they are now manufactured in labs.  Iron oxides, in nature, are often filled with toxic metals like lead, arsenic, mercury, antimony and selenium so safety warranted a change.

And lastly, you have the many differen't types of FD&C colorants which are not natural and manufactured in a lab, as well.  They provide a very wide range of colors and are really easy to use once you get the hang of it.

Is your head spinning yet?  How then, does anyone choose?  A lot of it comes down to preference, ease of use, and stability.  What do I mean by stability?  Well, often times in soapmaking, the chemical process soap needs to go through -  called saponification - creates reactions in alkaline environments that do all sorts of wacky things to colors.  You may start out with a beautiful royal purple poured into your soap mold, and when you come back a few hours later to check on it, you have something that closely resembles a greenish gray vomit.  Ew.   You may mix your little heart out to find that "perfect" shade of red, and end up with hot pink.  This is why colorants require testing testing testing!

Let me give you an example.  Tonight, I poured a soap with two separate colors, and did a simple slab swirl.  I used a shamrock green mica (which is gorgeous in my lip balms, by the way!), and a small amount of a cellini red mica.  Take a look  at  the photo below...

As you can see by these photos taken just after pouring, I have a medium shade shamrock green and a dark pink.   Everything looks like it should and all seems to be right in the world.  Here's a closeup:

Now take a look at the soap in the mold, just a couple of hours later:..(there is also some microfine blue glitter on top if you're wondering what the specks are :)

No more shamrock green!  What happened is that this particular mica is not stable in cold process soap and went through a color change commonly known as "morphing".  Now we have a very light tan color instead of green.  Sometimes the color just plain disappears altogether!    Don't even get me started on the havoc fragrance oils can wreak on colors too!  So you see...much planning and testing goes into soapmaking, which can be very frustrating...but never boring.  Sometimes you just have to roll with the outcome and adjust your "vision" to meet your soap reality.   So, the next time your dark pink and shamrock green soap turns light pink and tan?  Remember these 5 little words...

I meant to do that.  :)

Until my next post...thanx for reading!

UPDATE!  The color change continues!  This morning, after a full 20 hours, the colors have morphed again, back to green and pink.  They are softer and less pronounced now, but this just goes to show you once more, that colorants have all sorts of surprises in store. :)

Happy soaping!

SALE!

I'm having a sale on select soap over at the shop, to clear out some inventory for new scents and yummy new stuff.  30% off!  

Get 'em while we got 'em!  :)  http://www.alifedeliberate.etsy.com/

Better to light a candle, than curse the darkness....

So I've been threatening to make candles for ages now.  Who doesn't love a candle?!  A while back, after much research and brain frying, I settled on a soy paraffin blend and ordered up some supplies.  Tonight, the experimenting begins...

The vast choices of waxes will make your head spin.  Soy, paraffin, palm, mottled, beeswax, gel wax....and on and on.  Don't even get me started on wicks!  Much like the art of soapmaking, the more I research, the more questions one has.  I suppose that's part of the fun right?  The journey?  This is 25lbs of fun:

Try lugging this sucker up and down the stairs several times.  My next house will be devoid of all stairs, trust me when I tell ya.

I'm making container candles and tonight's jar is a pretty standard 8 oz. colonial.  I started by sticking my pre-tabbed wick into the jar with a glue dot and then warming the jar in the oven, on it's lowest setting.  This, they tell me, assures better wax adhesion to the jar wall and helps control wet spots.  I'll take their word for it.

First thing I'm noticing is that the heat from the oven is making my wick limp (insert joke here) and melting the glue dot.  Hmmm....maybe I should wick it after I heat the jar.  Next time.  Mental note.

Next, I scoop out 8 ounces of wax and put it into my metal pour pot in a pan of water, to act as a double boiler, and heat until melted.

Pardon that yellow cheese-like substance, above.  The handle broke off my pot almost immediately after I bought it, and I had the bright idea to Gorilla Glue it back on.  Do you see a handle in the picture?  Umm, no.  :)  The first run through the dishwasher and it fell back off, but left some hardened shmutz behind.  Don't worry though - the stuff wouldn't come off if you lit dynamite.

Anyway...

So after the wax is melted (stir, stir, stir) I added some color chips (stir, stir, stir).  I chose a light lemon yellow because I'll be scenting it with a lemon squares scent that will rock your sox.  Smells just like the real thing!  I poured in about .8 ounces of fragrance once I took the pot off the heat, and when the temps were about 175-185, I poured...

The melty glue dot problem made the wick tab come unstuck from the bottom of the jar and it began to float around a bit so I had to reattach it.  Not too big of a catastrophe but that's something I need to fix for next time.  I know some chandlers use glue guns so maybe I'll go that route. 

Ya like my wick holder?  I need to order some wick bars (or get some popsicle sticks) but this worked for now.  The main thing is that you get your wick centered and keep it from falling over while your wax cools.

Jack was highly intrigued...

And that's pretty much it.  I let it cool and popped a lid on.  I didn't have any major dimpling issues or anything.  Looks good, smells good.  Yay!

Now, however, comes the arduous and extensive testing process I always put my products through.  Once this cures 48 hours I'll test out the melt pool, the burn times, the sooting, the flame height, and all of the other things that can go wrong and tweak from there.  I'm pretty excited about adding them to my line though, eventually.  But never before they rock.  :)

Thanks for reading!

A Girl And Her Big Screen...

Any techno-dorks out there?

I'm not a huge electronics person (I can barely work my DVR) but I must admit I like my computer stuff.  A few years ago I bought a Gateway PC with a gorgeous 24" LCD monitor.  Going from a 17" to a 24" is a big leap.  I felt like I was working on a big screen TV at first.  I always buy Gateway stuff because until they started branching out and making low cost PCs to sell to Best Buy etc., they always had great quality and really good customer service.  Now it's a crapfest, to my dismay.  But I digress...

I loved this monitor.  I would walk into my office in the morning, and I swear it would sparkle at me like Johnny Weir in a headband from my desk, and once I think I even heard it ask me how I wanted my coffee.  Tons of features, great colors, like 4 extra USB ports on it, big as buick....loved it.  Well, the sucker crapped out on me after only three years.  Gateway was unapologetic, and the repair chick basically said I might as well use it as a doorstop because fixing it would be as costly as a new one.  Ugh.  Three years?  Really?  Unacceptable. 

So, the hubby and I went to every store in town to find a replacement that didn't break the bank.  Nothing really jumped out at me.  I tried hooking up an old monitor I had stashed in the closet that weighs roughly 10,000 pounds... and wow....did I really use to use this thing?  Was it back when I was spearing pterodactyls and perfecting my cave drawings? 

Awful. 

I was having serious separation anxiety.  Today I found my new one.

Now, I give my sister crap for buying HP computers (don't even get me started) but I do like their peripherals.  Meet my new 25" best friend.  :) 

Maybe now I can post some decent soap pictures.  I suppose it won't change my photography skills, will it?

Who put dressing in my blackberries?

I'm on a mission to try more scents than I normally choose.  Yeah - I'm one of those.  I'm a citrus girl.  I admit it. I head straight for the kumquats and guavas and starfruits, with the occasional foodie scent thrown in when I'm hungry.  I gotta cut that out, and expand my soapmaking horizons.  So in an effort to make something differen't (and because a customer ordered it...heh...) I made a decent sized batch of blackberry & sage soap.  Yeah, I know....more fruit.  But hey!  There's sage in there too!

Baby steps....

CRS

So I'm getting to that age where little lines are beginning to frame my eyes, my underwear is getting a little higher, sweatpants are becoming my ensemble of choice, and I am aquiring a wicked, searing case of CRS.  (Can't Remember Shit, for the uninitiated)...

A regular customer of mine put in a special order for goat milk soap the other day, and this afternoon I got out my arsenal of pots, pans, ingredients, and molds and set to work on a lovely swirled batch of blues, sages, creams and black - scented with blackberry and sage.  I tell ya though - this sucker just would NOT trace.  I whipped that batch half to death and it's still runny...hmmm...come to think of it, the frozen goat milk took forever to melt too.  And....hmmm....it's in the mold now and it STILL isn't setting up!

Uh....are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?   

Yeah.

Did I forget to add the lye? 

I'm seriously beginning to wonder about myself.  It ain't normal, I tell ya. 

I'll keep ya'll posted on the soap.... (and my hastening brain deterioration) ;o)

UPDATE!:  Oh yeah.....it's a goner.  Complete toast.  Ugh.

As promised...

I did actually make some time to make my soap for an order I got from a sweet lady in Illinois.  She wanted these for a shower that has a color theme of "spring greens and pinks".  I hope she likes it. 

Anyway, she requested pink grapefruit scent, which I happen to love, as well.  YUMMO.  I just poured it, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that the gremlins stay away...lol.