Natural Soap Colourant experiment - Part 1

Bare Naked Body only uses natural colourants and you may be surprised how many colours there are in nature - Cinnamon, cocoa powder, spirulana, paprika, annatto seeds, parsley etc. I am familiar with all these, but some more obscure natural colours I have been meaning to use for a while now are Madder Root and Alkanet Powder. Both are completely natural and not synthetically produced - which is very important to Bare Naked Body.

Madder root powder can produce a pink to coral colour in the soap and alkanet root powder can produce a blue, purple to blackish colour depending on the pH of the soap. There are two techniques to adding natural colourants to cold process soap and that is either adding the powder at trace or infusing the oils with the colourant and then filtering it before adding the lye.

Here is my first test - adding Madder Root and Alkanet Root Powder at trace

The alkanet root powder soap is the first photo and yes, the soap looks purple/blackish and with the large specks of alkanet root powder showing, the soap reminds me of road base! So, I will not be adding alkanet root powder again at trace and will soon experiment with infusing it instead.

The madder root powder soap looks a nice pastel pink and I do not mind the look of the small specks showing through. I do however, prefer the more solid colour I get with clays, like Pink Clay and Red Clay.

Well, either way, now I know that natural colourants added at trace does not produce the results that I want. Experiment 2 on the way - adding madder root and alkanet into the oils and infusing. I shall report back soon with pictures of the infused oil soaps.