Tonight I ended up experimenting with making lipstick for about 7 hours straight. My lips are raw from rubbing them on and off, and my bathtub is stained iron-red. This quest came after the debacle of 100% Pure changing their recipe to have lake dyes. I personally don’t like lakes in my lipstick and I tend to break out from a lot of ingredients, Titanium Dioxide included. The number of lipstick brands on the market without either of those is roughly under 10. The number of perfect reds is even less. Most fruit/vegetable dyed lipsticks are purple, and most iron oxides are rust colored (duh because it is literally rust).

So… I mixed and matched iron oxides (synthetically made just for purity and to avoid harsh metals) for hours trying to get a blend that I liked. Eventually I ended up having a stroke of genius and mixing my purple-toned Hurraw Paw lip tint with the red Iron Oxide blend I made. It’s not perfect… but it’s something a little closer to what I’ve been looking for.

The shade I made tonight is on the top. While it’s not the reddest red that I’ve ever seen, it is a lot better than the oranges and browns I made prior. The formula is quite nice, and is elevated by the fruit lip balm. The main ingredients before I threw caution to the wind and mixed the purple balm in were shea butter(1tbsp), beeswax (.5 tbsp), coconut oil (about 1tsp), jojoba oil (enough to get the iron oxides wet in the start and to keep the mixture from being clay), and iron oxides. I’m not going to lie, I made them in a Scentsy warmer because I didn’t want to double boil or deal with a hotter stove.

Whether or not I’ll actually start wearing it… I’m not sure, I do think it’s a fairly decent shade on me, so I might give it a shot.