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Soap & Candle Making

fading colors problem?

21 years ago

I did a two color soap months and months ago, it was a yellow goldfish sitting on top of a square blue/green block. I put it away in a box and forgot about it until I went to pull one out for a gift and got a shock.

The nice gold color I got before was now a sickly yellow. It looked like the color got sucked right outta the fish and into the square block. Is that normal? Is that what happens when colors 'bleed'? I thought it was only at the beginning when you first poured, not months later!

Disappointed, =/

Andrea

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Comments (5)

CraftyGirl75
21 years ago
That's what happens. You can buy non bleeding colorant to prevent it. I don't do much with artsy soap. Didn't want to buy a whole different set of colorant for something I might do once in a while.

Also remember that scents with vanilla in them can turn soap colors also. If you are doing fish in a bag you need to use a scent without vanilla (and many scents have vanilla) or you need to use a vanilla stabilizer. If you don't hours later your clear soap will be yellowish!

Better luck next time.
Heather
Jill_NC
21 years ago
Andrea---something similar happened with me. Remember that Dragonfly soap I made--blue with the dragonfly raised in white? I used opaque base for the design and then used clear base for the block/background of the soap colored with blue mica. I knew the mica wouldn't migrate into the white design. I sent it off to my mom and she put it in a decorative soap dish in her bath. Then about a mo. later she asks me where all the blue color went from the soap. The design was still white, just what was the blue base was now just ugly & colorless. All I can think of is that she has a window in her bath that's glass blocks so it lets light in all day and it faded the soap. Weird, huh?

Jill
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tanner2135
Original Author
21 years ago
hmm. my colorants are liquid but no idea if they're dyes or pigments. how do you tell? i'll have to look into the non-bleeding colorants, heather, since i have a couple artsy soaps i do. if they bled, i expected that the soap below it would change colors but it didn't really.

jill, i do remember your dragonfly soap, interesting about the mica. i definitely didn't use any mica in the goldfish though.

argh, can i just vent about the mica for a sec? i mixed up blue mica in a bit of water. i did this with black pigment and it worked fine. might be because it was black that you couldn't tell.

anyway, i was careful to mix really well, stirred extra long, everything looked good as i poured but when i popped them out of the molds, the mica settled at the top so everything looked speckled. my DP said it looked fine and that it was cool but still! i will grudgingly say they looked good BUT it's not what i expected nor wanted.

so annoyed!
andrea
BuffyC
21 years ago
Hello THere,

You can buy embedding soap for these soaps. I buy mine from WWSP. they have all colors even balck. I use the black to make my crosses for the bible church. Can you imagine a black cross bleeding?
I only use this soap for special designs. Sometimes the bleeding soap curls look good in loaf soaps.

Have a great day.
Carolyn

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