Soap Coloring Techniques

1. Intro to technique class: Hi, I'm Amber of Am Happy Soap. I am based out of Austin, Texas. In today's class, I'm going to teach you two color techniques to do. One is called a drop swirl. You can get results kind of like this. And the other one is called an in the pot swirl. And that one will end up with a bar, kind of like this. So get your soap supplies and we will make some soap. 2. Drop Swirl color prep: So the first technique of the two techniques is called a drop swirl. All of these are examples of that. So we are going to today do three colors and I will show you how to drop them in the mold so that they turn out like this. So I already have my soap batter and my lye all ready to mix together. So you can use any recipe like and, but we are going to do this recipe when you're so batter is between 80 and 90 degrees. So once you get to that point, which is where we are right now, we are going to makes our lye in, and then we're going to split it into three different containers. You're going to stick blend just until emulsion. So not until trace or light trace, but just before. Okay, at this point I'm going to separate it into three. You can just eyeball it. Sometimes I like to have one that has more. This scent I'm scenting with is a rose water scent. So I chose to do three different pinks. This one is a rose clay. This one is called Angry rose from Mad micas. And this one is called flirt. Also for mad micas. I'm adding about a fourth of a teaspoon. I don't measure my colorants. I am just pretty light handed though. I don't add very much. And then stick blend those in. So these are all at a light trace, which is good. Okay, at this point I'm going to hand stir in my scent. 3. Drop Swirl Pour & Cut : Okay. We're going to put it in the mold. So this is kind of the bar that I'm showing you how I make. And when I drop these colors into each other, I want the soap to go all the way to the bottom. Which means after I pour this first color in, I'm going to hold my next color up high. So if I pour it from up here, it's gonna go all the way down. If I pour it down here, it won't go quite as deep into the, into the other batter. So I like it to go kind of far. You're going to do that with all three colors until they're gone. Okay. Once you've poured them all, give it a little tap, just to get out any air bubbles. And then I do a swirly one on this, I just take a chopstick and swirl it. And after you do the top, just set it aside and cover it for 24 hours. Okay. So it's been 24 hours. You can uncover it. And you don't need to wear gloves or goggles now it's totally safe. So I usually cut my bar just over an inch wide. So usually my multi bar cutter cuts my soap to be an inch and an eighth. So on this so cutter that has these markings, I cut to right before the three Well, okay, great. So this was the drops swirl. So we will clean this up and I will show you how to do the second technique, which is in the pot swirl. So we'll make a bar like this. 4. In-the-Pot-Swirl Prep: Okay, now I'm going to show you the second technique. This technique is called an in the pot swirl. So all of these bars here, like this one at the top, all of that swirling is going to be done in our pot essentially. So I will show you how to do it. Right now. Everything is ready. This is my whole oil mixture and it is ready to be added to my lye mixture. And if you need help learning the basics of cold process soap making, I have other videos that will show you how to get to this point. So once you know how to do that and how to get to this point, this is a really fun way to color your soap and it gives you a lot of kind of variety within your soap. You can do it for different things. So we are ready to add our lie. Both of these are at 85 degrees. We're going to stick blend until it really light trace. Okay, at this point I'm going to pour off about a third of my batter into another bowl. You have a lot of leeway with this technique. You can do half and half. You can do three colors or four colors and mix them all in your pot. But I'm going to show you just with one color today. So I'm going to color the main part of my soap pink. And that will be with flirt from Mad micas. I'm going to color this smaller amount with white. I'm using a water soluble titanium dioxide. There are other ways you can use titanium dioxide. You can get oil soluble. You can just mix it right into your soap batter. And if it's not fully dissolved, you can get little white specks. So I prefer to use this, it totally dissolved in water really easily. So that is all ready. I'm going to add it to this. I'm going to mix this first. So I don't make my white pink. I'm going to color this part pink. Okay, so both of these are still at a really light trace. If you get yourself better to trace and you're still wanting to do this technique, you can, you will just need to stir it. So after you add them together, you'll need to stir. But today these are both pretty light, so I'll just be able to mix them together. You can, this is when I hand stir in my scent. The scent is called Caribbean Fruit Smoothie. It's from Elements. It's very good. It smells like a volcano candle. 5. In-the-Pot-Swirl Pour & Cut: Okay, so when I do this in the pot swirl, I am going to hold my second color up pretty high and I'm going to pour it in three different spots within my bowl. And that's it. So if my white had been really thick, I have done my spoon one time or two, but it looks went through just fine. So I'm just going to pour it in the mold. And so for this part, I waited just a minute because my batter was still a little bit liquid. But once it gets to a point where you could put some texture in it and it stays. You can texture the top and then cover it for 24 hours. So here it is. 24 hours later. Once you're ready to cut, you don't need your gloves and goggles anymore. And I cut my bars to just over an inch thick. And this technique will vary a lot depending on how thick both of your batters were. And if you had to stir it at all, and on how many points you poured your batter into your bowl And that's it. That's our second technique. An in-the-pot-swirl. Okay, so here we are two really fun and pretty easy techniques to try once you have gotten going doing cold process. Make sure you check out my other videos or go back to the basics if you need to learn how to even get started with this.