• Baked Makeup

    Posted by Candace on September 21, 2016 at 1:45 am

    We currently produced pressed powder makeup - but I am curious to explore baked makeup - like in the following video. 

    Does anyone have any advice on where to start with formulation and equipment for this type of product? 

    https://youtu.be/u0jk2gRBbD4

    olga replied 2 years, 9 months ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • bobzchemist

    Member
    September 21, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    They actually gave away virtually their entire process in that video. I’m really kind of surprised. Also, more than a few laughs at the beginning.

    What scale are you planning to operate on - batch size, etc.? What purpose are you trying to achieve - commercial sale or home crafting?

    Oh, and by the way - “baked makeup”? Most brilliant idea of making a necessary production step into a marketing tool since “micronized pigments”.

  • johnb

    Member
    September 21, 2016 at 2:19 pm

    Bobzchemist

    That’s what I thought but, not being particularly familiar with colour cosmetics, I thought I was missing some important point.

  • bobzchemist

    Member
    September 21, 2016 at 7:30 pm

    When making powdered makeup, a small amount of oil is needed to act as a binder. The best results are achieved when that oil is spread out evenly throughout the entire batch. The dilemma has always been finding the best way to accomplish those results, since the binder oil wants to absorb strongly on to the powder particles as soon as it contacts them, and too much oil is just as bad for performance as unevenly distributed oil is.

    The traditional way to do this has been to spray the oil onto the batch while it’s being stirred in a ribbon blender, and then to pass the powder + oil mixture through a pulverizer several times.

    This is a time-consuming process, as one might imagine.

    What the folks in that video are doing instead is making an emulsion with the binder oils and water, adding the makeup powders until the mixture becomes a paste, extruding then molding that paste, and finally, drying the water off in an oven. The emulsion and stirring the paste mixture insures a perfect distribution of binder oil onto the powder particles. Since water is bad for pressed powder product stability for a number of reasons, the drying (baking) step is critically important. It’s brilliant to turn that production step into a marketing tool.

    Interestingly (at  least to me) is that the “baked makeup” process didn’t become feasible until it became unacceptable to use parabens in makeup. Prior to that, parabens were the best (and cheapest) preservatives to use in powders, and since they were soluble in water, the water-based process that you see in the video above would have destroyed the preservative system. The cost difference between parabens and oil-soluble preservatives was enough to kill the potential use of this process. Now, since we can’t use parabens anyway, that cost consideration has gone away.

  • victoriayepez

    Member
    October 8, 2016 at 4:24 am

    This seems like a great way to mix an active ingredient in a powder mixture. What about if a ingredient is heat sensitive any other suggestions? How hot is the baking process usually. 

    Does water solubility  cause the parabens to evaporate along with the water? So nothing in the mixture can be water soluble? 

    Victoria Yepez 

  • bobzchemist

    Member
    October 10, 2016 at 2:03 pm

    Baking process is just hot enough to evaporate water efficiently. Must be determined by trial and error experimentation.

    If you use the process above, you could use any water soluble ingredient, come to think of it, even parabens.

    The typical commercial pressed powder process produces thousands of pieces an hour, or more. The original slurry processes all tried to match that speed, so that the water in the slurry was essentially vacuumed away - and with it went all the parabens and other water soluble ingredients. The costs involved with the slurry process killed this technology for about 20-30 years - until the “baked makeup” process came along. That disk they are putting in below the slurry is the key to solving all the slurry problems we used to have, by the way. Very high tech stuff.

  • Candace

    Member
    January 3, 2017 at 3:48 pm

    Interesting, thanks for the comments @Bobzchemist !  

    We would produce 1000-5000 units per shade.  It sounds like we will just stick with our regular pressed powdered products and wait for the “baked” trend to pass.  

  • olga

    Member
    June 2, 2021 at 4:40 pm

    Baking process is just hot enough to evaporate water efficiently. Must be determined by trial and error experimentation.

    If you use the process above, you could use any water soluble ingredient, come to think of it, even parabens.

    The typical commercial pressed powder process produces thousands of pieces an hour, or more. The original slurry processes all tried to match that speed, so that the water in the slurry was essentially vacuumed away - and with it went all the parabens and other water soluble ingredients. The costs involved with the slurry process killed this technology for about 20-30 years - until the “baked makeup” process came along. That disk they are putting in below the slurry is the key to solving all the slurry problems we used to have, by the way. Very high tech stuff.

    Hi, I know that it’s 5 years since the topic started, but there is not much on the pressed powders. 
    Is it ok for example (for DIY just for yuorfelf) to use cyclomethicone to make the process of mixing pigment and oils (with dimethicone) more easy, and than to heat the pressed powder up in order to evaporate cyclomethicone quickly (or just wait)?

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