Teach Soap

I'm new to using colors (I and the people that use my soap like the uncolored soap) but I did a 1.5 lb batch of cphp yesterday with the following tried and true recipe:

Castor 1% (.24 oz)
Coconut 24% (5.76 oz)
Lard 75% (12 oz)
Olive 25% (6 oz)
Water 4.56 oz
Lye 3.14 oz
1/8 tsp salt added to water before adding lye
Coconut milk 4.56 oz added just before thick trace
.5 oz eo added at molding

Unless I read the instructions wrong or missed something, they said for cphp to add the color at trace and that it can be used undiluted. So, at trace I added 2 drops. No color. Added 2 more drops, better but not enough. Added 2 more drops - finally getting there. Added 2 more drops - ok now we're at a pink I can live with but not what I was hoping for. I wanted a bright pink and got more of a pretty but darker muted pink.

Color has not changed since I molded it yesterday afternoon (its now 6AM - don't ask). Its a wonderful hard soap, as expected, with a wonderful lather and softness and smells ok (I don't care for the eo used but thats just my opinion).

Did I not use enough? Too much? Was it the oo? Did I mis-read the directions? Can someone point me to the right directon please? I'd love to know what I did wrong. I'd love to start playing with colors more. I've done some but its always been with the powdered and have had great results there.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Sunkawakan
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Finally open!
Blog -

It could have been a number of things. Olive oil that a has a greenish tint or pomace, coconut milk or the EO's that you used.

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

8 drops for 1.5 pounds of soap base might be a little light. That's less than 1/2 of one ml or 8/96th of a teaspoon - which is a teensy, teensy amount of color to try and get to color a 24 ounce batch of soap =)) Some of the colors will get a decent color with that little - others won't. Just like with oxides (blue oxide is super strong, pink oxide is super weak), different colors have different usage rates.

I'd recommend upping that amount for sure and remember, for the most part, what you see is what you get with cold process soap and labcolors with the exception of a few of the purples (which go through a glorious color transformation; see blog post here: http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/10/ ... -tips.html). They get a teensy bit brighter in CP soap after gel phase but it's not a major major transformation (see gel phased Red Velvet soap here: http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2008/02/ ... batch.html)

I'm a big fan of diluting Labcolors (instructions on doing it here: http://www.brambleberry.com/Labcolor-Qu ... e-W29.aspx) and there are instructions on SoapQueen.TV in Episode 2 on dilution (and showing speckling and why you'd want to dilute around minute 2:00) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3VbeNl1Nqg

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Happy Soaping!

Anne-Marie
blog: www.soap-queen.blogspot.com
supplies: www.brambleberry.com