Mica Archives - Page 11 of 11

Cut Out Soaps – Ingredients & Tools

February 27, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Bramble Berry got a nice press recommendation today. Thank you Modish for listing Bramble Berry as a top supplier for soapmaking supplies.Spring is coming! So, it’s time to pull out the pastel colors, white melt and pour soap and make happy designs. In this project, you’ll learn how to use cookie cutters to create soap inserts, marble those inserts and use cut-outs to make two-toned soap soap inserts.

So, gather your supplies and let’s get started!

You’ll need:

Cookie Cutters (we used the Daisy Flower Fondant Cut-Outs. You can buy them here along with a great alphabet cut-out set for $3.99)

White Melt & Pour Soap Base (I used Bramble Berry’s Economy Base)

Clear Melt & Pour Soap Base (ditto on the Economy Base)

Non-Bleeding Colors (I used the Non-Bleeding Blue, Yellow & Pink)

Spring Scent – pick your own but might I humbly suggest Rosehip Jasmine, Lilac or Lettuce?

Basic Shape Mold (Milky Way Square, Round and Rectangle)

Heat Safe Container

Spoons

Droppers

Spray bottle with rubbing alcohol

Tomorrow, we’ll start the cut-out process for these happy spring soaps.

Lipstick Making – Mixing Colors and Testing

February 21, 2008 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Lip Products

Day One – Colorant Choices
Day Two – Ingredient Choices

Once you have all of your ingredients assembled, it’s time to start designing your perfect color. There is no easy way to do this. Designing the perfect color is a process of trial and error. Thankfully, so long as your recipe contains no butters, you can melt, remelt and melt over and over with no damage to the balm.

Some basic rules of thumb:

If you want an opaque matte look, keep the titanium dioxide close by.
If you want a sheer look, stay away from titanium dioxide and use oxides sparingly.

This is Merlot Mica with titanium dioxide (left) and without (right). Both are very different look on the lips. Notice also the air bubbles in the titanium dioxide lipstick on the left? This is easily solved with a hit of the heat gun. A heat gun can be purchased in the hardware store in the paint stripping section.

This photo shows the power of brown. The container on the right is brown oxide addition. It has great coverage. It’s an opaque color, and a little goes a long way. Notice that the brown opacity really tones down the shimmer in the lipstick.

To get this color, I used a lot of Pearly White (what’s “a lot?” Well, as you can see from the top photo on yesterday’s post, coloring is almost a 1:1 ratio with the lip balm. There is at least 1 tsp of Pearly White in this 2 ounces of balm) and Merlot Mica and Cellini Red Mica to achieve this color. The Merlot Mica and Cellini Red were 1/2 tsp additions each.

I’ll be traveling to and from Portland tonight and Saturday for the “Portland Soapers Unite!” luncheon and will finish the lipstick tutorial next week. In the meantime, expect photos from the luncheon (including best and worst soap contest winners!), random soapy posts and cupcake shopping galore.

Lipstick making – ingredients & melting

February 20, 2008 Filed Under: Lip Products

Click here for day one – lip stick colorants

When making lipstick, there are a lot of different ingredients you can use. The basic ingredients are covered here but there are many, many more exotic oils, waxes and butters that can be used in lipsticks.

Wax – Waxes can be beeswax, candelilla wax, jasmine wax, orange wax and ozokerite wax. Most common to the home crafter is beeswax because of its pricing and easy availability. For vegans, candelilla wax is the preferred alternative since it is derived from a plant. Waxes are used to help provide a barrier against the elements, seal moisture in the lips and keep color on your lips. Waxes also help to provide shape and form to the lipstick mixture.

Oils – Oil in lipstick are used to be moisturizing, help provide a barrier against weather and also mix with the waxes to form a smooth, spreadable mixture. Popular oils in lipsticks are Sweet Almond Oil, Avocado Oil, Olive Oil and Hempseed oil. There are many other liquid oil options to use. It’s fun to play around with exotic or lesser known oils but remember, if your lipstick really takes off in the market, you want to make sure that the oils you choose are easily available and cost effective.

Butters – Butters are used in much the same way as oils are. They are designed to moisturize, help protect and make a stable mixture that is solid at room temperature yet glides and melts on the lips. Common butters in lip balm recipes are Shea Butter, Mango Butter and Cocoa Butter. Generally, large brands of lipstick do not use butters in their formulations. Since butters are comprised of many different fatty acid chains, they are described as “polymorphic,” which means that they have the ability to crystallize in several different forms according to how the liquid fat is solidified. What this means to you is that butters must be treated with gentle loving care in lipsticks. You need to melt them slowly (temper them) and then immediately place the finished product into the freezer for quick chilling. This will help to minimize any crystals that might form hard, unsightly bumps in your final product. Or, you can do what the “big guys” do and just avoid butters all together.

Lip Safe Fragrance – Lip Safe Fragrances are commonly referred to as “flavors.” They are not the traditional alcohol based flavors or extracts in the grocery store. While fragrance oils have up to 3500 different ingredients that can go into them, less than 10% of them are classified as safe for lips. This is because you “eat” your lipstick so anything that goes onto your lips must be GRAS (“generally recognized as safe” as classified by the FDA). Flavor oils, or lip safe fragrances, do not taste like anything. Rather, the user is tricked into believing that the lipstick or lip balm “tastes” because they inhale the scent. Seventy-Five percent of what we taste is actually from our sense of smell.

Before you get started, gather your equipment and ingredients.

Equipment Needed:

droppers
knives
spoons
small glass jars (microwaveable)
chapstick tubes/or lip pots
lip safe colorants
beeswax or another wax
liquid oil (sweet almond oil, hazelnut oil, jojoba oil – it’s your choice)
lip safe flavor

Soapy Geometry

February 11, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

At dinner the other night, my brother and husband got to talking about cool soap ideas. Since Erik works at Otion and my poor husband has lost his kitchen to soap, they’re both pretty savvy about soapmaking. Somehow, they started talking about how cool it would be to have a geometric soap with manly hard angles, rather than the floofy loopy stuff I’ve been doing of late. So, I set out to make them what they wanted.

Well, sort of … the batch is scented with Rhubarb al Fresco (discontinued) rather than something that screamed, “Man! Man! Man!” but really, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Using the custom loaf mold that Bramble Berry has been testing (this is batch #7), the mold is propped up using (what else?) a bar of soap!

Then, I poured a slab of soap, being careful not to tipple topple the entire project.

After approximately 20 minutes, when the first layer was solid enough to hold another slab of soap but also stay put when slanted the opposite direction, I poured the second layer of soap. This project is done with our new Bulk Base and it soaps like a dream. It’s chock full of liquid glycerin so it cuts easily and melts down smoothly.

This is the view from the top. The Heavy Metal Gold Mica glistens nicely in contrast to the Canary LabColor soap.

The top layer uses a contrasting purple color — Bramble Berry’s non-bleeding Liquid Violet.

I’ll post the Reveal Photos are later today or tomorrow.

Red Lychee Tea Unveiling & Economics

January 27, 2008 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Melt & Pour Soap

Here are some photos of the newly cut Red Lychee Tea soap. I’m very happy with how the batch turned out, especially the dark vibrant blue.

Colors used:

Non-Bleeding Pink Pigment (liquid)
Non-Bleeding Blue Pigment (liquid)
Non-Bleeding Purple Pigment (liquid)
Sparkle Gold Mica

I roughly sketched out the Profit & Loss of this loaf on the back of a napkin. The rough economics behind this loaf of soap look like this:

COG (cost of good sold) – the price you pay for the raw materials

4 pounds soap = $7.40
2 ounces fragrance = $3.00
color = $1.30

total: $11.70 for materials

Mold: suggested retail around $30; if the old is used 30 times, this works out to $1 per use

The soap loaf makes approximately 12 bars of soap. At $5 per bar, that works out to $60-$70 retail value.

Gross profit for the loaf, sold at retail, is approximately $53. Gross profit is the retail price less the COGS (materials). Afte

If fixed costs are taken out of the Gross Profit number, such as the cost of the mold ($1), wrapping ($1), overhead ($3) and labor ($15), the net profit works out to about $33.

That’s a pretty good return for such a wondrous creative outlet of expression.

Fun with Vocation Vacationer

January 12, 2008 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

What a fun day Linda and I had at Otion. We started the day by having breakfast and reviewing Linda’s reactions about her first day (conclusion: overwhelming but exciting) and made an action plan for the day. Since Linda has plenty of business experience, we chose to focus on making product and trying to narrow down Linda’s desire for a retail store versus a large scale wholesale operation.

After opening the store, we headed to the soap lab to check out Linda’s first batch of soap. I’d say that this turned out pretty good, wouldn’t you? I was thrilled that her first batch looked so smooth and colorful. Given that we did a full 8% beeswax, this should be a long lasting bar in the shower. The batch used green iron oxide, yellow clay and merlot mica.

While I ran out to a meeting, Erik and Linda made 15 pounds of rebatching soap and another loaf to go over swirling techniques. Linda was especially excited to see how to do larger scale production with a drill and 5 gallon bucket.
When I got back, Linda and I made bath fizzies galore. She was amazed at how easy and cost effective bath fizzies are. If you’ve never made bath fizzies, TeachSoap.com has instructions and of course, Bramble Berry has the supplies (including an all-inclusive kit for $21.50).
Linda did a great job with her bath fizzies, learning how to press the materials deeply into the mold to ensure a dense, long lasting tub experience.

Linda’s final bath fizzies turned out great. We went over using extra oils in the bombs, humidity’s role in rock hard fizzies and the use of extra herbs and color in bath fizzies. She has enough take-home goodies to test that she’ll be bathing for a while!

Our next experiment didn’t do so well. We made lip balms and while the lip balms were fabulous, our microwave didn’t live through the afternoon. Check back later this weekend for photos and a description of the debacle (hint: it involves exploding hot glass and oil).

After a wonderful dinner, we sent Linda on her way back home to Michigan. I’m very excited to keep in touch with her to see if she does a retail shop or decides to go the wholesale route. Whatever she does, I know she will be successful.

Jelly Rolls! Jelly Rolls! Day Two (Video)

December 11, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Below is the first layer for our Jelly Roll Soap. It is colored with Lavender Mica and Liquid Violet Colorant in clear melt and pour soap. It reminds me of a delicious vat of molten blueberry taffy.

The secret to successful Jelly Rolls is 2-fold – timing and 10% liquid glycerin addition to melted soap. Add 10% liquid glycerin to your melted soap base along with the fragrance and color for each layer.

There is approximately 3/4 of a teaspoon of Super Pearly White Mica in 8 ounces of melted soap. It is overkill to use this much mica. The same density of color could have been achieved with half of that amount.
Note: The Sparkle Violet Mica previously used in this recipe will be discontinued when supplies run out. You can use Super Pearly White Mica instead.

Alcohol is essential for mixing in the mica. The mica tends to ball up on the surface of the soap, similar to how hot chocolate clumps when you’re making hot chocolate. As you can see in the photo below, there’s a large mica bubble that is stubbornly refusing the mix in.

The video below shows the magic of Isopropyl Rubbing) Alcohol to break up mica bubbles by breaking the surface tension of the soap. The video quality is poor but it should get the point across (sorry, I was stirring while trying to hold the camera and spritz with mica at the same time).

Check back tomorrow for more on how to make Jelly Roll Soap!

Champagne-Sipping Fruity Soap

December 3, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Aren’t they cute? They’re using Kumquat fragrance, non-bleeding purple and either Super Pearly White (soaps on right) or Sparkle Violet (soaps on left) for the contrasting color.

The Kumquat fragrance is absolutely a stunner. It’s bright and effervescently fruity in a sophisticated manner that manages to avoid all nuances of Kool-Aid fruity and stick to adult, champagne-sipping fruity.

I’ll do a tutorial in the next few weeks on how to make Jelly Roll Soap.

Anti-Talc – Day Four – Gold Mica & Mess

November 30, 2007 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials

Click here for Day One – Set Up
Click here for Day Two – Color and Fragrance
Click here for Day Three – More Color and Fragrance

Making a shimmery evening dust to enhance your shoulders and collarbone is easy with a little bit of mica. The best micas for enhancing shimmer without making it look too obvious are gold, light pinks, silvers and white.

Why mica? Micas provide shimmer and sheen, while adding a sophisticated subtle amount of color that does not look garish or overpowering. Micas provide shimmer because a mica is a flat platelet that reflects and refracts light, similar to a diamond in the sun.

Depending on the amount of shimmer and sheen you want, 2 Tablespoons of mica in 16 ounces of powder can provide a healthy glow. In the photo above, the blob of yellow is the fragrance oil and the mica is on the right hand side.

Some ideas for mica in powders are:

Golden Decolletage Powder
Shimmery Fairy Dust Powder
Teenage Rave Powder
Sparkle Cheek Enhancer

Making powder is a messy operation. The powders are lighter than air and float everywhere. It’s delightful when the powders are floating gently out of the shaker and onto your skin. It’s not so delightful when the powders are floating gently all over your counters, into grout crevices, and into your lungs. A mask helps that last bit. The rest can’t be helped and you’ll want to keep a damp rag close by to stay on top of the cleaning process. If anyone comes up with a better way to keep the house clean during this process, please let me know.

Tomorrow, I’ll be in Seattle so will finish up the Talc Project instructions Sunday.

Anti-Talc – Day Three – Color & Fragrance, Again

November 28, 2007 Filed Under: Tips & Tricks

Click here for Day One – Set Up & Ingredient Explanation
Click here for Day Two – Fragrance & Color

As mentioned yesterday, there are a two main ways to color your Talc Powder:

1. Micas – Micas are a natural product that form a flat platelet. This flat platelet is then colored, either with natural or non-natural colors, to form a shimmery, diamond-like color. Micas form the base of most eye shadows and provide the shimmer you see in lipsticks and nail polish. In body powders, micas add a subtle color with a little sparkle.

2. True Tones, Labcolors or other FD & C water-based colorants – These colors are normally used in soaps, lotions, bath fizzies and provide color in most make-up, including lipsticks. These water based colorants are a little trickier to use in dry powders but provide a more defined, bright color. Per use, they are more economical than micas.

The photo above shows the color achieved with Fuchsia True Tone color in the powder. It took just 3 mls (a full dropper) of color in 8 ounces of dry powder to get the bright color in the photo above.

3. Other Additives – Spices, ground herbs, and ground flowers can add color, texture and even scent to your powder. Many times, these items can be scratchy though. Be sure to check the grain of the product to ensure that it won’t irritate skin and doublecheck that the product is skin safe. Also, ground spices and herbs may leave fine bits of herb detritus, often colored, on the skin. Test batches are very important when using spices, ground herbs and flowers.

This is a recipe that uses ground herbs:

2 oz. Tapioca Powder
1 oz. Arrowroot Powder
1 oz. finely powdered dried chamomile flowers
1 drop L avender 40/42 Essential Oil or fragrance oil
2 drops 10x Orange Essential Oil
3 drops gardenia fragrance oil

Here’s another powder recipe using ground lavender buds:

4 oz. Tapioca Powder
1 oz. powdered lavender buds
1 oz. powdered rose petals
optional: 1 tablespoon zinc oxide powder
1/2 teaspoon L avender 40/42 Essential Oil or Rose Fragrance Oil

Other options for adding fragrance: Some people add their fragrances or essential oils to their powders and allow the entire mix to sit for weeks, shaking daily, prior to shifting. The thought is that the fragrances may better permeate the entire batch if the fragrance sits in the powders before sifting. I haven’t found this to be the case.

Another option to cut down on fragrance clumping is to spritz the fragrance onto your dry powders with a very fine mist spritzer. This does cut down on clumping. However, that first spritz can cause the light powder to poof up and out, covering the surrounding area with a fine dust.

Another option to avoid clumping is to avoid adding fragrance directly to the dry powders altogether. The trade off is less scent in the final product for minimal clumps. Add a fragrance or essential oil saturated cotton balls to a sealed container (zip lock or canning jar) filled with the dry powder mixture. Leave the cotton ball in the dry powder for a week (1 or 2 cotton balls per 16 oz of dry products) and shake daily to impart a subtle scent without clumps like the photo above shows.

Check back tomorrow for making sparkle powder and also a bit of a mess.

Do my lips look plump?

September 20, 2007 Filed Under: Tips & Tricks

This product says that it will:

Restore lip fullness and volume within minutes. It also claims to offer long-lasting anti-aging benefits.

Really? Give me some of that! Anti-aging and fullness, all in a wand sounds like something I want.

I applied the two part system today. The tubes are a metallic silver and look very futuristic. Two steps seems extreme for beauty but I’m willing to be inconvenienced for a “more youthful look.”

The Step One feels like a nice smooth milky balm. There are a lot of interesting ingredients in the product not the least of which includes Human Fibroblasts and Marine Filling Spheres.

Step Two is a clear soybean based gloss. It contains niacin which is mildly irritating to the lips, encouraging them to plump up. It also tastes somewhat sweet.

My lips look quite flushed and plump 15 minutes after applying. For $50, it’s an expensive lip gloss but check with me in 4 weeks. If I really do get a reduction in skin folds and increase my pouty lip volume, $50 would seem more reasonable.

Day 6 – Cocoa Balm

August 26, 2007 Filed Under: Lip Products

Day One: Set Up

Day Two: Double Boiler Set-Up

Day Three: Hersheys Trouble

Day Four: Bittersweet Recipe

Day Five: Clean-Up

Day Seven: Final Recipe

Taking the basic chocolate recipe one step further, I tried White Sparkle Shimmer mica in the recipe to add texture and color. The mica mixed in easily. The recipe took a full 10% mica to show any color difference. With a dash of red, the color would be wearable on my washed out pale skin. On the lips, the brown color isn’t very deep or shocking, despite how the photograph looks.

The top kiss is a 2:1:1 ratio (2 parts chocolate:1 part beeswax:1 part jojoba).

The bottom kiss has 10% White Mica added to it.

This is a photo of the chocolate lip balm wiped off. It leaves just a tint of color.

Tomorrow’s post will have the final day including recipes for the winning Choco Balm!

Chocolate Lip Balm, Day One

August 20, 2007 Filed Under: Lip Products

Day Two: Double Boiler Set-Up

Day Three: Hersheys Trouble

Day Four: Bittersweet Recipe

Day Five: Clean-Up

Day Six: Cocoa Balm

Day Seven: Final Recipe

Sunday was a busy day at our home. Chris painted a new bathroom cabinet while I tried to create a workable chocolate lip balm. Here’s what I started with:

Jojoba Oil
Beeswax white
Beeswax yellow
Beeswax yellow prills
twist up tubes
chapstick tubes
daisy pots
lip safe mica (for shimmer)
Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate
plenty of paper towels
lots of disposable spoons & knives
measuring spoons
droppers
heat safe containers

I had basic Hershey’s, bittersweet baking chocolate, Vivian chocolate and Green & Blacks Organic chocolate. Both the Vivian and Green & Blacks have very high cocoa content (above 70%). I expected those two to have a very strong, potent flavor. Just for fun, I had a few extra bars of White Chocolate and Dark Orange Chocolate. Sadly, I did not end up using those but maybe I can try those another day.

The final tool used for this project is frozen knives. They are used to test individual batches in a very quick and easy manner. You’ll learn more about that in a future post this week.

This week’s posts will focus on making chocolate lip balm, with real chocolate for flavor. The final results turned out marvelous.

Instructions for Aloha Surf Shorts

August 7, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Instructions for making Aloha Surf Shorts:

1. Melt 1 ounce of white melt and pour in the microwave
2. Using a dropper, draw up some non-colored, white soap. Carefully dropper/color in the details on the Surf Shorts.
3. Wait for 5 minutes
4. Melt the remaining soap from step 1 and an additional 8 ounces of soap in the microwave. Prior to turning on heat, add 1/4 tsp Cellini Blue Mica.
5. Stir the melted soap to ensure that there are no unmelted Cellini Blue Mica bubbles. Spritz the top of the soap with Rubbing Alcohol to help break up mica bubbles. Cellini Blue is an oil soluble, lip safe colorant. It requires extra stirring to get it fully mixed in.
6. Add your fragrance (we used Ocean Rain)
6. Pour slowly and evenly into the Surf Short Mold.
7. Spritz the top of the soap with alcohol to ensure a smooth and even finish on the soap.
8. Allow to harden for a minimum of 4 hours. Gently pull away the sides of the mold from the soap. Do not force the soap out. The little strips of white color will not come with the soap if you push the soap out too quickly or harshly.
9. Wrap with Saran Wrap or some other breathable method. Label and you’re all done!

In the soap above, since Cellini Blue is an FD&C based color, the blue is morphing into the white lines making a sophisticated similar-hued accent stripe.

If you make the project, I want to see your photos. You can email them to me at info (at) brambleberry (dot) com.