This is Nomad, for whom my soap business is named.

I finally designed a logo to put on my cigar bands.  Since my company is named after my daughter's cat I used a cat that looks like him.

I decided to do a blue soap.  I used lard, olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, and canola oil.  I mixed blue mica with the canola oil and it was a brilliant blue.  I melted the hard oils, mixed in the liquid oils and then added the canola with the mica.  Looked great.  I added the lye water and the color went away completely.  I then added the essential oils for scent and brought it to trace.  It still had no color as I poured it into the mold.  I dribbled the remaining blue canola oil and swirled the top a little.  Over time the soap changed to peach, then red, and this morning was turning blue again.  Very interesting. The package of mica next to the loaf is the one I used. I'll post again after I cut it.

I won a small soap kit from Brambleberry for filling out a survey for them.  It contained enough oils, etc. to make a small batch of soap.  I made a swirl using the activated charcoal contained in the kit.

I rebatched the soap I made with orange extract because it was very crumbly.  I colored it orange with infused annato seed and sent the bars off in the box I sent to Oklahoma for the soap drive a group was doing for the victims.  It still smelled of oranges.

I did a little test today with a 1.5lb batch to see what would happen if I used orange extract that contained alcohol.  What I discovered was that the mix seized up as I was mixing in the lye mixture.  It got to think to use my stick blender within seconds so I used a spatula to mix it and then used my hands to pack it into a plastic Velveeta box I have.  I just used 80/20 olive and coconut oils with infused paprika oil for color.  It is soap, but not very pretty.