Coloring Soap

Coloring Soap

If you are a novice soaper, you might have wondered where to find black soap color for your Halloween soap batch. Many novices believe that coloring homemade soap is little more than simply adding a few drops of dye, but this is somewhat of a misconception. While there are most certainly the ready mixed colorants that can be applied with a dropper, coloring soap can be made a much more intricate process, and to many advanced soapers coloring soap is actually a large part of the fun and they would not want to miss out on it in favor of using some ready made product.

When coloring soap, you have a number of options. For example, there are the dried pigments that may be purchased in hobbyist stores. The advantage of using dry pigmentation for coloring soap is obvious: since it is specifically manufactured for the use with the high pH concentration that is found within the soap mixture, the color will not suddenly change into an altogether different shade. This kind of coloring device is preferred by those who want to have a rainbow of colors within their soap products since the pigments will not mix into different colors. Thus, if you use blue and yellow pigments, you will not end up with green soap. For those who like to have intricate designs in the finished bars, this is the coloring agent of choice.

Another form of pigment for coloring soap is called mica. This is actually a dyed mineral that provides the sparkly appearance that is so popular with teen girls in their lip gloss products. Make sure to purchase food grade mica and see if it has been approved for the use in soap, keeping in mind once again that the high pH content of the soap mixture causes some forms of mica to alter their color properties.

For those who desire a more natural soap colorant there is the collection of herb and spice colors for soaps. These are usually sold as botanical dyes and may come as drops of sassafras color for soap, or powder made of alkanet root, or powered and dried sandalwood. While using natural soap coloring is a great way to make natural soaps, these substances are a bit harder to work with and you will need to experiment with the different substances, quantities, and also concentration levels until you find the perfect way of coloring your batch of soap.