Teach Soap

Hello! I'm new to making bath bombs and I have been using a pretty basic recipe with baking soda, citric acid, cornstarch, and sea salts. I've added essential oils to great effect and some FD&C colorant, but I added 45 drops of Red #40 to my bomb and the water was still kind of a disappointing orange. I really want a deep red and a black.

I bought a couple different sample packs of mica on Etsy. I think both blacks I got were powdered iron oxide. The gold, copper, and free sample of blue/green I got were awesome and totally dissolved in the water, but the red and black were not nearly as good. I added the red and black to my bath bomb recipe and tested them out but the black one pretty much destroyed my tub. It took me an hour to scrub all the black off. A YouTube video said I needed to mix the mica with polysorbate, so I bought some polysorbate 80. I mixed it with the mica, but it turned into a big, ugly blob. I used a fork like a whisk to break it up, but it never really totally dissolved the black or the red. The water turned the right color (in a bowl this time!), but there were still a few little blobs of polysorbate.

What am I doing wrong? How do I get good colored bath bombs? It's killing me that I'm like a month into this and still can't get the right colors. Should I break down and order the colors they have on WholesaleSupplies Plus? I hate that they charge a $5 "Handling Fee" on top of shipping and I don't want to spend $40 more on colors I'm not sure will work.

BrambleBerry sells colorants specific for this purpose. They are called La Bomb Colorants or something like that. Mica should easily disperse in your oils. You can add the polysorbate, but separately to help prevent staining in your formula.

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

When I use micas in my bath bombs, I add it to the dry ingredients. I add the polysorbate to my liquid ingredients. I don't mix them directly.

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~Kelly~