Alkanet and Fading

There has been some talk about Alkanet Root and Ratan Jot fading significantly over time when used in soap. We have only used it once before and we actually kept a bar from that batch to see how it would look later. It has probably been about 3 or 4 years since we made this soap (at the beginning of our adventure). Our notes are nowhere to be found so we can't be 100% sure what we actually did but if memory serves us right, here is a summary:

The color oil was made by heat infusion on the stove for 30 to 60 minutes with about 1 tablespoon of alkanet root and a few large scoops of coconut oil.

The alkanet that we used was obviously very old (though we did not know it at the time) because it barely colored the oil. If you look at the picture of our color oil (which we also kept from that day) and compare it to the Alkanet oil we have infusing right now there is a huge difference. The Alkanet oil we have now has the same rich color that the Ratan Jot infusion did...there is a picture of that oil in "Spicy Color Trials Part 2" (Remember those are the same thing but from different suppliers).

We did cold process soap but the recipe is lost. All we know is that it had some coconut oil, olive oil and probably something else...

Here is a picture of the soap:

This has not faded as much as you might think. It is much lighter than the purple soap we made with the Ratan Jot but when we first made it, it was not much darker than the picture shows. You can still see some light purple coloring to it.

We stored it in a cardboard box in a basement. It was not on display and it was never used.

We plan to keep one bar each of our colour trial soap and after a significant amout of time, we will post pictures so that everyone can see how much they fade.