The Magic of Lavender
December 17, 2008
If you can't tell from the title, I've taken a slight detour. Did I mention I get distracted easily? Anyway when I posted a picture of some milk and nonmilk soaps I had made while messing around, I got an email from a lovely lady named Ingrid. She had fallen in love with one bar of soap that she called lavender and wanted to know if I had done that in milk soap. Alas she was looking at a bar of soap made with water. One of the FD&C lake blue colors stays true in milk soap but turns purple/lavender in soap made with all water.
Since Lavender is one of my favorite colors I decided to focus on finding a colorant that makes what I consider a perfect shade of lavender in milk soap. Don't worry, we will return to the oxides probably after Christmas. Next week is going to be a little busy. So I've made batches with all the purple colorants I had on hand, hoping I could find one that would please Ingrid, and myself. As it turns out she likes the dark purply lavender, while I prefer the lighter less purplish lavender. I think I suceeded.
First a word about Lavender. I did some web searching and discovered that there are many different colors that fall under the description of lavender. I found an interesting article on Wikipedia that you might find interesting. It defines lavender as a pale tint of violet refering to the color of the flower of the same name. Then it goes on to list 22 discret colors ranging from pinkish to blueish tones. Appariently any shade between blue and red on a color wheel would qualify.
Trying to duplicate them all would lead to a deeper shade of mad scientist than I really care to be, at least in this point in time. So I made up some test batches of soap with all the purplish colorants I have on hand. Most of the results are in the image above.
On the top row from left to right we have batches made with 3 .15ml scoops lavender oxide, 6 scoops lavender oxide, and 3 scoops of grape pop.
on the bottom row from left to right we have batches made with 6 scoops grape pop, 3 drops neon purple, and a mxture of 3 drops kolourscape red and 3 drops of kolourscape blue.
As you can see we get a wide variety of red and blue lavenders, But not what either Ingrid or I really want. And the neon purple in the bottow row may have an issue. I accidently left it in the freezer for several hours. The color is so light and so pink that I'm redoing that one. I'll post that result in a few days.
These last two bars of soap I consider the winners. Both were made with the Lab Color easter puple. The bar on the left has 1.5 mil of colorant the one on the right has 1 mil. As you can see the result is two different colors. Interesting, don't you think? Ingrid, the one on the left is for you.
I'm tempted to make one more batch using Easter purple to see if I can get a slightly lighter shade of lavender just for me. But I'm out of lavender FO so that has to wait and thus ends the Lavender search. For now anyway.
The lesson learned here is that Lavender is mostly a light shade of purple or a dark shade of red. And I think maybe I need to invest in a color wheel or read a few books on color theory.
But that can wait. Mad scientists don't have to be knowledgeable. They just have to be persistant and somewhat methodical. And there I do qualify. So it's back to the oxides.
Return to soap Journal index Blog
