Welcome to the Year of Rainbows

This year, I’m inviting you into my soap studio for a full year of rainbows—all created with natural botanicals, plant extracts, and clays.

January is a little different from the rest of the year. We’re not making soap yet. Instead, we’re setting up our color pantry, talking about how color really works in soap, and making sure you have the infusions and botanicals ready to go for the months ahead. The rest of the year will be a colorful journey across an entire rainbow of natural soapy colors!

In this lesson, I want to give you a clear picture of what we’re doing this year, how the classes fit together, and how you can get the most out of the experience.

What the “Year of Rainbows” is all about

Over the next twelve months, we’re going to build a full rainbow of colors in cold process soap. Essentially, I’m going to walk you through every color of the rainbow, step by step (with multple options for each color) until you have mastered a full rainbow!

We will focus on:

• Botanicals (roots, herbs, flowers, seeds),
• Plant extracts and decoctions, and
• A few carefully selected clays.

Some months, we’ll focus on a single hue (like red or yellow) and explore it with multiple botanicals and methods. Other months, we’ll work with value and contrast (whites, blacks, and neutrals), or pull everything together into rainbow designs and custom palettes.

You’ll see:

• Side-by-side color tests,
• Full “hero” soaps in each hue,
• Layered and swirled designs, and
• Ways to document your results so you can build your own natural color reference library.

Your colors vs. my colors

One of the most important things I want you to carry through this entire year is this:

Your soap colors will not look exactly like my soap colors.

That’s not failure. That’s just soap chemistry.

The base color of your soap batter will change depending on things like:

• Which oils and butters you use,
• How refined or unrefined they are,
• Your water (distilled vs other options),
• Your superfat, and
• Whether your soap goes through a full gel phase.

If your “yellow” looks more creamy, or your “green” leans more olive than mine, that’s completely normal. Think of this year as learning how your oils and your process translate natural colorants into soap.

I’ll show you what I get in my studio here in Tucson, and you’ll learn what your version of those colors looks like in your own space.

Where “white” fits into the plan

You might have questions about white soap, especially if you’ve read the white chapter in The Natural Soap Color Palette.

We’re going to explore white and off-white more deeply in August, including:

• 100% coconut oil soap as a bright white benchmark,
• A coconut-free salted soap,
• The effect of sugar, and
• How white clays affect value and feel (without magically making soap pure white).

But for all of the other color months, I’d like you to set white aside as a goal and accept your natural base batter color as the starting point for this rainbow journey.

How access colors across the year

If you’re in the Best Friends Club, you’ll be able to:

• Revisit all rainbow lessons from the entire year at any time,
• Watch supporting classes I reference (like Extracting Color from Nature, Blushin’ Roses, Earth’s Song, All Ways Indigo, and Anti-alkanet), and
• Use this year as a long-term reference library.

If you’re a Basic or Plus member, you’ll have access to the current quarter’s lessons:

• Q1: January–March
  • January — Foundations, Color Theory, and Infusions
  • February — Reds
  • March — Oranges
• Q2: April–June
  • April — Yellows
  • May — Blues
  • June — Greens
• Q3: July–September
  • July — Violets and Purples
  • August — White Month
  • September — Blacks and Deep Darks
• Q4: October–December
  • October — A Full Rainbow Soap
  • November — Neutrals and Skin Tones
  • December — Happy Holidays Everyone!

Let’s start making our rainbow!

January is all about foundations:

• In this lesson, you’ve gotten the big picture.
• In the next lesson, we’ll walk through a soapmaker-friendly color theory overview.
• Then we’ll go through a simple list of what you need to infuse and gather, so you’re fully set up.
• Finally, in our live class, we’ll set up infusions together and have lots of time for questions and troubleshooting.