Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Dripping/pooling/bleeding of lip balms and glosses

  • Dripping/pooling/bleeding of lip balms and glosses

    Posted by Quiny11 on September 18, 2023 at 12:44 pm

    I’m not sure what to the call the phenomenon, but it’s the following experience: you put on a lip balm/gloss and 5 minutes later a lot of the lip product has pooled onto the bottom of your lower lip (or even on the top of your upper lip). Visibly, you can see the lip product material accumulating as a liquid on all edges of your lower lip. Even if you don’t move your lips, the issue occurs. This pooling is occurring with my lip balm formulation too, and I want your thoughts about solving it. The formulation is to be in a tube, not stick form, and is to have high gloss.

    The issue may be resolved by increasing materials such as high MW Hydrogenated Poly (C6-14 Olefin), hydrogenated polyisobutene, polyisobutene, etc., and also including Ethylene/Propylene/Styrene Copolymer, wax, silica, hectorite, or similar; Usually the product’s skinfeel suffers from too much stickiness and thickness, but not always. Rhode’s Peptide Lip Treatment successfully solves the problem without any sacrifices (no dripping with no stickiness). Dior’s Lip Glow Oil does a fair job.

    I’ve tried upping microcrystalline wax (90C melting point) very high, 7-9%, but you start encountering other problems (dispensing difficulty, stringyness) and it doesn’t seem to fix the issue; At 50C my formula doesn’t even flow because of the amount of wax crystals, yet the issue is present when on the lips. I plan on trying silica dimethyl silylate and polyamide-3/8 next, but have little hope since it seems the interactions enabling this oil-gelling are very weak and easily disrupted. I thought that achieving no “flow” (yield) at 50C would solve the problem, but it has little connection it seems. I don’t think I have an issue with adhesion either: for example, I’m using >50% dimer dilinoleyl dimer dilinoleate.

    Quiny11 replied 1 year, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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