Category Archives: Natural Colorants

Charcoal Facial Bar with Mango, Avocado and Babassu

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I received an email recently about soaping without coconut oil. I have some recipes sans coconut oil but most are really high olive/bastille/castille type of recipes that don’t produce many bubbles. I wanted a bar that was nice and bubbly. I know that babassu is similar to coconut oil in its fatty acid makeup so I got some babassu to try.

I wanted to make a face bar with charcoal. I like to have at least one butter in every soap that I make and that butter is usually shea. I’m not a big fan personally of shea on my face…so I thought I would try mango in this recipe. I also love avocado oil in a facial bar…so included that as well.

Charcoal Facial Bar with Mango, Avocado and Babassu Recipe

Avocado oil – 4 oz
Babassu oil – 8 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz
Mango butter – 4 oz
Olive oil – 12 oz
Rice Bran oil – 2 oz
Water – 9 oz
Lye – 4.35 oz
1/2 Tablespoon Charcoal

If you are new to soapmaking…start here.

Melt the mango and babassu. 

Add all of the other liquid oils to the melted oils.  Add the charcoal to the mix as well.

Add the lye solution and mix to trace.

I added about .75 oz of tea tree oil.  Then pour it into your mold.  I prefer facial soap to be round.  Facial soap and beer soap…  I’ve always gone with round bars for those types of soaps.  So I am using a mail tube with a liner (more info on the liners).

Unmold and cut after 24 hours. Let cure for at least four weeks.

So…the verdict. Its been several weeks since I made these and I have to say that I LOVE this recipe. Its bubbles amazingly well even though there isn’t any coconut oil. The charcoal helps suck up excess oil. When I use this soap I make a nice thick lather in my hands, put it onto my face and let it sit for a minute (almost like a mask) and then rinse it off.

If you give it a try…let me know what you think!

Happy Soaping!
-Amanda

ps….  Bramble Berry sent me a goody package with some exciting products to try out!  They are running a promotion during the month of November called GIVEMBER!  (Make sure you are on their email list for the newsletter!)  And I get to be a part of the fun.  I’ll share the details with you soon! 

pss or is it pps?…. Check out the new pourable silicone from Bramble Berry!  Guess who wrote the eZine that accompanies the kit!  (MOI!)

Don’t forget SOAPMAKING CLASSES!

Ginger Soap – Using fresh ginger pulp in soap

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Holly Port of Lotion Bar Cafe came down to visit a couple of weekends ago and help out with a class.  Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling well so we decided to juice some fresh ginger to hopefully knock out whatever was getting her.  As we got done juicing and started to clean up the juicer…we both kinda paused, looked at each other…and I think it was Holly that said…”let’s soap it!”  And “soap it” we did!

I took some of the ginger pulp and laid it out on a cookie sheet to dry a bit more.  Then I put it in a food processor shred it down some more.  We used about 1/4 cup in our three pound recipe.

Ginger Soap Recipe:

Avocado oil – 2 oz
Coconut oil – 20 oz
Olive oil – 16 oz
Rice bran oil – 5 oz
Shea butter – 4 oz
Sunflower oil – 3 oz
Ground ginger pulp – 1/4 cup

Lye – 7.2 oz
Water – 12 oz

Make your lye solution.  Weight out the solid oils and melt.  Add the liquid oils to the melted oil.

Holly and I decided to add the ginger to the melted oils and stickblend to help break them up some more.

Add the lye solution and bring to trace.  We wanted to do two bars…one scented and one unscented.  So we divided our mixture at trace and scented one.

Then pour it into your mold!  We used mail tubes with liners to make cute 3″ round soaps.

After 24 hours, cut your soap and cure for about 4 weeks.

I used one today for the first time.  Its been curing about 2 weeks so I’ll let it keep curing a bit longer.  I love this recipe.  Its nice and hard (and palm free).  The lather is great and it rinses nicely without any tacky/sticky feel.  You can see some of the pulp in the soap so I was worried that it might be a bit scratchy like oatmeal.  It wasn’t scratchy at all.  You could feel it a bit if you really tried but it was really smooth.  It turned out to be a great soap!

Happy Soaping!

-Amanda

ps – Do you want to purchase some of the liners used above?  I sell them 25 for $10.00 (includes US shipping).  Email me amanda@lovinsoap.com to order.  See original liner post on how to use them.

Pumpkin Coconut Milk Salt Bars

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It’s pumpkin time!  My favorite time of the year.  I thought I would kick pumpkin season off with a salt bar made with real pumpkin and coconut milk scented with Bramble Berry’s Pumpkin Lager.

This recipe sets up fast and gets REALLY hard so it is best done in individual cavity molds.  It does not cut well if done in a slab or log. 

The recipe:
Coconut oil – 28 oz
Shea butter – 4 oz
Fine Sea Salt – 24 oz

Pumpkin – 4.5 oz (canned pureed pumpkin)
Coconut milk – 2.25 oz
Lye – 4.6 oz

Make the lye solution.  Measure out the coconut milk and pumpkin.  I like to mix in a cold water bath.  Both pumpkin and milk contain sugar and the solution can heat up real quick and sometimes even burn.  So to keep the temps down, use an ice water bath or you could even freeze the pumpkin and milk in ice cubes.  Here I did an ice water bath.

Sprinkle in the lye while mixing.  Mix and mix and scrape and scrape until no lumps are left.  It will turn liquid.

Be sure to scrape as you mix and break up all of the lye clumps.

Measure out the coconut oil and shea butter and melt.  To keep the temps lower I like to first melt the shea butter.  Then add the coconut oil to the melted shea butter, mix and then if it needs a bit more heat to melt completely…add a bit more heat.

Get everything ready to go!  Salt bars can sometimes move a bit quick!  Weight out the salt needed.

For fragrance I used Bramble Berry’s Pumpkin Lager.  Its my favorite pumpkin scent so far this year.  Go ahead and add about 1.2 oz (you don’t need much) of the fragrance oil and add the lye solution to the oils.

Zap it with the stick blender just a bit until you get a light trace.

Add the salt and mix it all up.

Then pour it into your mold.  I used Bramble Berry’s 9 cube silicone mold.  This is a such a fun mold!  This mixture got thick because of several things… the high coconut oil, the salt, the fragrance oil and I did a bit of a water discount.  So I had to move fast.

I poured into the mold.  Well, okay…there was more glopping going on than pouring.  Then I used my spatula and smooshed it down into the cavities.

Bang it on the floor or counter top hard so that the soap will go all the way down!

The cool thing about salt bars is that they are ready to unmold in about four hours (depending on your recipe).  They heat up real quick and then as soon as they are cool…they are rock hard and ready to be unmolded.  I still had some air pockets because the mixture was so thick but I think it just makes them look a bit rustic or primitive.

Let them cure the standard 4 weeks.

Some general notes on salt bars:

  • Salt kills lather so use 50-100% coconut oil.
  • Since coconut oil can be drying you’ll want to superfat 10-20% for best results (I do an 18% superfat).
  • Salt bars made with high coconut oil set up fast…like 2-5 hours fast…so it’s easiest to use individual molds. If you use a log mold be sure to cut as soon as it’s hard enough…usually after 2-5 hours.
  • Don’t judge your salt bars the next day or even after week. Give it a nice long cure of 4-6 weeks and you’ll be surprised at how nice it is to use.
  • I prefer a salt bar with 75% (of oils) salt but you can go as high as 100%.
  • Use regular table salt or sea salt. Do not use dead sea salt or you’ll end up with a gloopy mess.

Happy Soaping!

-Amanda

The Peacock Swirl Soap Design

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Inspiration here.  I saw this paper on Paper Mojo and thought it would make a wonderful swirl in soap!  So here’s how I did it.

You’ll need a slow tracing/moving recipe.  Something high in olive oil, low in castor and low in hard oils/butters will work.

The Slow Moving Recipe:
Olive oil – 12 oz
Lard – 12 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Rice bran oil – 4 oz

Water – 11 oz
Lye – 4.98

I used charcoal, spirulina powder, sandlewood powder and rose clay to color the soap.

Make your lye solution and melt the solid oils. Add the liquid oils to the melted oils and let everything cool down to about 115.  While things are cooling down you can measure out the natural colorants into each of their containers.  I added some water to hydrate the colors for easier dispersion and to hydrate the clay.

Make sure your molds and squeeze bottles are ready to go.  You don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would be easier to line up the color pours in straight lines.

Bring your soap to a really thin trace. If you can recognize emulsion before you get to trace…that’s even better.

Divide the soap into the different containers. I believe I did about 3/4 cup for each color.

Pour all of the soap into squeeze bottles. Again…you don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would make things easier.

Pour a layer of uncolored soap into your mold.

Rotating between all of the colors and white…layer the lines until you use all of your soap batter. You don’t have to pay attention that closely as you go along. But when you get to the surface of the soap make sure you have each color visible and that you try and have light colors touching dark so you have plenty of contrast.

Make sure the lines are going all in one direction.

Now its time to swirl! Using a small spatula or a craft stick we’re going to swirl through the lines.

Here’s a line drawn so you can see how I drug the utensil.

Now mirror that move. Start back up at the top.

Repeat that down the soap.

So that’s the peacock swirl! I haven’t had a chance to cut it yet but will post pics when I do. Next I want to try it with peacock colors and round out the humps a bit more like the paper. But this is the general idea.

Red Palm Oil

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I’ve been playing lately with natural soap colorants and wanted to experiment with red palm oil.  I make a ton of pumpkin soap in the fall and thought that this would be great for coloring.

Red palm oil, which is bright orange, gets it color from carotenes (like carrots and tomatoes).  It is bleached, refined and deodorized to give us the creamy palm oil that most of us are familiar with.

In doing some research I decided to use red palm oil as 33% of my oils.  Most of the websites I came across said to use it for no more than 50% of oils.  I did a 33% palm, 33% lard and 33% olive oil type of recipe.  Nothing fancy.  I ordered my red palm oil from Camden-Grey.

I used 33% red palm oil in my batch and that ended up being to much.  It was staining and colored the bubbles as you can see a bit in this picture.

Oh.  And it stained my mold.  Sigh.

I’ll give it another go…but use 5-10% and see what I get.  Anybody else use red palm oil?  How much do you use?

-Amanda

Naturally colored lavender soap

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There are a couple ways to get purple in soap using natural colorants.  My favorite herb to use is alkanet infused in olive oil.  But I wanted to try something different.  For this soap I used indigo and madder added to the lye water.  Here’s what I did…

The recipe – 2 oz castor, 8 oz coconut, 8 oz lard, 10 oz olive oil, 3.9 oz lye & 8 oz water.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of madder root powder and 1/4 teaspoon of indigo powder to your water before you add the lye.

Add the lye slowely while stirring. 

Melt the solid oils, add the liquid oils and add your fragrance.  I used lavender essential oil.

Once your oils and lye solution are ready…pour the lye solution into the oils.  I poured my lye solution through a stainless steel strainer to strain out some of the herb powder.

Stickblend to trace.

Pour it into the mold.  I let mine set up a bit and  teased the top with a craft stick.  Then I added some lavender buds.

Since the top of the soap didn’t reach above the mold I covered with a piece of wax paper and a piece of wood and set it on a heating pad to go through gel.  Here it is in gel stage.

The next morning it was ready to cut.  Here’s a tip on cutting soap with botanicals on the top without getting the “botanical drag” through the soap.  Lay the soap on it’s side and cut in that position.  It won’t drag the buds down through the soap  like if you were cutting from top down.

So overall I’m pretty happy with the outcome.  It’s not a dark or very striking purple that you can achieve using alkanet.  It’s more of a dusty vintage type of purple.  I think if it were a flat plain bar it would be a bit boring…but the sculpted tops and light sprinkle of lavender buds make it all come together and look pretty good.  I’m happy with it.

Amanda