Ultramarine Blue: Winter Sea Soap

Scents can be so inspiring, and I was hit by inspiration while my daughter-in-law was sniffing fragrance oils in my stash. She really loved Icy Water, passing it to me to have a sniff.

Cut bars of my Winter Sea Soap.

Immediately I thought of seawater in winter. Somehow the color manages to look so cold and uninviting, yet absolutely beautiful.

I wondered if I could capture that color using our Ultramarine Blue colorant. I was thinking of a gray/green/blue color. I knew the gray would be doable, but I was not sure if the green hue would show up in my soap.

Follow me to the soaping lab to see how my experiment works out!

Recipe:

If you need basic soap making steps, please read this blog.

Before cutting, I could really see the rolling waves on the soapy sea.

First, I mixed 2 ounces (weight) of glycerin and added a tablespoon of Ultramarine Blue pigment. I used a tiny stick blender to fully disperse the colorant into the glycerin. I set this aside and proceeded to make the soap.

After weighing the oils into a soap bucket, I placed it in the microwave and heated it in 30-second bursts until all the oils were liquid. Setting that aside, I poured the lye crystals over chunks of frozen goat milk, stirring until the lye melted the iced soap and dissolved completely.

When using milk as the liquid in cold process soap, it’s crucial to soap at lower temperatures to avoid scorching the milk. My lye solution was 82 degrees, so I set it aside and placed the oil bucket into a basin of cold water and stirred until it was about 95 degrees. Then I combined the two and started stirring and stick blending to reach a light trace.

In went the Icy Water Fragrance Oil, more stirring, and then I added about a teaspoon of the premixed Ultramarine Blue colorant and stirred. I hit the mixture a few more times with the stick blender to get the color mixed thoroughly and bring the batter to a stronger trace since I wanted to play with the top to make some waves or something that reminded me of sea water.

Cut bars of Winter Sea Soap.

When I liked the trace I had reached, I poured the soap into the mold and began working on the top. After trying several things I didn’t like, I ended up just pulling a rubber spatula across the top of the soap the long way, leaving little ridges that reminded me of rolling waves coming into shore, one after another.

I was happy with the gray-blue color I’d achieved, and I could hardly wait to unmold the soap! Sometimes colors change as the soap hardens, and this small amount of Ultramarine Blue turned a really nice shade that I never had in mind, but which I think works perfectly to portray a winter sea!

Off to the curing rack with these pretty bars!