This one is coloured with Alkanet coloured Olive Oil. I really like the colour, but it doesn't say "Sea" to me.
This one is coloured with Alkanet coloured Castor Oil, and I think I just put a little more in, so the colour is darker but similar to the first.
All this resisting resisting and more resisting what nature is offering me in search of my ideal is tiring. I think I may just give in to the magical power of nature. I had this great soap designed in my head - Lavender... Goat Milk... the perfect lavender purple. BUT - I just couldn't get it. Goat Milk and Alkanet just produced a muddy grey green. Then, even without goat milk, I just couldn't get the purple that I wanted in the soap. Lots of interesting blues and greys. I could probably get it if I used artificial colour but I don't.
So, then I had this beautiful Mediterranean Sea Salt bar created in my mind - Essential Oil combo reminiscent of a Sea Breeze... loaded with Sea Salt.... nice Sea blue.... BUT - I just couldn't get it. I can only get purple with Alkanet in my Sea Salt bars.
So, instead of resisting, I am going to accept nature's magic. I can either have a nice purple Mediterranean Lavender & Sea Salt bar.... and/or a white Sea Salt bar & a white or blue Lavender bar. What do you think?
xo
Jen
7 comments:
I agree with you...the whole part about wanting to control nature. It can be very frustrating when you have this vision of the final product and you are working with all natural ingredients, that often times behave the way they want to because they have that unknown factor in them that requires us to be flexible and forgiving. Predictability in outcome certainly is the goal when you are mass producing, especially for a market that demands repeated sameness of your product. If we are up for that and still want to stay 100% organic/natural, then simplicity is the key. Good, whole hearted simplicity :) I salute you for your experiments, it's truly the most creative part of our soap making. Ease up on yourself for now and maybe focus on just on two parts of the outcome, rather than on the complete package. You go, Jen :)
Wonderful wisdom that you have gained :) Nature is unpredictable. I just did a Alkanet with yogurt and recognize the grey-green colour. Hadn't heard of that before. Obviously something to do with milk. I'll post it shortly. We will gain more understanding as we continue to share.
Greyish green? Wow, I'll have to try that someday! Next time you feel like making purple lavender soap, why not give my recipe a try? The one I just made? I don't know what I did to make it purple, but I do hope that by doing the same thing again, you'll get the purple you like!
HI Jen! I love the color of that sea salt soap! What about a batch that's half sea salt (lavender colored) and maybe the other half your goats milk w/lavender essential oil & swirl 'em? I think the color combo & texture combo would be very interesting. That way you would have a soap with goat's milk, lavender fragrance and a lovely lavender color...maybe not the way you initially wanted, but I think it might work! Just a thought...~Becky
Your new soap looks great. I can understand your frustration at not achieving the best colour. I debated at one point to do all natural soaps but I like non natural colours too and love getting somewhat consistent results.
I like The Soap Sister's idea though.
It's so frustating when you know in your mind how you want your soap bar to look like and it just won't happen, I've had a few of those lately:)
It's funny, sometimes when I think "this should look really great" I'm disapointed with how it comes out and then other times when I'm not expecting it to look good, it comes out really nice.
Your lavender bars look beautiful Jen, great colour! boy would I love to be able to get a nice natural blue, but have given up on that one. What about lavender and white together?
Jen, here is a link for another blog that did an alkanet colored soap.
Yours look great by the way!
http://soappixie.blogspot.com/2010/07/natural-soap-colorant-alkanet-root.html
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