Ultramarine Blue Challenge

Among all the natural colorants, Ultramarine Blue definitely ranks very top of my list. It's a beautiful & brilliant color to make your soap shine thru when properly handled.  Yes, properly handled..... It takes several trial  and error to get what you want to achieve, especially with cold process soap.

See the first photo was that vibrant, vivid blue that got me hooked since.  I still remember it was REALLY dark when the soap mixture was poured into the mold.  At that time I thought I had too much pigment in it.  But 24 hours later it turned out so beautiful....

Another batch, the blue became dark due to the Oakmoss essential oil.

In this batch, the charcoal kind of ate up the thin fine lines of blue.  Only the top blue survived.

 This is my latest batch about 2 weeks ago.  While mixing the pigment, a shearing force is required to get it thoroughly blended.  I used a mini  blender.  Apparently it was not blended enough, I ended up having these undissolved tiny dots in there (see the speckles in the picture, yak!!).  Imperfect color makes me sigh every time I saw it.  Fortunately it still smells wonderful with the Clary Sage, Lavender & Sandalwood EO. 

Now the urge to make another batch just to run after that splendid blue has grown inside of me every day.  How many days I can tolerate with that sound repeating "one more shoot" ?  I really have no idea !