Teach Soap

Hello! I made my first batch of this recipe. I envisioned a pretty light yellow soap with bits of the walnut shells showing through. It smells awesome .... citrusy and a light nutty scent. It actually looks nice but not at all what I expected. Very dark brown. Here's my ingredients ... Oils: Coconut, Olive, Aloe Butter, Castor, Jojoba, Wheat Germ. Powered Lemon Zest (which I thought would produce the lemony yellow color) and I added a bit of crushed walnut shells as an mild exfoliant. I have never used them before. For scent, I planned to use the Citrus Synergistic EO Blend from BB. I didn't have enough, so decided to try to make a blend. So I used The Citrus Blend mentioned above and added Lime FO and Energy FO. I checked each one on the BB Frangance Calculator & also ran it through my Soapmaker Software. I think this loaf will be fine but am trying to learn & figure out what happened here. My questions are this: 1) Where is the nutty scent coming from? Do the walnuts add a scent?
2) Where is my lemony yellow color? 3) Is it ok to combine EO's & FO's? Any comments would be appreciated!

Sounds like some powder from the shells discolored your soap. It could also be the lemon zest. The only herb that will stay yellow is calendula.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I agree with SB that it is likely the shells that gave you brown, they usually do produce a brown. Lemon zest will not give you a yellow color in soap, but will look its own color on top of the soap. Safflower and a small amount of annato seed infusion will produce a nice yellow color in your soap if you want a natural yellow colorant.

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Thank you both for your comments! This
makes sense. I plan to remake it without the walnuts just to see what happens. Any thoughts on combining EO & FO? Is this something that you do?

Do you have a photo to share? Sometimes that helps.

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

OK, on mixing the FO & EO's! The scent seems pretty interesting. About the photos, I will need to learn how to get them on here, but .. I'll give it a try! I enjoy looking at the photos that other members have posted.