Cold Process Soap Making #2 - Natural Colours & Ingredients

Discover how to color soap naturally using clays, botanicals, and pigments such as oxides and ultramarines, and learn to create varied effects with muted and subtle tones.

learn how to color soap using natural clays, exploring six clay types to color cubes and reveal subtle color variations in your soap.

Prepare clays by mixing a quarter teaspoon of each color with half a teaspoon of distilled water, then blend; start with palest color and note greens, yellows, oranges, and purples.

Color cold process soap with clay, use sodium lactate for a harder set, and divide batter into six cups for even color and two fragrance groups.

Turn out a cold process soap colored with clay, observe color shifts from green to yellow tones on a yellow base, and note clay varieties and titanium dioxide options.

Discover how to color cold process soap with botanicals using powdered plant extracts. Learn practical steps to apply natural pigments to soap cubes.

Blend six botanical colorants—rosehip, beetroot, spirulina, madder root, alkanet, indigo—into soap batter, using water or oil, then divide into six cups to test and compare their hues.

Make soap colored with botanicals by letting the cubes gel and thickening the color paste to achieve deeper, bold hues, with indigo, madder root, beetroot, and titanium dioxide.

Discover how to color cold process soaps with pigments such as ultramarines and oxides, and mix burgundy, orange, yellow, lavender, and green to achieve vibrant results.

Color your soap with natural pigments like ultramarine lavender and blue, oxides, and titanium dioxide to keep colors true; mix, divide into six equal parts, and pour into the mold.

Turn out oxide cubes and reveal vibrant, true-to-color soaps by adding titanium dioxide to prevent base color shift, then gently handle the still-soft soap to avoid fingerprints and indents.

Learn to color cold process soap with cosmetically approved colorants—oxides, ultramarines, mica, and dyes—using proper dispersion and the 1 teaspoon per pound guideline to prevent fading and bleeding.

Explore oils and butters for cold process soap making, noting color from green avocado and hemp oils, and additives like colloidal oatmeal, honey, sea salt, petals, loofah, and sodium lactate.

Discover a variety of molds for cold process soap making, from silicone and acrylic options to free household substitutes like muffin trays, fondant mats, and a Pringles can mold.

Craft Castille soap with 100 percent olive oil from the Castille region, delivering a moisturizing, gentle lather for dry or sensitive skin. Use water discount and salt to speed trace.

Make castile soap with 100 percent olive oil, lye water, salt to form bars; spritz with alcohol to prevent soda ash, cut into bars; keep unscented, speed trace by discounting.

Turn out castille soap from a homemade mold, cut into even bars with a knife and cheese wire, and bevel edges for a professional finish before curing.

Learn to make buttermilk and calendula soap with two color effects, infusing calendula petals for yellow hues and an orange fragrance with avocado, almond, coconut, olive, and canola oils.

Infuse calendula petals in sweet almond oil (or jojoba oil) in a crockpot or double boiler for four hours, then strain to obtain a nourishing, yellow soap oil.

Make buttermilk cold-process soap with infused oil and lye dissolved in buttermilk. Layer natural colors with annatto, chromium oxide, and orange fragrance for a decorative bar.

Turn out cold process soap from the mold, slice with a straight knife to avoid drag, set for a few days, bevel edges or create effects with a silicone mold.

Discover how to blend coconut oil, shea butter, olive oil, and canola oil to create a hard, moisturizing cold process coffee soap with speckled exfoliation.

Explore cold process soap making with colors by crafting a coffee soap using titanium dioxide, brown oxide, coffee grounds, and activated charcoal, layered and swirled for a speckled chocolate finish.

Turn out coffee soap from cold process soap making to reveal a speckled surface of coffee grounds for exfoliation, accented by a charcoal stripe and colors from coffee and oxide.

Make goat's milk soap with lavender using coconut and palm oils for lather and a hard bar; hempseed oil and avocado provide nourishing moisture, with lavender petals decorating the bar.

Make a lavender goat's milk soap at low temperature by freezing milk, dissolving lye carefully, and adding sodium lactate and lavender petals for a textured, easily unmolded bar.

Pull the silicon liner from the mold, release the soap by turning it upside down, then cut into one-inch slices and air-dry to finish a natural lavender goat's milk soap.

Learn to make honey oatmeal soap with palm, castor, coconut, and olive oils for a hard, easy-to-mold bar with a honeycomb texture, plus soothing oatmeal and honey moisture.

Line the mold with bubble wrap to create a textured honey and oatmeal soap, cut circular bases, seal edges with a light oil, and prepare to pour without gaps.

Blend lye water with oils to a thin trace, then add honey, oatmeal, fragrance, and yellow oxide for a creamy yellow cold process soap; pour into muffin mold and chill.

Turn out honey and oatmeal soap from the tray to reveal a honeycomb pattern with bubble wrap and a warm yellow color, noting natural color fades.

Learn to craft loofah soap with a swirling technique using palm, coconut, and olive oils for hardness, lather, and exfoliating texture, plus shea butter, rice bran oil, peppermint cedarwood.

Craft exfoliating loofah soap using cold-process technique, mixing lye water with oils and folding in loofah pieces. Swirl titanium dioxide and ultramarine blue for patterns, then set overnight.

Turn out dried loofah soaps to reveal vibrant colors and swirls that run throughout each bar, with a loofah exfoliating layer on top and shapes ranging from round to rectangular.

Craft indigo ombre cold-process soap using palm, coconut, and olive oils, indigo powder for color, sweet almond oil for conditioning, with rosemary and peppermint fragrance.

Create an indigo ombre soap by micro-ionizing titanium dioxide, infusing indigo in olive oil, and layering four colors in a lined acrylic mold with peppermint and rosemary fragrance.

Push the soap through the cutter to reveal the indigo ombre with a shaded effect, highlighting how indigo reads grey and pairs with botanicals or oxides.