Trying Out Soap Crafting Recipe

About 2 months ago I was invited to be a guest blogger for Soap Queen's new book Soap Crafting blog tour series.   Soap Crafting is a new book that shows how to make cold process soap from introductory basic to more intermediate/advanced design techniques and specialty soaps.  It also talks about using different soaping colorants and additives.  Instructions are simple, clear, and come with lots of beautiful photos, very easy to follow.  With this book you can make 31 different cold process soaps!  If you are interested it is available now on Brambleberry  Don't forget to check it out!

I'm very excited to be able to test out one of the soap in the book.  Since I soap mostly with artificial fragrance and vibrant colorants I chose to try something I don't do often, using natural colorant and essential oils.  Brambleberry is kind enough to sent me all the ingredients to soap including a small 2 lb mold with silicone liner.

I admit, I didn't totally follow the instruction included...  I'm a little restless that way.  I wanted a very saturated bright golden yellow.  Instead of following the instruction to warm infuse the annatto seed in additional 5 oz of almond oil.  Instead, I heat infused the whole bag of annatto seed with a small amount of the soaping oil.  Can you see the intense orange in that small plastic measuring cup?  I planed to use the whole amount into the soap for the deepest golden yellow I can get.  Also, I've never done a single note scented soap, I like mixing scents.  I felt the fir needle essential oil is a bit too camphor for my nose, I ended up add some sweet orange 10x and rosewood essential oils to round it up.  Sweet orange adds that extra juicy sweetness and rosewood grounds the mix as a base note.

I also mixed in some poppy seeds for texture and a little scrubbiness.  I reserved a portion of soap batter without coloring it with annatto to create some color contrast.

Topped off with some dried juniper berries.

It took a little longer to harden than my usual recipes.  I usually don't use that much liquid for lye solution as stated in the book.  But silicone liner really made it easy to release the log.

The recipe is very easy to work with, plenty of time for even fancy swirl.  The natural vibrant gold yellow from annatto seed is holding up very well, unlike turmeric I used once a while back, faded to caramel after cure.  If you are looking for a good natural golden yellow colorant annatto seed is the best.  And this is my interpretation of Soap Queen's natural colorant recipe, what's yours?