Are you excited to make your first batch of cold process soap? Make sure you prep your colorants! In this Soap Queen Short we show you what you need to prepare your colors beforehand to ensure an even pigmentation and give you more time to work with your soap. The more prepared you can be with all of your ingredients, the better your soap design will turn out. We use a few simple pigments and oxides and mix them into some of our favorite lightweight oils like sweet almond, sunflower, and canola.
Learn to Prepare Colorants for Cold Process Soapmaking from Soap Queen on Vimeo.
This link will take you to a great list of our pigments, and below you will see some of our best lightweight oils for mixing colorants:
We also have a battery powered 4-in-1 Mini Mixer that will make the job fast and easy.
For more information on coloring your soap consult some of our other resources like Lori Nova’s great E-Book, Color with Confidence and the Color with Confidence Starter Kit or check out Kathryn Hackney’s E-Book,Cold Process Colorant Master Class.
Does this work with water based colorants, as well?
Hi Junga!
Water-based colorants, like LabColors, can be added directly to your soap batter! Then you can whisk them in until they’re fully incorporated. 🙂
Learn more about diluting and working with LabColors here: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/diluting-bramble-berry-labcolors/
We used LabColors in this gorgeous Sunset Ombre Cold Process Soap: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/business-in-a-box-sunset-ombre-soap/
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Hello
Great video
I was just wondering about the oils used to mix the colors. Are they being taken from the total oil amount of the soap recipe?
Thanks
Kind regards
Ellen
Hi Ellen!
So glad you like the video! These oils are not taken from the total amount of soap. We consider them additives, so it’s extra oil going into your soap. It helps that color disperse nicely and adds more luxurious oil to your soap. 🙂
If you’re worried about too much extra oil in your soap, you can decrease your superfat slightly. You can also mix the colors in your premade oils. To do that, use a spoon or a dropper to transfer some of your soaping oils into a separate container. Then, mix your colors in and add them at trace. You can see that in action in the Making Sunshine Soap video on Soap Queen TV: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/making-sunshine-cold-process-soap/
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Droppers: https://www.brambleberry.com/Droppers-With-Suction-Bulb-P3802.aspx
Hello, I am still doing mad mad reading, watching and research for soap making, you mentioned taking the oils out from our measured oils to mix our colorants, would that not effect the water.lye amount once it’s taken out? Thank you for all the wonderful videos, you all have taught me so so much, I’m a firm believer in reaserching and learning all that you possibly can before dipping your toes into the soap making pool. Ann Marie has been my personal in home teacher and I would probably not know half of what I knew now if it weren’t for her and all of brambleberries videos, so, thank you so much.
Ahh, you know what? My common sense just kicked in!!!! *laughing to myself* Those oils are going to be added back into the soap, therefore, not effecting the lye/water amounts…Correct?
Hi Tammy!
That is correct! If you take those oils from your base soap, they will be added back into the soap. That means the lye and water amounts won’t be affected!
Also, I’m so glad you are enjoying the videos and tutorials! Thanks so much for your kind words. 🙂
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Do you know how long you could keep these colorants once they are mixed like this? I was wondering about keeping them in squeeze bottle for use in detailed molds. Thank you! I am very excited to get started!
Hi Amanda!
You can definitely keep these colors to use for your next batch! They should keep as long as the shelf life of the oil. For instance, sweet almond oil has a shelf life of six months to a year. I’ll include a blog with more oil shelf lives!
I would recommend storing them covered in a cool dry place so they keep longer. Make sure to stir them well before use, as those colors can settle. 🙂
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Free Beginner’s Guide to Soapmaking: Common Soapmaking Oils: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/free-beginners-guide-to-soapmaking-common-soapmaking-oils/
I have been mixing my colorants in oil and usually superfatting from 5-10%. My soap is too oily! Is the oil used for colorants incorporated in the lye calculator? Meaning if I use 5 grams of oil for colors should I add those 5 grams to the calculator?
Hi Eva!
We consider our colorants an additive and don’t add them in our lye calculations. However, if your soap is too oily you can definitely do so!
To make your soap less oily, you can decrease your superfat.
Another trick is to mix the colors in your premade oils. To do that, use a spoon to transfer some of your soaping oils into a separate container. Then, mix your colors in and add them at trace. I’ll include a video that shows you how to do that. 🙂
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Making Sunshine Soap on Soap Queen TV: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/making-sunshine-cold-process-soap/
As a new cold process soap maker, I am unsure about how adding the extra oil/colorant affects the overall soap recipe. For example, if you divide a batter into thirds (for example, to make a three color soap), and add one ounce of oil/colorant mixture to each third, that is adding 3 ounces of extra oil to your recipe. Does this affect the recipe overall? Do you have to adjust the water/lye mixture to account for adding an overall 3 ounces of extra oil? Or is it negligible? Please advise, and, thank you.
Hi Munimula!
It depends on how much color you add! For instance, we typically add 1-3 tsp. of color to our recipes depending on the size of the recipe and how bright we want to color to be.
We typically don’t have any problems with adding the extra oil, because it usually works out to be a couple teaspoons per color.
If you’re using quite a bit of color in a small batch of soap, you can decrease your superfat by 1% or 2% to be extra careful. 🙂
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Thank you Kelsey!
You’re welcome! 🙂
-Kelsey with Bramble Berry
Hello,
Every morning I check my inbox and share a cup of coffee with SoapQueen. I am addicted to both!!!
Is there any way you could pass on the recipe of the soap that is pictured along with this post? Those have got to be the most gorgeous pieces of eye candy I have seen in a long time!
Also, are soaps made with such vivid colors mostly for looks? I find when I actually use them things get pretty ugly.
Thanks so much,
~Cyndi~
Hi Cyndi!
We can certainly try to get a tutorial up for this soap :). While soap with lots of color can start to loose some of its beauty after use, many look just as nice 🙂
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
Hi, I’ve never made soap but I’m very interested in making soap. Could use any information u could give me for a beginner. What kit show I start with? Which process is best Lyle or Glycerin.? I’ve watched a lot of your videos which are very help full. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Hi Vicky!
I’m excited for you to start soaping! One of the first decisions to make is wether you’d like to make cold process soap which is the process of combining oils with lye water, or melt and pour. Melt and pour soapmaking is the process of melting down already made bases, and customizing it however you want!
To get more information on both methods, these blog posts will help!
Beginners Guide to Melt and Pour Soapmaking:
http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/melt-and-pour-soap/free-beginners-guide-to-soapmaking-melt-and-pour/
Beginners Guide to Cold Process Soapmaking:
http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/free-beginners-guide-to-soapmaking-cold-process/
Choosing between cold process and melt and pour is just a personal preference, both soapmaking methods are really fun! Some people like to do Melt and Pour because they don’t want to deal with lye, but Cold Process allows you to customize all the ingredients in your soap. Many soapers start with Melt and Pour, and then move on to Cold Process.
If you’d like to start with cold process, I great kit to start would be the Beginners Cold Process Kit would be perfect! If you are looking for a kit for Melt and Pour, I would recommend taking a look at all our kits on Bramble Berry, and finding a project that interests you 🙂
Melt and Pour Kits: https://www.brambleberry.com/Soap-Queen-Melt-Pour-Kits-C332.aspx
Beginners Cold Process Soap Kit:
https://www.brambleberry.com/Beginners-Cold-Process-Soap-Kit-P5202.aspx
If you have any more questions, let me know!
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
Hello,
I produce natural handmade glycerine soaps and your website is just awesome! Full of ideias, colors and shapes. Keep up with the good work. If you wanna visit my web store here is the URL: http://loja.fabricadearomas.com.br
Hi Ricardo!
Thanks so much for the kind words, I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying the blog! We are thrilled to have you as a reader 🙂
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
I really enjoy your products and videos! Thank you for your hard work. I did find that shopping online and placing items in cart, then continue shopping was difficult and did not bring me back to the page I was on. Maybe your IT person can fix this glitch. Thank you.
Hi Sandi!
I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying the videos! When you return to the page you were on, your cart should stay intact if you are logged in 🙂 Thanks for the feedback!
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
I have trouble with Titanium Dioxide and getting enough of a “white” color. It always seems to fade and I never achieve white.
I used one teaspoon oxide to one tablespoon sweet almond oil.
What am I doing wrong do you think?
Hi Robin!
If you find that the Titanium Dioxide is not giving you a white enough color, I would recommend adding more! It sounds like your dispersion is correct, I would just try adding more to your soap 🙂 I hope this helps!
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
Thank you for this video… I’ll definitely use this method to disperse the colorants. The colors in my soaps don’t look very nice because of soda ash.
So I have a question about alcohol. You suggest to spray the soap with isopropyl alcohol to avoid soda ash. I have only 96% denatured alcohol and I was wondering whether it would be effective in preventing soda ash.
Thank you.
Hi Mrs. G!
I’m so glad you found this video helpful! From my own personal research, denatured alcohol is not safe for skin application or digestion. We have used isopropyl many times and have found it to be very effective in preventing soda ash.
Isopropyl Alcohol: https://www.brambleberry.com/Isopropyl-Alcohol-99-16-oz-P5682.aspx
I hope this helps!
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
Hi, This video was quite helpful. Recently, I’ve started mixing my oxides and pigments in glycerin which also seems to work out nicely as long as I really give it a good mixing. On the question of soda ash, I just thought I would add that denatured alcohol is used in cosmetic applications quite often. I have a nivea face cream that contains it. It’ usually on the label as Alcohol denat. or SD alcohol. It’s simply ethanol with something added to make it taste bitter. I don’t know if it will prevent soda ash but it is safe to use in cosmetics.
Hi Felisha!
Interesting, thanks for the additional info! Because we have not worked with denatured alcohol, I cannot recommend it to prevent soda ash like I can isopropyl alcohol. I will share this info with the team and research this more.The Teach Soap Forum is a great resource, and there may be more info there! 🙂
Teach Soap Forum: http://www.teachsoap.com/forum/
-Amanda with Bramble Berry