more colored soap experiments

[Guest guest]

dear buds,

just wanted to let you know i experimented with some colors on thursday the

third (4 days ago). i do cavitch's olive/palm/coconut soap that normally

dries white. in one batch, i substituted tomato sauce for the water and today

it is mushy and bright, speckled, dense orange. i was hoping for red or

pink. i think the tomato neutralized the lye too much - it is way too soft.

i did another small batch and added some finely shredded dark purple cabbage,

hoping that the lye would turn the cabbage blue-green since cabbage juice is

a ph indicator and turns blue-green in alkali solutions. it turned all the

shredded cabbage bright orange (flecks of bright orange in an off-white,

lightish yellow soap). it looks pretty neat - if you want orange.

did another batch streaked with chopped spinached soaked in liquid

chlorophyll. added some soap to the green mixture and streaked it through

the white soap at cool trace. right now it looks very dark - alot more green

than i intended but i am so far happy with the effectiveness of the color and

the streaking (marbling) technique.

will post any color changes in curing in a few weeks (such as lightening).

busily yours,

kim in pa