Mineral Makeup Part Two

Now that we have all of our supplies assembled, now the fun starts. The first thing that we do is to lay down pieces of wax paper to protect the surface from our oxides. These are intense colors and they can stain.

What I'm doing is starting to add the different colored oxides to get ready to blend. The goal is to achieve a "brown" color. Yes, you can buy a few different shades of brown oxides, but this gets me closer to the type of brown that I need. Some women have a peachy complexion, some very yellow, some pink, you get the picture.

I take my little popsickle stick and I start to cut in the colors. I've also added a little of TO2, Titanium Dioxide with a little mica to help the blending process. You can see now, with my yellow, red-blue, red, green, ultramarine blue, I've achieved a "pink" brown. I will use the black oxide if I the shade is correct but I need to darken it. One year, we met my sisters Jodi and Karen in Iowa for a weekend camping spree. I brought all my supplies and proceeded to make mineral makeup at the picnic table. It was difficult to get the coloring right for my sisters out in the Iowa sun. I sent Jodi home with a little baggie of black oxides just in case the color was too light under her lights. Later on, she gave it back to me. She said she was too scared to use it. It does look a little frightening but I've never added too much black. Now red is another problem. Red oxides are harder to mix. It's quite easy to get little red streaks in your makeup.

I've added my base ingredients to my Magic Bullet. There are maybe nine different ingredients in my veil or finishing powder in addition to the oxides. Ingredients that I use are Kaolin clay, pearl powder, silk powder, silica microspheres, magnesium sterate, boron nitride, calcium carbonate, rice powder and zinc oxide. The batch I'm whipping up here is for my boss Connie and she has sensitive skin. So I skip the rice powder and the zinc oxide and try to limit the kaolin clay. Each ingredient has it's role to play. It could be used for slip, adhesion, filler, oil absorption, UV ray protection, etc. Mineral makeup foundation uses pretty much the same ingredients except different ratios. The veil is more translucent. I also add more silk powder and pearl powder to my mineral veil. Before I turn on the blender, I add a little spritz of water to the blender to help keep down all the flying powder.

I slowly start to add my blended oxides. I add a little scoop at a time. Remember when I told you that red oxides are difficult. This help me to get them blended. I go slowly and add a small scoop at a time. Hopefully by proceeding slowly, this will eliminate going too dark.

Connie's mineral veil is finished. Her original batch is in a small container that I've used to compare with. I need to purchase a scale to be more accurate. Ingredients really should be weighed not just scooped out. There can be a lot of variance with the color. The two batches were actually very close in coloring. The camera flash kind of distorted the color a tad.