We’ve been experimenting with our soap colorants lately here at Nature’s Garden, going between our dyes and pigments. We’ve talked about our blue dye and how it can morph your cold process soap, but have you tried our reds or yellows? Well we have! Like with the blue colorants, we used our red and yellow FD&C Da Bomb dyes in cold process and melt and pour soap to show you the differences! As we all know, our pigmented colorants, or FUN Soap colors, will not cause any morphing problems in melt and pour or cold process, and we have conducted this experiment to see if the same is true for our yellow and red FD&C dyes!
Our red FD&C dye was experimented with in both our melt and soaps as well as cold process. In melt and pour, it brought an awesome bright red color as soon as it was added! However, when used in cold process at first we were concerned that it may have the same problems as our blue FD&C dye with color morphing. When I first mixed it into the soap, it was definitely red! However, after I poured it into the mold, it did start to look like an orange color! But after we let the soap sit for the required 24 hours we realized that it was a brick red. So don’t be concerned if you use our red FD&C dye in cold process and it looks orange at first! It does not color morph as badly as the blue! We do recommend using our FUN Soap pigmented colorants over the FD&C dyes for cold process soaps however since the Da Bomb soap dyes can bleed and fade over time.
Melt and Pour Soap using FD&C Dyes
Cold Process Soap Using FD&C Dyes
Cold Process Soap Using Pigments
With our yellow FD&C dye, as you can see in the pictures above, we have tried it out in both melt and pour soap and cold process. It brought a beautiful bright yellow to our melt and pour, and the same goes for our cold process. There was no doubt that it was yellow in cold process! Both of our yellow colorants, FD&C and FUN Soaps, work very well in melt and pour and cold process soap.
The usage of each different kind of colorant for your soaps is based on the pH levels as well as the actual saponification process. Melt and pour soap is technically soap that has already gone through the process of saponification, so it is only slightly alkaline. However, since cold process is made completely from scratch the pH levels are very high initially. Pigmented colors can withstand higher pH levels much better than dyes. The red and yellow soap dyes will not cause major color morphing, but we do recommend using our FUN Soap Colorants for cold process over our FD&C dyes. Please don’t hesitate to contact us here at Nature’s Garden if you have any thoughts, concerns, or questions! Make sure to check out all of our fantastic free recipes and classes, especially our soap classes! You can learn so many valuable things about the soap making process! Watch out for more Enlightened by Layla!