Teach Soap

I have a friend getting married in July and my plan is to make her a soap/lotion/bath salt gift set, with the soap colored her wedding colors. The one giving me the most trouble right now is plum, and since I'm making a fragrance-test batch later this week and can work one bar at a time (for the record, one big batch, measured into individual bars, not trying to measure lye & oils for single bars!), I thought now might be a good time to solicit suggestions from more experienced/color-savvy/supplier-wise folks so I can try them out!

I've attached a small swatch of the shade I'm striving for, I realize it probably won't be true-to-color on all screens but hopefully close enough to help!

So far I'm planning on trying one part brick red, one part ultramarine violet per a suggestion I found idly googling last night, and I may try alkanet root although I get the impression it might be unreliable if I'm trying to get a consistent, exact color with it. Suggestions for other blends, or for an elusive supplier who sells a straight-up cp-stable plum welcomed! I need to make at least six bars for the fragrance testing, and my recipe makes eleven, so I guess eleven is my upper limit of things to try, haha. No suggestion too outlandish, at this point, since I have plenty of time!

Thanks in advance!

Either you forgot to post the pic or I'm not seeing it for some reason.

Purple is the bane of my soaping existence lately. I either get a nice purple when I don't want it, or I get gray or blue when I do want it. The soap gremlins have apparently decided to take up residence in my kitchen permanently after my little oven fire fiasco a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, I finally got a nice, true purple with BB neons: ultraviolet blue and electric bubblegum. I tried the ultramarine violet mixed with a bit of ultramarine blue pigments and it looked great in the mold, but cured into more of a violet-gray. I haven't personally tried the purple vibrance mica from Nurture yet, but from videos and pictures I've seen, that might be your most reliable starting point to get to the plum color you want. I'll be interested to see what the pros here have to say on this topic.

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

I forgot to attach the pic it was early! Ha ha, thanks for saying something.

I'll try the neons, that sounds promising!

My best purples have come from mixing ultramarine blue with Fired Up Fuchsia (from BB). I've heard that the purple mica from Nurture Soap Supplies is great but haven't used it.

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

I got a lovely shade of plum from combining ultramarine blue and BB's Merlot Mica. Not a super-bright plum but deeper and richer. Electric bubble gum and ultramarine blue is on my list to try!

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If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane
~Jimmy Buffett

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

I think lovegreyhounds was giving me another suggestion, not misunderstanding what you'd said.

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

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If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane
~Jimmy Buffett

I finally got to soap today (it's been like a month, omg) and I thought those of you who gave advice, as well as anyone who needs purples help themselves, might like to see how the colors turned out pre-cure:



1 - one part red, one part purple
2 - one part red, one part orchid
3 - one part red, one part lavender

4 - one part neon pink, one part purple
5 - one part neon pink, one part orchid
6 - one part neon pink, one part lavender

This batch I used just what I had on hand (the WSP pigments/oxides and neon color sampler packs [sorry BB!]), figuring I'd get close enough to know what to buy to get the color I really wanted, but I think #4 is actually dead on.

I'll come back with updates, as I'm sure saponification and curing will bring many changes (for example, that lovely pink #5 is going to turn into something terrible, it's scented with Turkish Mocha). Thanks for your help, guys!

Thanks for the picture! I had been wanting to see your colors!

You did it! Yep, I agree lucky number 4 is the winner.

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!