Maker Notes: Creating Annatto Seed Infused Soap and Candles with Wild Dot
If you’ve browsed our shop, you may have noticed that our products tend to be more muted and earth-toned in colour. It’s not aesthetic preference on our part, but because it’s not the easiest to colour soaps and candles using only natural ingredients! When natural colourants are heated — such as when we heat candle wax, or when the soap mixture naturally warms after adding lye — they tend to lose their vibrancy.
When I mentioned this to Shirin of Wild Dot, she suggested we try using annatto seeds. Wild Dot is founded and run by Shirin and Liz, local inkmakers and artists who create botanical inks using natural pigments that they find or grow in Singapore. Their materials range from upcycled waste to plants they come across during forest walks, and they’ve found that annatto seeds can create very vibrant results in oil-based mediums.
Shirin and Liz at their home studio and garden. Spot a jar of annatto seeds at the far left of their collection!
Exploring natural pigments with Wild Dot
I’ve known of Wild Dot’s work for quite a while now, and always wanted to work with them on a project at Plural Supply. I just didn’t know what, or when, that project would be! Their work speaks to a big part of our philosophy at Plural Supply, particularly our approach to ingredients and materials.
Shirin and Liz began exploring natural, locally derived inks after repurposing some mouldy blueberries, while many of our products also began as experiments with ingredients rescued from our friends' or our own kitchens, or from local farms and gardens.
We eventually met at the Kampong Bugis Cosmic Market in April 2023. After our conversation about colouring soaps and candles, Shirin generously offered us some annatto seeds to experiment with. The annatto seeds were harvested from Shirin and Liz’s own garden, where they grow a variety of plants for pigments, fibres, and food.
They introduced annatto to their garden two years ago, which gave them the chance to experiment with fresh annatto seeds. Annatto seeds that are commercially available come in a dried form, but Shirin and Liz discovered that annatto seeds can generate more intense pigments when fresh. Now, they use a mix of fresh and dried annatto seeds from their garden, as it can be difficult keeping seeds fresh for long.
Pictured: Liz telling us more about their annatto tree.
Taking our time with annatto seed infused wax
We set out to create an original candle blend and a bar soap with the seeds, keen to explore how our products could be a medium for the colours of nature. This process requires time.
Over hours, we let the annatto seeds infuse in our coconut wax, turning the wax into a beautiful deep orange-red colour. Colouring wax in this way has an additional benefit too — unlike synthetic candle dyes, which are added to the wax and may interfere with how the candle burns, infused waxes burn the same way uncoloured waxes do.
Don’t be surprised to find tiny seed pieces at the bottom of your candle though! We do our best to filter the seeds from the oil, but a small amount of sediment will inevitably remain. These pieces will sink to the bottom of the wax, and won’t disturb the burning of the candle.
Finding the right canvas for the pigment
With the soap, the annatto seeds don't just lend their colour to the bar. Instead of infusing our oils with colour, we added the annatto seeds directly to our soap mixture, where they also act as a soothing, antioxidant and mildly exfoliating treat for the skin.
To allow the colour of the annatto seeds to shine through as much as possible, we went for base oils and essential oils that tend not to impart colour into soaps: geranium essential oil, olive oil, and coconut oil.
This fuss-free moisturising formula is also our very first Bastille soap, what we call cold-process soap made with at least 70% olive oil. Olive oil produces some of the most gentle soaps, while coconut oil enhances the lather of the soap without it needing to be cured for as long as 100% olive oil Castile soaps.
Annatto seeds and the different ways we’ve used them: watercolour paint by Wild Dot, and candles and soap by us.
The experiments continue
Keeping natural pigments stable and lightfast is always tricky, but it’s especially so in Singapore. Our strong sunlight and hot and humid weather cause natural ingredients to evolve differently over time compared to more temperate regions. This means Shirin and Liz are always engaged in a process of trial and error to learn about how different materials, and different combinations of pigments, binders or mediums respond to our climate.
Annatto seed pigments haven’t been the most lightfast in Shirin and Liz’s experience, but this only makes them a great choice for soap and candles, which are meant to be used up over time.
That said, over the last few months of experimentation and observation, we’ve noticed that the coconut wax has been preserving the annatto seed colour very well, and the colour will likely keep for months to come. We have already begun testing out other ingredients, and can’t wait to share them with you next time!
