• Add the fragrance oil to the oils in your soap batch before you add the lye water.  
• Add the fragrance oil to a small amount of oil first and then add this fragranced oil to your soap. 
• Don’t discount the water.  Use a full 8 ounces of water per pound of oils in your soap recipe. 
• Instead of using a stick blender, hand stir the soap using a spoon. 
• Hot process or cook the soap before adding fragrance.

The above are not the only ways to handle fragrance oils that accelerate trace, and we will be adding to the list as time goes by, so feel free to come back and check the list in the furture. 

Also if you have a hot tip for handling fragrance oils that accelerate trace, feel free to share it with us in the comments section.

If your soap has small orange spots on the surface of it and you have not added anything orange to your soap, chances are you have developed DOS, the dreaded orange spots, rancidity.   What causes these DOS to appear? 

Heat and light and moisture and oxygen all can play a part in the process, but rancidity is basically oxidation of the free fatty acids in the soap.  Storing your soap and a warm humid area will exacerbate the problem and speed up the process tremendously.  If you intend to store your soaps for any length of time, a cool, dry, dark place is idea.  Using a corrugated cardboard box will also help when storing soap.  It won’t trap moisture like a plastic container, corrugated cardboard insulates well, and also will help keep the soap dry by absorbing what moisture may be present inside the box.

Adding antioxidants to your soaps should help stop the oxidation.  There are many things that can be added to your soap to help slow down the process.  Adding tocopherols or vitamin E which has antioxidant properties will help.  If you don’t mind yellow soap, or even if you want yellow soap, you can beta carotene which is vitamin and also an antioxidant.  There’s also lycopene which is a powerful antioxidant.  Lycopene is from tomatoes, red fruits and veggies, etcetera and like beta carotene may be pigmented so it may or may not color the soap.  A few more additives to help in stopping or slowing down DOS and rancidity are Selenium and Co Q-10.  Take a look at your local vitamin or health food store, they’ll have tons of antioxidants.

There’s also grapefruit seed extract (GSE) and rosemary oleoresin or rosemary oil extract (ROE) which are also good antioxidants, but last time I checked they were kind of expensive for soaping.  GSE may speed up trace time in soaps.

Also, using oils that have BHT or BHA or whatever it is they put in vegetable oil at the grocery store seems to help with the rancidity problems.  But then you have the question of “Do you want that in your soap?” and “Do you care since it is a rinse off product?”.  Many people don’t mind, but some people have very strong opinions about BHT and BHA and may not like it in their soaps.  It really just depends on your marketing niche.   BHT or BHA or whatever is also available at the health food store. 

Even if you get the perfect numbers, what does it mean?  Absolutely not a thing if you ask me.  There are so many factors involved from the water that is available in the area where the soap is used to how humid it is in the geographic area.  You know, a soap that works really well in Biloxi, Mississippi, will not work the same or even be a soap you may want to use in Houston, much less West Texas or even Arizona.

And there are even more factors than those listed above.  Many, many years go I participated in a soap swap where we all made the same soap recipe.  The results was that everyone’s soap was different.  How could that be?  Well, I like to think that we all have different ways of doing things and we all put a little of ourselves in the things we make.

Additionally, numbers are just numbers because with each season, with each batch of oil and fats that are pressed from seeds or somehow rendered, the oils and fats will be unique from time to time, batch to batch and will have different exact sap numbers and iodine numbers due to growing conditions and things like that.  So the numbers are just guidelines, they are not exact.  The chances of an oil you have on the shelf having the exact same characteristics as the numbers listed in a calculator somewhere are very slim.  It’s just not something that you can be exact about unless you send the oil to a lab to be analyzed.  And then there goes your budget if you know what I mean.

The harder the soap bar, the lower the solubility and the less lather you have.  Some people like lots of lather, some don’t and some have no preference, they just want the soap to clean.  So, numbers are still just numbers.  You know what you like, so don’t go second guessing yourself. 

Like when you use the MMS calculator, you go with what you already know, stuff that you learned along the way in your soap making journey and you draw from that knowledge when you plug in the numbers for the amounts of oils.  The truth is you know a lot more than you think you do. 

The only really crappy bars of soap that I’ve seen have been either soaps that were way too superfatted, were way under-cured before they were wrapped, or were one oil soaps like 100% cottonseed oil soaps.  100% cotton oils soaps suck!  LOL  They go rancid very fast.

Further, everybody’s opinion of what the perfect soap recipe is will be completely different no matter what the numbers are.  Opinions about soap are like finger prints, everyone has a different one, but we all have them, unless we don’t. LOL  But that’s not all bad.  So, take what you learned about oils from Soap Calc and at some point in time I bet that even without know it you’ll use some information you learned there and use it in a future soap recipe without even knowing you’re actually using it.

If you’re subtituting rice brand oil in your recipe for the more expensive olive oil and are worried about the soap ending up too soft, then toss in a little stearic acid or castor wax to make the bar harder.   How much?  Well, not a lot or the it would make the soap too hard.  So I’d start with about an ounce per pound of rice brand oil used and go up from there if you’re not pleased with the results.

Soap making is science, but not rocket science and it’s not meant to be.  Use what you know, use your intuition, relax and have some fun.  I say numbers are just numbers.  If you like your soap, I bet others will too.  If don’t like it, well, that’s just part of the spice of life.  We all have different ways of doing things, our products end up different… and just think how boring it would be if we all made things that were identically the best. 

So, don’t forget that knowledge comes from experience, numbers are just guidelines, and guidelines are no substitute for knowledge gained thru experience.

When I get ready to make the soap I use about 8 ounces of this oil in a 3 pound recipe.   You will either want to pour the oil off the top of an undisturbed (unshaken or settled jar) or use a coffee filter or cheap paper towel to strain the oil bits of alkanet from the oil before you add the colored oil to your other oils in the recipe.   I usually use the cheap paper towel method.  LOL   The paper towel has two layers which I separate and just use one layer because it seems the oil drips thru that a little faster than it does two layers or the coffee filter.   Sometimes I run the alkanet colored oil through a layer of paper towels twice to be sure all the tiny bits of alkanet are removed.

The more colored oil you use in your recipe the darker the soap will be.  You may have heard that you can get blue from alkanet, the blue color has to do with pH.  Alkanet is sort of a pH indicator (but not really.)   I’ve hot processed or cooked an alkanet colored soap and during the cook at one point the soap is a beautiful blue color, but it doesn’t stay blue.  When the pH of the soap drops to a certain level then the alkanet colored soap turns a purplish color.  Blue is a very elusive color when you’re trying to color soap with herbs.  Most likely blue soap obtained by using alkanet is either not totally cured; perhaps even has a bit too much lye in it; or maybe you are just extremely lucky.  However, I would be willing to bet it is something other than luck.

After using the alkanet colored oil from the jar more oil can be added and the alkanet will color the oil again.  I’m not sure exactly how many times you can do this, but you can certainly use the alkanet more than once.  The soap may be a little lighter the next time, but you may not even notice it.  However, you may want to add a little extra alkanet powder to the jar.  If your oil is going to sit and infuse for some time between batches I wouldn’t worry about a color difference.

The same method can be used for annatto seeds.  You can use them over and over again.

You can find alkanet root powder and many other herbs at www.EllensEssentials.com

When it comes to fading, the simple truth is that you need to protect your products from UV rays.   Not only does the sun cause fading, but florescent lights also give off UV rays.  However, florescent lights are much slower acting than the sun. 

The sun is particularly cruel to both natural color additives and dyes.  So whether you are outside or inside, it’s possible that some fading may happen.  Your best bet is to protect your products with packaging. 

There are bottles and jars that are treated to resist UV rays, and then you have the good old brown paper bag approach to things.  Sometimes a decorative opaque container can be just as or even more attractive than a clear container.  It just depends on your marketing niche and how you want to present your products.

For coloring bath salts (which are a cosmetic) you would need to use a color additive that is approved by the FDA for use in cosmetics. There are lots of color additives that are approved for cosmetics,  however some of them do not work well in bath salts.

Ultramarines are basically made by heat treating kaolin clay and sulphur. At low pH’s (which is the range where bath salts are) ultramarines tend to break down and release sulphur giving off that lovely rotten egg smell. Not a very nice surprise for your customers. While these stink, LOL, they do
not fade.

Iron Oxides will work, but may also leave a residue in the tub. The good thing is they don’t fade.

Micas will work. Some will fade and some won’t. They will most likely leave a residue in the tub.

There are also natural colorants on the FDA’s approved colorant list. These are annatto, caramel, carmine and beta-carotene. There are a few more, but nothing that you would probably want to use in salts. These will all fade in sunlight or UV rays. There are no flowers (like blue malva - which will make water a lovely blue — too bad it does not hold up in soap) or chlorophyll listed on the approved list and using these “simply for the purpose of coloring” your salts would make them an adulterated product, you don’t want that.

Dyes offer the biggest color choice of all. You want to make sure that what you are using in on the approved list for cosmetics. And as with natural color additives, eventually dyes will eventually fade, particularly if exposed to UV rays. There are a couple dyes that are limited in the amount you can use in a product, Green 8 and Red 36, but generally you would have to add so much of these dyes to a product that the product would start coloring other items before you reached that limit.

Unless you are familiar with the ingredients in certain food colorants it is not a good idea  to use them in bath salts or other toiletries.  Some food colorants, particularly gel/paste food colorants, contain Blue#2 and Red#3.  Both Blue#2 and Red#3 are not approved by the FDA for use in cosmetics.

The link to the FDA’s list of approved color additives is: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/opa-col2.html 
You can look up the individual colors in 21 CFR part 73, subpart C and 21CFR part 74, subpart C.  Unless you are making make-up or lip stick and eyeshadow, you don’t really need to worrying about what you use as long as it is on the approved list for cosmetics.

I have been asked about the glycerin content of soap made with various oils.  Here is some information that might be helpful in figuring this out. 

First of all the glycerin recovered from commercial soaps is 80% (that does not mean that soap contains 80% glycerin, but that the recovered glycerin isn’t exactly pure.)  After glycerin is recovered from commercial soaps, it is distilled into a purer form.

Okay, that said, here is a list of the available percentages of 80% glycerin contributed to soap by some of the different oils which may be used in the making soap making process according to Modern Soap and Glycerin Manufacture, by E.T. Webb.

18% - Coconut
18% - Palm Kernel Oil
13% - Cottonseed Oil
13% - Soy Bean Oil
13% - Olive Oil
13% - Lard
12.5% - Tallow
12.5% - Castor Oil
12% - Palm Oil (bleached)

When figuring out the percentage of glycerin in your soap you will also have to take into account the percentage of lye, water, and any other additives like herbs, color or fragrance used in the recipe and some how figure how much water evaporates from your soap.

You can figure out how much water evaporates by weighing your soap at the end of the cure period.  Water weighs the same in volume as it does in weight, so 4 liquid ounces of water will weigh 4 ounces.  Whatever amount of weight your soap loses during the cure period, you will have to subtract that from you recipe to get the correct percentages for the ingredients of the recipe or formula.

Sorry, you’ll have to do your own math. 

Also remember that these numbers will simply give you an idea of how much glycerin is in a particular soap.  Just like saponification numbers of various oils, glycerin percentages will also vary from crop to crop depending on growing conditions and other things.   So, your milage may vary.

According to 21 CFR §70.3, “The terms externally applied drugs and externally applied cosmetics mean drugs or cosmetics applied only to external parts of the body and not to the lips or any body surface covered by mucous membrane.”

So the FDA restricts the use of the following color additives in lipsticks, lip glosses, lip balms or cosmetics applied to the lips.

Ultramarines
According to 21 CFR §73.2725 (c) “Uses and restrictions. The ultramarine pigments may be safely used for coloring externally applied cosmetics, including cosmetics intended for use in the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.”

Hydrated Chromium Green
According to 21 CFR §73.2326(b) “Uses and restrictions. Chromium hydroxide green is safe for use in coloring externally applied cosmetics, including those intended for use in the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.

Chromium Green Oxide
According to 21 CFR §73.2327(b) “Uses and restrictions. The color additive chromium oxide greens may be safely used in externally applied cosmetics, including cosmetics intended for use in the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.”

So, if you want tint lipsticks, lip glosses or lip balms, consider using lakes instead of ultramarines or the above mentioned oxides.  If you want green consider a blend of yellow and blue lakes. 

That said, yellow, brown and black oxides are safe for general cosmetics, so there’s no problem with mixing them with castor oil and using those for color.

If you’re thinking about using micas your lip products, you may also want to check and see if the following are an ingredient in the mica you are considering.  Both of these color additives are usually primarily in blue micas, but they are also used in many other colored micas too.  You’ll need to be sure and do some research.

Ferric ferrocyanide. 
According to 21 CFR §73.2299(b) “Uses and restrictions. Ferric ferrocyanide is safe for use in coloring externally applied cosmetics, including cosmetics applied to the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.”

Ferric ammonium ferrocyanide. 
According to 21 CFR §73.2298(b) “Uses and restrictions. Ferric ammonium ferrocyanide is safe for use in coloring externally applied cosmetics, including cosmetics applied to the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.”

We’ve have however added some new pages to the blog which detail the cold process soap making method. 

A lot of our readers already know how to make soap, but just incase some newbies stop by we’d like to share the info with them.  The instructions can be found by clicking here and following the links.

We’ll be adding more information the near future for both newbies and experienced soap makers, so stop back by when you can. 

And if you’re looking for soap making supplies, stop by Ellen’s Essentials.