I have to come clean that I learned something new lately; Did you know you can make beautiful soaps using natural dyes as a colourant? Not only do natural dye powders give the soaps beautiful shades, they have specific properties that can be beneficial for the skin.
Handmade soaps are created by combining fat from oil or lard with lye water. How to infuse the colour to your soaps depends a lot on the type of colourant:
Bits and barks should always be extracted and I found the best way to do that is to soak the colourant in a small teabag (a fancy word for mesh tied with a string) in a glass jar with the oil you are going to use for your soap. It can take a few days for the colour process to take place, to speed it up you can put your glass jar au Bain Marie to heat up gently for a few hours. Most tea bags can be re-used for another round of colour extraction (albeit lighter shades).
Fine powders can be used either using the above mentioned tea bag method, or by mixing a small amount with distilled water and adding it to the soap batter ‘at trace’, meaning the mixture is starting to come together.
You can certainly use plant dyes soaked in oil without a teabag, just make sure you pour off the oil without adding the sediment.
Alkaline loving dyes like madder, woad and indigo powder can be mixed with the lye powder before making the lye water.
Nicole Cohen Yechezkel helped me put together these lovely bars of soap so you get a small preview of what you can do with natural dyes in soaps. She has a lovely website with holistic, handmade, natural skincare. You can be sure I will be posting about this more often!
For blues;
Use either woad or indigo, this soap here is made with some indigo. Isatis Tinctoria has been traditionally used for treating a red and swollen face, skin infections and has anti-bacterial properties while Indigofera Tinctoria has long been regarded for its deeply soothing, restorative, and calming powers. The extracts help comfort irritated skin.
For grays:
Sandal wood is not the prettiest in a soap, but smells delicious and the benefits are amazing; Sandalwood can prevent wrinkles because of the anti oxidants in the wood, it treats pimples and soothes skin. Traditionally it has been used to treat parasites
and fungal infections.
For reds;
Himalayan Rhubarb, use either the ground roots, or the extract (just a little bit!) for brick reds. Rhubarb is naturally anti-fungal and anti-bacterial which makes it beneficial in treating bacterial skin conditions such as acne. In fact, traditional folk medicine often used raw rhubarb as a topical application for various skin infections.
Madder, Rubia Tinctorum contains alizarin, which gives wonderful pinks, oranges and deep reds, depending on your recipe. Madder is considered very effective for healing acne, rashes, boils, skin irritations, and other conditions of the skin.
For yellows;
Golden yellow; Annatto, Bixa Orellana has been told to be a natural anti-oxidant, as well as very rich in essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper and manganese. It’s very rich in beta-carotene.
Greenish yellow: Marigold. (Tagetes erecta). In India they already knew it for hundreds of years, marigolds give your soap a lovely shade and gives it antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties which can help in eradicating wrinkles and pimples!
For purples:
Alkanet is the way to go. Alkanna tinctoria will give gray/purple to reds to your soap and it has wonderful skin and hair benefits. Here in India, we use it both as a natural dye and also in home remedies. The root of the plant is said to be used in skin care and hair care for promoting hair growth and reducing burn scars, for treating grey hair and for brightening skin. We will try this at home and let you know!
Want to try making soap at home? Already making soaps? I have put together a kit with the best natural dyes for soap makers;
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