After the long weekend away in Wellington, I really do feel I had the blues the past few days, which is why this post is a little later than usual. It’s a shame really, that we associate blue with feeling down, as it’s such a beautiful colour. Blue is the colour of sunny, cloudless skies, the deep blue sea with all its wonders, and of rare flowers and birds (blue is rather an uncommon colour in nature). So I really do think we do the colour blue a disservice, by calling the blues ‘the blues’.
This week’s micas are called Blue Lustre, Cambridge Blue, Iridescent Blue, and Magic Blue, all from Pure Nature, and the colours they morph into in cold process soap are not quite the blues you expect by seeing the micas. In the picture above, the micas are mixed with a little bit of oil, which usually brings out the colour even more. As you can see, the blues are all very bright and bold. The picture below shows the micas in cold process soap, straight after pouring into the mold. The colours have changed significantly, although they are still all in the blue range of the colour spectrum. The top two colours in particular have changed drastically.
Curing the soap for a week, and the results are quite revealing. The lightest of all the blue micas, Blue Lustre, is still the lightest colour of them all, but has turned into this gorgeous bright blue. It’s one of my favourite micas so far. My other favourite is Iridescent Blue, pictured right underneath Blue Lustre. This one has stayed the most true to its original mica colour. They’re also the colours I used in this week’s tutorials.
Looking at Cambridge Blue, this colour was always in the greyish part of the blue spectrum, and it will initially turn quite grey in cold process soap, and only get back some of its blue after curing. Magic Blue also changes significantly from its original mica colour, and loses most of its boldness. However, it still gives a nice, if a bit toned down, blue to cold process soap.
This week showed how important it is to test the micas before designing your soap. The micas were very similar in colour, with the exception of the Cambridge Blue, but the results in cold process soap show drastic differences between the colours. Which is why I always tell my students in my courses: test the colour in a small sample before you use it for the first time!
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