what’s in here what’s it do and can I
make it from scratch
heat the stuff is on your side
ingredients you can think of lipstick as
a slightly more complicated crayon
crayons are made of waxes and colors and
lipsticks have waxes and colors in them
too but if you’ve ever tried drawing on
your face with a crayon you’ll find that
it doesn’t really work the way you’d
like because crayons are hard because
they need to write on a hard surface
whereas lipsticks have to be soft
because your lips are soft so in
addition to the waxes and colors they
also contain oils and a bunch of other
stuff depending on exactly what type of
lipstick you buy but what I really want
to talk about is the reason you buy
lipstick in the first place and that is
its color co-channel is a scale insect
that feeds on prickly pear plants and it
was used to make dye in South America
hundreds of years ago now these bugs
produce a chemical called carminic acid
which is this brilliant red color to get
the dye out of the bugs you kill them
specifically you kill the pregnant
females because that’s where the dye is
and it takes about 90,000 or so bugs to
make one kilogram of dry coach neil
powder today we still use coach neil to
color not just lipsticks but also foods
look for coach neil extract or carmine
which is made from carminic acid on an
ingredients label so at this point you
might be wondering why do we use bugs to
color food I mean ideally wouldn’t we
just make all of our colors in a lab
somewhere actually that is mostly what
happens these days but it turns out that
many of the brilliant non white non
black colors are chemically really hard
to make so for most of human history
we’ve had to rely on nature to do all
the complicated chemistry of color
making for us hence the grinding up of
bugs
now once chemists started being able to
make reds like carmine in a lab the use
of bug juice went way down although it’s
been enjoying a bit of a resurgence
lately because people have been asking
for all-natural ingredients
go figure now if you look at the
ingredients of a lipstick you’ll see
that there’s usually more than one color
ingredient and typically these color
ingredients are described both by a
regular English name like red 7 Lake Oh
by a color index or CI number and this
number can sometimes tell you more than
you think like a secret code so for
example any number starting with seven
five that is a natural color so carmine
is seven five four seven zero any number
starting with seven seven
that’s an inorganic compound which is
basically something that doesn’t have
carbon atoms titanium dioxide which is
white and mixed with red to make pink
lipstick is seven seven eight nine one
and then there’s seven seven four nine
one nine two and nine nine which are all
slightly different versions of iron
oxides also known as rust yep
sometimes the rust red color of your
favorite lipstick is literally rust so
now that we know it’s in lipstick and
how it works I’m gonna try and make my
own from scratch using natural
ingredients starting with rust as my
homemade lipstick colorant and I’m going
to use mica for some glitter and shine
now mica comes from granite and other
rocks and this stuff is the best glitter
bomb material I have ever seen it gets
everywhere and never comes out so use
that information wisely as for my waxes
I’ve got beeswax which comes from bees
and paraffin wax which comes from crude
oil as for the oils I’ve got canola oil
and coconut oil I’m just going to assume
that the rest of the stuff in lipstick
doesn’t matter all that much so we’ll
see how right or wrong I am
[Music]
okay time to pour this into a lipstick
mold well so much for that idea now we
let this harden let’s try it I made a
bit of a mess of things but here’s the
mold I’m just going to pop it open
[Music]
oh wait wait here comes ah lipstick okay
the moment of truth area I have to say
that’s actually the first time I’ve ever
done that so let me get my mirror here
and see oh that’s amazing
hey man it is not bad I’m really sort of
huh really good okay so we did it we we
made lipstick I am hmm
I can’t tell though if it’s really
glittery the red the iron definitely
worked but I don’t know if it shimmers
as much as I wanted it to it’s possible
that the mica settled to the bottom of
the mold while it was still cooling and
the way to fix that would be to use even
more finely divided mica but I would
give this I would give this I’d give
this a nine out of ten eight and a half
eight and a half out of ten so if you
guys have ideas on how to improve this
recipe let me know in the comments or
hit me up on Twitter and if you have an
idea for an episode let me know as well
[Music]
you
make it from scratch
heat the stuff is on your side
ingredients you can think of lipstick as
a slightly more complicated crayon
crayons are made of waxes and colors and
lipsticks have waxes and colors in them
too but if you’ve ever tried drawing on
your face with a crayon you’ll find that
it doesn’t really work the way you’d
like because crayons are hard because
they need to write on a hard surface
whereas lipsticks have to be soft
because your lips are soft so in
addition to the waxes and colors they
also contain oils and a bunch of other
stuff depending on exactly what type of
lipstick you buy but what I really want
to talk about is the reason you buy
lipstick in the first place and that is
its color co-channel is a scale insect
that feeds on prickly pear plants and it
was used to make dye in South America
hundreds of years ago now these bugs
produce a chemical called carminic acid
which is this brilliant red color to get
the dye out of the bugs you kill them
specifically you kill the pregnant
females because that’s where the dye is
and it takes about 90,000 or so bugs to
make one kilogram of dry coach neil
powder today we still use coach neil to
color not just lipsticks but also foods
look for coach neil extract or carmine
which is made from carminic acid on an
ingredients label so at this point you
might be wondering why do we use bugs to
color food I mean ideally wouldn’t we
just make all of our colors in a lab
somewhere actually that is mostly what
happens these days but it turns out that
many of the brilliant non white non
black colors are chemically really hard
to make so for most of human history
we’ve had to rely on nature to do all
the complicated chemistry of color
making for us hence the grinding up of
bugs
now once chemists started being able to
make reds like carmine in a lab the use
of bug juice went way down although it’s
been enjoying a bit of a resurgence
lately because people have been asking
for all-natural ingredients
go figure now if you look at the
ingredients of a lipstick you’ll see
that there’s usually more than one color
ingredient and typically these color
ingredients are described both by a
regular English name like red 7 Lake Oh
by a color index or CI number and this
number can sometimes tell you more than
you think like a secret code so for
example any number starting with seven
five that is a natural color so carmine
is seven five four seven zero any number
starting with seven seven
that’s an inorganic compound which is
basically something that doesn’t have
carbon atoms titanium dioxide which is
white and mixed with red to make pink
lipstick is seven seven eight nine one
and then there’s seven seven four nine
one nine two and nine nine which are all
slightly different versions of iron
oxides also known as rust yep
sometimes the rust red color of your
favorite lipstick is literally rust so
now that we know it’s in lipstick and
how it works I’m gonna try and make my
own from scratch using natural
ingredients starting with rust as my
homemade lipstick colorant and I’m going
to use mica for some glitter and shine
now mica comes from granite and other
rocks and this stuff is the best glitter
bomb material I have ever seen it gets
everywhere and never comes out so use
that information wisely as for my waxes
I’ve got beeswax which comes from bees
and paraffin wax which comes from crude
oil as for the oils I’ve got canola oil
and coconut oil I’m just going to assume
that the rest of the stuff in lipstick
doesn’t matter all that much so we’ll
see how right or wrong I am
[Music]
okay time to pour this into a lipstick
mold well so much for that idea now we
let this harden let’s try it I made a
bit of a mess of things but here’s the
mold I’m just going to pop it open
[Music]
oh wait wait here comes ah lipstick okay
the moment of truth area I have to say
that’s actually the first time I’ve ever
done that so let me get my mirror here
and see oh that’s amazing
hey man it is not bad I’m really sort of
huh really good okay so we did it we we
made lipstick I am hmm
I can’t tell though if it’s really
glittery the red the iron definitely
worked but I don’t know if it shimmers
as much as I wanted it to it’s possible
that the mica settled to the bottom of
the mold while it was still cooling and
the way to fix that would be to use even
more finely divided mica but I would
give this I would give this I’d give
this a nine out of ten eight and a half
eight and a half out of ten so if you
guys have ideas on how to improve this
recipe let me know in the comments or
hit me up on Twitter and if you have an
idea for an episode let me know as well
[Music]
you
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