Grey to Green to Purple: LabColor Tips

On the Teach Soap Forum recently, we had a big discussion on how to work with Royal Blue LabColor in Cold Process Soap. In general, LabColors turn brighter in cold process soap as the soap sets up and cures, especially if your soap gels. For example, the Royal Blue LabColor is a disappointing grayish color when it is first mixed into the soap, even at a high percentage. After 24 hours, it slowly turns a bright vibrant blueish purple. Because of this, many people have a tendency to over color their soap and end up with colors that are more vivid than they originally intended.

If you have added the proper percentage of LabColors (and maybe even a little more!) and the color is still not popping, STOP while you are ahead. Insulate your soap to ensure a nice, cozy gel phase and note the color after 24 hours.

Just after pouring Royal Blue LabColor colored soap. Check out that grey green gross color.

 

After 24 hours in the mold. See the brighter areas where the soap went through gel phase in the middle? The ‘white’ on top is glitter that I sprinkled liberally on the soap for an extra magical look. Sadly, the glitter doesn’t photograph great.

To see if small batches that never went through gel phase would also turn, I did a couple teensy 1 ounce test pucks. Notice how the soap on the tippy top of the soap never went a blue color? It’s either the soda ash affecting the final color or the lack of heat that retarded the final color turn. To get the bright blue color (top layer below – and in the soap above), I used 2 tablespoon diluted Royal Blue Labcolor (Small bottle [10 ml] of LabColor diluted in 4-8 ounces of water) per 16 ounces of soap soap (oil/water/lye total). This makes such a bright blue color that I recommend using close to 1 tablespoon diluted Royal Blue Labcolor per pound of soap to ensure no soapy blue bubbles.

This one is really interesting to me. It is the Pool Blue LabColor (middle layer on the left, bottom layer on the right). Look at what happens when you change the addition rate just slightly. The shade of blue is the same but the hue is much darker, deeper and brighter just by upping the usage rates. Curious about LabColors? Here is more information on how to dilute the concentrated colors and use them to get every color imaginable.

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