Week 3

Hey all! Happy week three! Thank you all for continuing to follow my blog as I learn more and more about the chemistry and marketing behind dermatology products.

This week I have made a lot of progress in creating my lip product. The goals, as stated earlier, were to be all natural, contain an SPF, deeply moisturize, and leave the user with a thoroughly enjoyable experience. To create a unique product I have been doing a lot of research about specific ingredients in the past weeks. On Tuesday, I brought in a list of ingredients which I wanted to use along with how it would correspond to an existing formula for a lip balm.

Last week, Kerwin had given me a sample formula for a lip balm that I could use to gain inspiration for my own product. I decided that I want to make a lip butter that can easily penetrate the lip’s thin layers, so, over the weekend I did some research on the ingredients that would be going into my own product. And research takes a long time, especially when you want to create an amazing product that you are proud of.

So I walked into Kerwin’s lab on Tuesday and we sat down and talked about my ingredients, and he told me to create my formula! I was a bit shocked, not knowing exact concentrations to use or percentages, but that is what is really cool: to begin, it’s kind of an educated guess of what percentages to use in a formula. So I wrote it down, Kerwin checked over it, we gathered the ingredients, and he let me put everything together in a beaker!

At the beginning

20 minutes in

40 minutes in

Right before we poured the lip balm into the containers.

Complete side note: I’m super grateful that I get to work with Kerwin, because he is letting me create my own product which I could have never imagined of doing! Huge shout out to Kerwin for being so involved in my project, way more than I could ever ask for.

Back on track. Thursday, we melted everything down, put in the pigments, and poured the lip balms. They smelled super good, thanks to an essential oil I’m using, but the consistency and color are very off. Of course I cannot tell you what is exactly in my product at this stage, I will tell you that this first round was based in coconut oil which has proved to have too low of a melting point to be at such a high level in my product.

So this weekend I am continuing to work on my formula percentages with ingredients that will increase the viscosity. And also, my product was super white since I am using a white, natural ingredient, so I will either have to take out the sunscreen or pigment it with all natural pigments, which could look unnatural to the consumer even if it is natural.

Question for you guys: if you see a pigmented lip balm, would you think of it as unnatural? 

Have a great weekend!