Li's crafting thoughts 08-01-07

Products I've been working on over the last several weeks (I haven't crafted much over the last two weeks since I'm currently out of town)


Serums (oil based): A few weeks ago I made a serum that's good for all skin types, one that is super high in antioxidants, and one for mature skin. I still have to work on all the essential oil blends for my serums though (which will up the antioxidant content even more, so all my serums will contain antioxidants). I also need to craft serums for other skin types too. But the trouble is that I have thirty or so carrier oils to work with and I can't seem to decide which oils to use because I keep coming up with so many different combos! ;P

Toners: I've been experimenting with blending different hydrosols together for toners. I think that initially I may just offer plain hydrosols to tone and hydrate, and later add hydrosol toners to my product line.

Lip Balm:A while ago, I also made yet another vegan lip balm; this time I made one that is high in antioxidants. I don't really know what I think about it yet. The texture of this one is nice but I don't like how much the balm shrinks after pouring them in the tubes. Either I need to find a different way to pour it in tubes, reformulate it, or offer it in a pot or jar. Also I used distinct smelling carrier oils which may bother some people (I tried to improve the scent with essential oils but it didn't really help).

I also need to test all my balms to make sure they don't melt too much in the heat! (They aren't as hard as some of the balms I've tried on the market). The trouble with crafting vegan balms is that if you use too much of certain (vegan) waxes the balm will not only become too hard but it will be so hard it becomes brittle (ask me how I know-LOL!). I kind of miss crafting with beeswax because the texture of a beeswax balm is perfect; it is really hard to mess up a beeswax based balm (if you use too much beeswax it simply gets really hard but not brittle).

Though I am pretty happy with the formulation of my other three balms, I still need to work on which scents/essential oil combos to offer. The bad thing is that I don't know if I will be able to sell the lip balm formulation I like the most, which has east shea butter in it, because east shea is really hard to come by now (very few places sold it before, and all the sources I know of are all sold out now or do not wholesale it any longer). I may have to switch to using west shea butter, but that will totally change the texture, and may become gritty if I'm not careful.

Mask:A couple days ago I made a body mask/scrub with some basic food stuffs (true 'kitchen cosmetics' :) ). I love traveling but when traveling I really miss not crafting almost every day, and having access to all of my herbal ingredients :( The mask/scrub was vegetarian but not vegan. The mask was yogurt (unsweetened, organic), honey, and sugar based (one of these days if I find a good unsweetened organic soy yogurt I'll probably try using that in skin care instead of regular yogurt! :) ) It was very moisturizing for my dehydrated skin.

Hair: My family has asked for some hair products to improve hair health so I am going to craft some for them using herbs from their delicious garden :)

Those are the main (new) things I've crafted (in addition I crafted some old favorites like body oils, herbal rinses, and a couple new things like other masks and scrubs, etc)

Agenda: (once I get back into town): lotion, lotion, and more lotion (for face and body) and a variety of facial cleansers, but mostly I will be focusing on serums (I think I may end up offering at least 12 and maybe up to 20 different formulations) and essential oil blends (for both the serums and lip balms, and possibly other products).

I also will be attending Monave's mineral makeup and marketing seminar on August 12th :) Looking forward to it since there will be a lot of business info.