Coloring Soap with Vanilla Fragrance Oil

As I explained in my article, Using Vanilla or Vanilla Fragrance Oils in Your Soaps, vanilla and vanilla-containing fragrance oils will turn your soap brown...sometimes deep brown. And it's not just "Vanilla" scents that will do it. Many fragrance blends use vanilla as a component to help deepen and mellow the blend.

Well, if you can't beat it, join it. In a batch I made recently, I embraced the vanilla, and actually used it in a nice swirl. I made the batch as normal (Basic Soap Making Instructions) but, knowing that the vanilla fragrance oil was going to turn the soap brown, I planned ahead. I designed the recipe as a "Lavender Vanilla" soap. The batch I made took about 2 ounces of fragrance oil. I measured out one ounce of lavender essential oil, and one ounce of vanilla fragrance oil. Right after the soap reached very light trace I separated the raw soap into two parts. To one, I added the lavender oil, to the other, the vanilla. After mixing them in well, I layered the soap into the mold and swirled it a bit. In the mold, you could hardly tell the difference in the two soap mixtures...but after I cut it, and it sat for a few days...voila...a lovely brown and tan swirl! I've also done this with orange essential oil and vanilla (lemon is yummy too), pine or Christmas scents and vanilla, and floral scents like ylang ylang or geranium and vanilla. Ehhh...pretty much everything blends well with vanilla...so give it a try.