Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Natural Fragrance

Talking about my products with a few people lately, it seems as if a lot of people are confused about natural scents. I only use naturally derived fragrances (essential oils, absolutes, concretes, waxes, enfleurage, and CO2 extractions) in my products, so if someone recommends a flavor or scent, I sometimes say I can't do it, since they don't exist in a natural form. It doesn't help that some companies advertise their products as natural, but don't mention that their scents come from fragrance oils. I'm not strictly opposed to fragrance oils and synthetic fragrances, but I think many people aren't aware that the products they're using aren't scented naturally.

Many fragrances aren't available in a viable natural form. When talking about lip balm flavors, a lot of friends mention various fruity flavors, but they're not available as essential oils. A "natural" flavor can be made, but you won't necessarily know what it's made from.


Citrus fruits are some of the few that can be turned into essential oils, and there really are many wonderful ones to choose from. I keep several types of orange essential oil on hand- blood, bitter, sweet, wild. The different colors of grapefruits and mandarins produce slightly different scents as well. That's not even going into lemon, lime, and all the other citrus fruits you find out there. Citrus oils are often inexpensive, but the main issue is that they can increase photosensitivity, so you don't want to add a lot to products that will stay on the skin. Bergamot is particularly bad due to the bergaptene in it. There are bergaptene free versions out there, so those are a little less likely to leave you burned.

Some essential oils have a fruity smell, such as Roman Chamomile, red raspberry leaf, black currant bud, osmanthus, and boronia. These range in price from expensive to obscenely expensive, so it's unlikely you'll find them in a beauty product, at least not one that isn't equally expensive. Also, while some of them have a fruity aspect, the other aspects to their fragrances make it so that they won't really come of as a simple fruit smell.

Floral scents are pretty tricky. Lots of them are available as essential oils or absolutes, but floral oils are usually pricy. Some are incredibly rare- there's only a small amount of gardenia absolute produced, and it costs a small fortune. Gardenia enfleurage is another option, but again it's too much money for anyone to want to throw it into a soap. I use an absolute and maceration of gardenia in my Monoi Hair & Body Oil (coming soon!), but most gardenia scents out there come from a fragrance oil.

Enfleurage, maceration, and CO2 extractions are options for getting a fragrance out of some flowers that don't otherwise give up their scents. These are expensive and hard to find, so scents like lilac most likely from a fragrance oil.

There are also some flowers that don't have a scent that can be captured. We might long for a natural scent from them, but they either have little to no fragrance of their own, or the fragrance is too delicate to survive extraction.

I don't think people should necessarily avoid all fragrance oils and synthetic scents. They're an easy and inexpensive way to give a product a nice scent. There many high quality fragrance oils out there, some that even use essential oils and absolutes. Without them, we wouldn't have coconut scented soap or strawberry lotion. Scents like rose and jasmine would be available, but many people wouldn't be able to afford them.



Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Favorite Essential Oils

While I love buying a wide variety of crazy essential oils, there are some I really love, and wish to add to everything. Below are a few of the ones I turn to the most.

Top Notes:
Yellow Mandarin: This is a softer, slightly floral citrus. It blends beautifully with many other essential oils. A lot of citrus oils have scents that are kind of obvious- orange, lemon, and lime, for example. There are many varieties of orange, and I love playing with those, too. But yellow mandarin is my go to for a citrus top note.

Cinnamon CO2: I keep wanting to add this to a lip balm. It smells so fresh and sweet- exactly the kind of cinnamon I want. A lot of cinnamon essential oils don't smell that great to me, but this one I could sniff all day. Unfortunately, it's very strong, so adding even a little to lip balms might result in stinging lips. I'm still experimenting though, and hoping to find a level that will give a nice cinnamon scent without the ouch factor.

Cardamom CO2: I added a little of this to my Wild Orange & Lavender Lip Balm, which adds a subtle twist to the flavor. I love cardamom, and it's one of my favorite spices for cooking and baking. I also have some rare cardamom absolute, but that's a little pricy to be throwing around everywhere. Cardamom essential oil is nice as well, but the CO2 has a cleaner scent.

Pink Peppercorn: My favorite pepper. I also have white and black pepper, but use them less. The white pepper isn't exciting enough, and the black pepper can be a little harsh. It adds a little excitement to blends without overwhelming them.

Middle Notes:
Orange Blossom Organic Extract: Different than orange blossom absolute, which can be heavy and sometimes a little too dirty. It's not the same as neroli either, though probably closer to a neroli scent than an orange blossom absolute scent. The scent is light but not weak, and is a great addition to any orange blossom collection.

Moroccan Rose Absolute: There are so many roses, and so many extractions for them. While I don't have the money to try them all, Moroccan rose is so far my favorite absolute. I use a Turkish rose otto for lip balms and skin care. It has a nice odor profile, and while still expensive, it is cheaper than Bulgarian rose otto. I have also tried a rose otto from Moldova.While significantly cheaper than even the Turkish otto,  I was not impressed with that one.

Jasmine Sambac Absolute: I prefer this to jasmine grandiflorum, though I use both. While jasmine isn't necessarily a filler, it blends in nicely with a wide variety of fragrances. I need to be careful though, since I tend to use it with too many other white flowers, ending up with an overly indolic fragrance.

Ylang Ylang: A sweet floral scent, and it's cheaper than many other floral essential oils. I like "complete" and "extra" best, though the other grades might work well for soaping.

Base Notes:
Vetiver: I didn't like it much at first, but I love it now. While it doesn't work with everything, it's become one of my go to base notes.

Sandalwood Absolute, New Caledonia: I love Mysore and East Indian sandalwood, but it's becoming rare and I worry about the ecological impacts of buying them. I've tried a few other sandalwoods, but the absolute is my favorite.

Opoponax: I love the absolute, but I do like the essential oil as well. The absolute is a nice sweet base note, with an interesting warm balsamic fragrance.


Thursday, September 5, 2013

Beauty and Patents

While a cosmetic maker by night, I am a research assistant by day. Most of my research is on techy patent cases. I was joking with a coworker that I could make your lip balm and research lip balm patents. Of course I had to search for lip balm patents after that.

First off, my search strategy. Skip this paragraph if you don't care for the nitty gritty details. I used Free Patents Online for my search, since I've been using them for a long time and like their search function. The USPTO has their own patent search tool, and there are many other patent websites out there, as well as paid databases. I searched "lip balm" in the title fields and abstract fields separately. A general search for "lip balm" comes up with over 3000 results, which is far too many to sort through just for fun. A search for lip balm without quotes has almost 5000 hits- not as many as I thought there would be, honestly.

Most of the patents with "lip balm" in the title were design patents, and I didn't look at any of those. Many of the utility patents were about the packaging/casing as well, and so I skipped over those as well.

While I adore chemistry, I didn't want to puzzle out the ingredients some of the patents were discussing. I've listed the ones I find interesting below, but there are definitely more out there.

Botanical butter stick lip balm, Patent 7695727
This one puzzles me. I'm not sure how it's novel- is it the jojoba esters? I have some jojoba esters, but haven't used them in anything yet. I was mostly curious as to what they were like. Using candelilla, carnauba, botanical butters, and liquid oils hardly seems novel. Using a small amount of beeswax in such a recipe doesn't seem too strange either.

Hypoallergenic cosmetics, lip balms and lip sticks, Patent 4793991
This one's a bit older, and kind of interesting. Basically you used single plant origin beeswax, combined with that plant's oil (or an oil that is similar). I know of single plant honey (I see lavender and orange blossom in stores), but never thought about the beeswax.

Compositions and methods for delivery of caffeine, Patent 7560465
Caffeinated lip balm- specifically, dissolved caffeine added to a lip balm base. Given how much lip balm I apply in a day, that could be dangerous. I do use coffee oil in my Mocha Lip Balm, but that probably has minimal caffeine.

Nicotine replacement applique, Patent 7105173
Caffeine, nicotine...I guess you can try to handle all of your addictions with a little lip balm. I'm fairly certain this would be regulated as a drug, though I'm not exactly sure in which way- it has a drug in it, and the drug itself is an active ingredient in a cosmetic. Maybe the inventor of this patent and the caffeine patent should meet up and try to make one new super patent.

Land mine, Patent 5423266
So this patent has nothing to do with lip balms, but it came back in my search results for "lip balm" in the abstract. Because this land mine is about the size of a lip balm. Kind of scary and sad.

My job is to pull patents and to look for ones that meet the attorneys' specifications. I do not interpret patents, so these are just my musings. Patent litigation is expensive, so please do not consider these as a jumping off point for your products.






Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Cleaning up my workspace

When I moved across the bay, I was so excited that I finally had my own little crafting room. I bought a giant wooden old filing cabinet with regular cabinets underneath that takes up a lot of space, but holds all sorts of things. I use it for paper, ingredients, packaging, etc. I also have a little plastic table that I've turned into my scent station. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I've run out of room there, and have essential oils taking over other spots. I have a little book case, some carts, and a mini-fridge. I also had a sewing machine, some fabric, and various other crafty supplies.

While getting ready to launch my business, my slightly disorganized space became rather hectic, with papers everywhere, supplies misplaced, and every empty surface filled. I went on a reorganizing mission this weekend. I started with kicking out the non-business craft supplies- those are now out of the way, and might even be easier to use now that they're not competing for space. That cleared up a lot of space, so I got a new tall bookcase and another cart to help me get better organized. After a few hours or moving things into their new places, I finally had a clean space in the middle of the floor, and logical places for my supplies and ingredients.

Things are still a little crazy, but they probably always will be. I tend to know where everything is, even if it's not obvious to anyone else. And some day I will relabel the filing cabinet drawers, which still have the previous owner's labels. For example, I do keep manuals in the "manuals," but I use the "shrunken heads" drawer for bottle caps. I know. It's not nearly as exciting.



My scent station.

My awesome cabinet.