The Rainbow Heart soap uses several blends to get unique color shades. Color blends are a great way to find your new favorite shade. If you’ve never tried color blending before, it can help to start off with a 50/50 blend and adjust from there. You can read more tips in the Create a Rainbow: Mixing Colors in Cold Process post.

A rainbow color palette looks great in other bath and beauty products, including scrubs. The Rainbow Jojoba Bead Sugar Scrub adds some brightness to your beauty routine. The combination of sugar and five different jojoba beads exfoliates your skin while potassium cocoate adds some lather and silkiness. The scrub is gentle enough to use on your body and face.

Different shades of the same color create a beautiful look as well. The Purple Blackberry Flower Candle is topped with flower cut outs made with beeswax. The lightly-colored flowers pop against a purple base, which gets its hue from the Purple Wax Dye Block. Scented with Blackberry Sage Cybilla Fragrance Oil, the candle fills your home with a springy scent.

The green ombre in the Luck of the Irish Hot Process Soap is a festive way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. The green layers are accented with a mica vein made with Gold Sparkle Mica. Even though the recipe is palm free, it is ready to unmold in 1-2 days because hot process speeds up the saponification process. It will be ready just in time for the holiday.

The colors in this week’s Facebook Photo of the Week are stunning. Tracy with LAVE Handcrafted Soap used a blend of purple, pink, black and white for a color palette with nice contrast.

With swirls inside and on top of the soap, the design really stands out. The purple sprinkles on top add a lovely touch as well. If you’d like some design ideas for the top of your soap, click through the Sea Clay Swirl Cold Process Tutorial, which is topped with pink sea salt. Jojoba beads also add interest to the top of your soap, as seen in the Doughnut Melt and Pour Tutorial.

Above (clockwise, top left) are Tracy’s White Tea Soap, Almond and Oatmeal Soap, Citrus n Sage Soap and and Fleet Street Clean Soap. If you love the top on Tracy’s Fleet Street Soap, click through the Peacock Swirl Soap for more inspiration. For a different color combination, check out the How to Make the Perfect Peacock Swirl on Soap Queen TV.

Find LAVE Handcrafted Soap
On Facebook
On the web

This week’s Instagram Photo of the Week delivers on the color as well. The collection of soaps by Hands_KW is so beautiful. The combination of toppings like jojoba beads, glitter and soapy frosting are so fun. Check out more soapy pictures on the Instagram page.

Post pictures of your crafty creations on the Facebook page each week for a chance to be featured on the Soap Queen blog and receive a sweet soapy package from Bramble Berry. Photos are chosen based on consensus from the Bramble Berry staff, so the best way to increase your chances of winning is to show us lots of photos!

To participate in the Instagram contest, hashtag your pictures with #soapshare. Each Friday, I will pick a photo on Instagram to win a copy of the Soap Crafting book, and share on the Bramble Berry Instagram account. 

The post Facebook and Instagram Photo of the Week (Feb. 14th ~ Feb. 20th) appeared first on Soap Queen.

Working with color is one of my favorite aspects of soap making. I collect tons of color inspiration via Pinterest, magazines, Instagram, nature and fashion. When selecting colorants to use in soap, there are plenty of options including LabColors, clay, micas and color blocks for melt and pour. My go-to colorants are often pigments; they are non-bleeding, produce vibrant color and do not morph in cold process soap.

Part of the fun of working with colors is mixing to create unique shades. Blending colorants can seem a little intimidating at first. But with only three colors, you can create an entire color wheel. To demonstrate how to experiment with color blending I chose three colors to represent the primary colors of the color wheel: Ultramarine Blue Pigment, Fizzy Lemonade Colorant and Electric Bubble Gum Colorant.


Why pink instead of red? A vibrant red can be tricky to achieve in cold process soap. My favorite red is made using one part Merlot Sparkle Mica to two parts Electric Bubble Gum. In order to keep the blends simple, Electric Bubble Gum represents the color red in these mixtures. The bright pink hue keeps the colors looking vibrant while adding a similar effect of a “true red.”

Below are the three “primary” colors used at different usage rates. The soaps shown represent using the colorants at 1/4 tsp. per pound of cold process soap, 1/2 tsp. per pound and 1 tsp. per pound. “Per pound” refers to the total yield of the soap, rather than the oils used in the recipe. All colorants have been dispersed in a lightweight carrier oil at a rate of 1 teaspoon of colorant to 1 tablespoon oil. For more information on how to disperse colorants for cold process soap, check out this Soap Queen TV video. It’s interesting to see that for some colorants, such as the Ultramarine Blue, the amount used places a huge role in the color. While for the Fizzy Lemonade, it does not affect the color as dramatically.

Electric Bubble Gum Colorant, top to bottom: 1/4 tsp. per pound of soap, 1/2 tsp. per pound of soap, 1 tsp. per pound of soap.

Fizzy Lemonade Colorant, top to bottom: 1/4 tsp. per pound of soap, 1/2 tsp. per pound of soap, 1 tsp. per pound of soap.


Ultramarine Blue Pigment, top to bottom: 1/4 tsp. per pound of soap, 1/2 tsp. per pound of soap, 1 tsp. per pound of soap.

Time to get mixing! Below are shades that can be achieved with mixing the Ultramarine Blue, Fizzy Lemonade and Electric Bubble Gum. The amounts listed are before being dispersed in a tablespoon of carrier oil. Each disk of soap has been colored with a total of one teaspoon of dispersed colorant, but the percentages of each varies. Mixing these three colors creates beautiful hues of green, purple and orange.

Left to right: .75 tsp. Fizzy Lemonade + .25 tsp. Ultramarine Blue
.5 tsp. Fizzy Lemonade + .5 tsp. Ultramarine Blue
.25 Fizzy Lemonade + .75 tsp. Ultramarine Blue

Left to right: .75 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum + .25 tsp. Fizzy Lemonade
.5 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum+ .5 tsp. Fizzy Lemonade
.25 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum + .75 tsp. Fizzy Lemonade

Left to right: .75 tsp. Ultramarine Blue + .25 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum
.5 tsp. Ultramarine Blue + .5 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum
.25 tsp. Ultramarine Blue + .75 tsp. Electric Bubble Gum

Creating your own shades is incredibly fun. With so many colorants, the possibilities are abundant! Below are some tips and things to consider when mixing colorants to create unique shades:

• Keep the color wheel in mind, and make deliberate decisions when adding colors.
• When mixing colorants, adding two colorants at 50/50 is a great place to start. Then, you can easily adjust either color to get the shade you’re looking for.
• Having white and black colorants on hand can lighten or darken colors.
• Consider mixing two colors in the same family (pinks with pinks, blues with blues, etc.) to create a totally new shade.
• Don’t forget to take notes! Once you find the perfect color, you’ll want to be able to recreate it.
• Decide how you like to blend colors, and be consistent. For example, some soapers like to disperse their colorants and add the various shades directly to the soap. Others like to disperse the colorants, and combine the liquids together and add them to their soap. Either way is fine, but it can be helpful to be consistent.
• If you are doing a lot of blending, it may be helpful to disperse large amounts of colorants in a sealable jar. That way you can blend the liquids and easily start over if the color does not work.

Do you enjoy mixing colorants to create unique shades? If you have any blending tips, I would love to hear them!

The post Create a Rainbow: Mixing Colors in Cold Process appeared first on Soap Queen.