Mineral make-up - Introduction, part 1

To those of you who followed a link from Tutorializer or another blog to get here, welcome! This is only the first post on mineral make-up - I think there's something like 92 posts on the topic on the blog (click here to see them) with many ideas for various things like eye shadow, foundation, and so on. I encourage you to read other posts on the topic to learn how to make the shade you've always wanted - I am kinda partial to lime green and yellow and these neutrals really don't represent the full rainbow of possibilities! On to the post! 

So what's mineral make up and how do I make it? Whoa, slow down there just a little bit - 2 questions is a lot for first thing in the morning!

Mineral make up is generally defined as make up made from minerals. A colourless base is created using various ingredients, then you add iron oxides and micas to create a colour.

How do you make it? Well, that's really a question that starts off what could be a million part series for this blog...

First, we're going to call it MMU from now on because that's easier to type. Secondly, I find it is easier to understand something and make it your own when you know why you are doing what you are doing...so let's start with ingredients.

When you go hunting for MMU recipes, you're going to find a ton of various ingredients, all of which seem awesome and essential and wonderful. Some of them are essential and some of them are merely ones favoured by the company that published the recipe. So how do you figure out what you need, what you don't need, and what you can substitute for something else?

Concept: You could just mix the micas and iron oxides and slather them on your face, but you want them to stay there so you don't walk around with crazy clown face, frightening the children, who then run past your house screaming "crazy clown lady" on Hallowe'en. So you're left with all that candy, which you eat, because you are depressed at being the person on the block the children avoid. And your skin breaks out, so you put on more foundation, which morphs in colour, so you become the "zombie lady" and everyone avoids you because they think you want to eat their brains, but you don't, because you really just want another Mars bar. Then you have to move and you end up moving beside a really crazy cat lady and she makes your life miserable because she has so many cats and the smell is annoying and they keep you up with their incessant meowing and you don't get enough sleep, then you fall down a flight of stairs on a BC ferry because you're tired, but this time you don't end up with a hematoma on your bum, you end up breaking your neck and dying. All because you didn't want to use a base! Think about it, won't you?

And you need them to stay there when your skin gets oily or when you get rained on. And we don't want the colour to change - as it can when you don't compensate for the oily skin factor. So we include ingredients for that reason.

MY EYESHADOW BASE

4 tsp serecite mica
1 tsp titanium dioxide (I use oil soluble)
1 tsp dry-flo

Put the ingredients into a coffee grinder or Magic Bullet and grind for quite some time -- at least 2 or 3 minutes. Now put into a container to be used as your base. (Feel free to increase the amounts by the same ratios -- I generally make up 8 tsp serecite mica, 2 tsp titanium dioxide, and 2 tsp dry-flo so I have a ton around!) An eye shadow container takes about 7/8 tsp.

Why these ingredients? What does each one bring to the party?

A DIGRESSION: A FEW CONCEPTS

For mineral make-up, you want coverage -- this is usually defined as light, medium, or full coverage. This means how well it covers up your own skin colour. For eye shadows, coverage is a good thing because you want your colours to pop!

The opposite of coverage is translucency. You may want to include ingredients that aren't apparent once they are on your face. These ingredients are used for things like mineral veils or glitter powders (you don't want something white on your skin, just glittery) or sheer eye shadows and blushes.

Finally, you want slip. Slip is how well the product goes on your skin, how well it "slips" and doesn't drag. So we include ingredients that make application nice and smooth.

CONTINUING WITH THE EYE SHADOW RECIPE BREAKDOWN

Serecite mica gives you the coverage. It offers medium coverage and adds a slight shine, which is good for an eye shadow. It's sheer and allows the minerals to stay on your face. It keeps your colour true during the day and can repel water.

Titanium dioxide gives you heavy coverage. It is opaque and can whiten your colours. It's also a great adhesion ingredient.

Dry-flo is modified corn starch. I find it gives the eye shadow a nice slip when applying and it's translucent when applied.

So what we have in this recipe are ingredients to:
1. offer slip;
2. create coverage - medium and full;
3. repel water;
4. keep your colours true; and
5. adhere to your skin.

SUBSTITUTIONS

When you are substituting, it isn't necessary a 1:1 ratio of substitution. For instance, you can substitute zinc oxide for the titanium dioxide in this recipe at the same amount, but substituting the dry-flo might take more. This really is an art in getting the right feel and staying power. So try some things and see if you like it!

Titanium dioxide -- Get yourself some titanium dioxide. It's pretty essential to most MMU recipes. You could substitute zinc oxide for this ingredient. This is available at pretty much all soap suppliers. It's cheap and it's easy to find.

Serecite mica -- You can use micronospheres, which are lovely, but I really do encourage you to get the serecite mica. You can get it at Voyageur or Suds & Scent (links on the right hand side of the page) and you can get micronospheres at Voyageur (as well as other MMU suppliers - this is just my favourite!). What do the micronospheres do? They offer slip, adhesion, water repellation (is that a word?), and adheres to your skin. So they do what the serecite mica does with a little less shine. This might be what you want...so try it if you like!

Dry-Flo: Leave it out if you want, or substitute some rice powder, kaolin clay, corn starch, or silk. We want something translucent that offers slip. You can go hog wild and substitute all the Dry-Flo with silk, but this gets expensive.

WHAT NEXT?
You've got your base and you love it. Make a ton of it...you will need it. You want to play and try new colours, and it is annoying to have to stop and make another batch of it in the middle of your colour extravaganza.

TOMORROW'S TUTORIAL -- How to make a basic eye shadow! Get out those micas and iron oxides because it's an eye shadow extravaganza!