Nature's gifts are plentiful and with only a few exceptions of  'nude' bars, I generally can't resist adding colour to my soap to help portray a theme or in general because I love pretty soap. Whether there's a swirl or more uniform layers, I enjoy making considered additions to enhance the character of the soap.

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Plant Extracts

Plants have been used for thousands of years to provide dyes for fabrics and many of these same plant extracts can be used to effectively colour soap. A common method for doing this is to infuse a carrier oil e.g. olive oil,  with the plant or plant extract and then use the infused oil as a portion of the soap base in your recipe. With these unrefined colourants, intensity may vary from one batch to the other and may also fade with time.

I enjoy exploring the possibilities with plant extracts in my soap and have often use

• Tumeric (yellow/orange)

• Indigo (grey7blue)

• Alkanet root (purple)

• Rhubarb root (pink/red)

• Madder root (red)

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Minerals and Pigments

Cosmetic grade minerals and pigments give a consistent quality in a concentrated form meaning a little of these colourants goes a long way. Unlike synthetic micas, minerals and pigments are natural compounds and are, therefore, limited in range but can be mixed and blended to achieve a full range of shades.

These colour compounds tend to be stable in soap and are represented in the ingredients list with their identifying Colour Index (CI) code and I list here the colours I occasionally make use of

• CI 77007 Ultramarine blue 

• CI 77288 Chromium Oxide/Chromium Oxide Hydrate

• CI 77891 Titanium Dioxide