Some Essentials on Essential Fatty Acids

Once vilified, fats and oils are now celebrated. Hardly a day goes by without me seeing a post about the top ten uses for coconut oil or such. Honestly, I think the best part about virgin coconut oil is that it smells and tastes like coconuts. And refined coconut oil? It's a good cheap oil for soap, bringing lots of lather to your recipe. It's a good source of medium-chain fatty acids and has a good shelf life. However, it only has a small amount of Linoleic acid, one of the essential fatty acids (EFAs).

I recently finished reading Susan M. Parker's Power of the Seed, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more. It's a pretty awful title, but it's a good book. It covers the chemistry and components of oils, plus it includes a lot of profiles (about 90, I believe) of various oils. There are several appendices that help present the information on the oils in various ways, including a saponification value chart, if you make soap). There are few recipes if you don't know where to start with all the oils.

A Little Science

There are two essential fatty acids- Linoleic Acid (LA) and alpha-Linolenic acid (LNA). They are called such because your body doesn't produce them, so you need to get them from other sources. They're both polyunsaturated fatty acids, meaning they have two or more double bonds in their carbon chains. Saturated fatty acids don't have double bonds and are less susceptible to oxidation. LA has 2 double bonds, and LNA has 3, so LNA has the shorter shelf life of the two.

LA is an omega-6 fatty acid, and LNA is omega-3. You've probably heard of omega-3, and maybe omega-6 and omega-9. All unsaturated fatty acids have omega names, and the number refers to the first double bond in from the free end (the omega) of the chain. For omega-3, this means means your first double bond occurs at the third carbon in the chain,counting in from the omega. Saturated fats do not have omega names, which probably makes them sad.

Eating Your Omega-3

It's not my place to give medical advice, so I'm going to discuss sources rather than health benefits. It's easier to get enough linoleic acid in your diet, but fewer foods have high percentages of LNA.  You'll often see omega-3 supplements, sometimes in pill form or as a straight oil.

You might think of fish when you hear omega-3, and most of the supplements for omega-3 fatty acids are various of fish oils. Other than a brief time when I was four years old, I never liked fish, plus I went vegetarian when I was a teenager. So I do not recommend fish, because I think they're gross as a food and they belong swimming merrily in the water. And if you're an omnivore who doesn't like fish but is considering fish oil supplements, I have two words for you- fish burp. Some will claim not to cause fish burps, but do you really want to risk it?

If want to consume your omega-3 fatty acids through whole foods, there are a few plant sources that are high in LNA. Chia and flax seeds are excellent sources. You should store both in the refrigerator, and grind the flax before using. Hemp seed and walnuts also provide a fair amount of LNA. Several berry and fruit seed oils have a decent amount, but it'd be hard to eat enough fruit to get the proper amount of fat.

If you want to supplement, flax and chia seed oils are available in pill form. If you're vegetarian, check the ingredients, since some of the supplements use gelatin. While your body can produce DHA and EPA (more omega-3 fatty acids), it's not always very efficient, so there are supplements for those two fatty acids as well. DHA and EPA typically come from fish oil, but there are some vegan supplements out there. I think they're derived from algae. The best sources for GLA (an omega-6) are borage, evening primrose, and black currant seed oils. These also come in pill form, and again check the ingredients if you're vegetarian.

Omega-6 for Your Skin

In addition to eating LA and LNA, you should consider using oils with these fatty acids on your skin. Dry, damaged, or acneic skin often have low-levels of linoleic acid, so using oils rich in LA might help balance the skin. If you're not using a single oil, look for oil blends or lotions that contain LA-rich oils. Since they are more likely oxidize quickly, a blend will probably help with shelf life.

A few good oils with high percentages of LA include evening primrose, grape seed, hemp, walnut, and wheat germ. Safflower and sunflower are also good sources, but only if they're not the high-oleic hybrids. Popular skincare oils argan, rose hip seed, rice bran, and sea buckthorn also have decent amounts. The oils have different properties, so some may be better for your particular skin type.

Susan M. Parker, Power of the Seed: A Guide to Oils for Health & Beauty, Port Townsend, WA: 2014, Process Media. ISBN: 978-1-934170-54-0

Chemistry and Poetry

I remember at my job interview for my library assistant position I was asked, "What brings you joy?" It was probably just a throw away question, one meant to be easy. The interviewer, an HR assistant, said it's fine to answer with money, that's what some people answer. Oh, if money was all I needed for joy- at least it is tangible. A lot of things make me happy- cats, the scent of jasmine in the air, the people I love...But this happiness is a fleeting feeling, not a sustained feeling of contentedness.

I answered that finishing something brings me joy. Like putting the finishing touches on something I created, or getting to the end of a difficult book. I do read plenty of books more for knowledge than entertainment, so sometimes just getting through them feels like an accomplishment.

I think I did horribly with that job interview, even ignoring that question, but I got the job anyway. I guess there weren't many other people interested in it, plus I was able to temp while they were deciding. I'm more impressive working than interviewing. During my time there, I learned that there is never an end to anything- assignments from years ago would rise from the dead. Never knowing if something was truly over, I couldn't enjoy anything. I worked there for over eight years, and by the time I quit I was bored and frustrated at the lack of opportunity to advance. The only interesting work left was for me to head down to our "technical books" section and find specifics on semiconductors, 802.11, programming, etc. (By the way, isn't OOPSLA the most fun name for a conference? I just love it.)

I love learning. I've been studying cosmetic chemistry kind of casually since I started the business, but I've been delving deeper into it lately. I listen to chemistry lectures instead of music while working. I read books with funny squiggly carbon chains. Those carbon diagrams used to confuse me, but now I enjoy them. And so I start wondering if I should go back to school and get my master's in cosmetic chemistry.

Oh, but how I hate formal education! I feel like I've learned so much more on my own than I did in school. I did well in school, but it all just felt like part of what I had to do. Go to school, get good grades, go to college, and then join the workforce. Back in high school I assumed after getting my bachelor's, I'd go on to graduate school, but I was disenchanted after four years of college. Screw the talk about college being the best years of your life- it was four years of misery for me. Just thinking about it makes me melodramatic. I worry going back to school would hurt me more than help me.

How much would I never learn if I do go back to school? Would I have time to study art, poetry, literature? After all, I seek poetry for comfort, not skeletal formulas (yes, skeletal formulas are a real term, I'm not just trying to make them sound cold and lifeless). I want to capture the art and beauty in scent. A fragrance is more than just the sum of its molecules- for me it's capturing an idea in a bottle. The thought of translating the abstract into a scent fascinates me. Stretching the imagination this way and that leaves me restless, wondering how far it can go before it snaps.

I wish I had time to study everything that interests me- all of the above, plus so much more. I would take this knowledge and blow it up like a giant balloon so close to popping. And then I would ever so gently paint a flower on that balloon.

"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit."

-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Witch Hazel and Hydrosols

While lots of ingredients in a product aren't necessarily a bad thing, it does make it harder to scrutinize the product. I personally dislike squinting over a label in the store, scanning for any ingredients I want to avoid. I love hydrosols, including witch hazel, for my face, since there shouldn't be too much in it, and they offer various skin benefits.

Hydrosols are often a by-product of essential oil distillation, though better hydrosols are produced just for their own sake. They're much cheaper than essential oils, and you can even find hydrosols for plants that don't produce an essential oil.

Witch hazel is a cheap and natural astringent, and you should be able to find it easily in grocery stores and drugstores. It's good for oily and acne-prone skin, as well as dry, sensitive and inflamed skin. It usually contains alcohol as a preservative- look for one that's 86% witch hazel distillate and 14% alcohol. The alcohol should be some sort of ethanol/ethyl alcohol, not isopropyl alcohol. If you want to find an alcohol free witch hazel, you will need to use one with a different preservative, since unpreserved witch hazel is not available.

Other popular hydrosols include rose water, orange flower water, and lavender water. While there are many hydrosols out there, these three tend to smell nice to most people. You can use them as toners if you don't like witch haze. I love spraying my face with hydrosols when I'm feeling warm to help cool myself down. They also work as a light, pretty fragrance when you don't want to wear a heavier perfume. When purchasing hydrosols, check the label to make sure there are no added fragrances or dyes.

2015 Beauty Resolutions

The new year is a perfect time to clean out your beauty products. Having gone through my collection of various beauty products (I was addicted to sample boxes for awhile, so I had a lot of stuff to go through), I'll offer up some tips for going through your own.

If you have any that you don't use regularly, check the expiration dates and get rid of those first. Ingredients do break down, and any preservatives might not no longer be working, so you don't want to risk putting those things on your skin.If a product is purely oil based, you can probably tell if it's gone rancid by giving it a quick sniff- if it smells fine, it's probably fine to use.

I like to go through the ingredient lists and make sure there's nothing in there that I don't want. Fragrance, dyes, and sulfates are on the top of my list of things to avoid. If these things don't bother your skin, then it's fine to use them, but they don't add any benefits to the end products. When essential oils are used for fragrance, they can offer various beauty benefits, but when a product just lists "parfum" or "fragrance", you have no idea what you're using.

Getting rid of old make up is a good idea too, since it probably harbors bacteria from previous applications. Mascara should be swapped out regularly (about every three months), especially since it goes near your eyes and the wand and tube design make it hard to keep it germ free. Clean your brushes while you're at it, and try to clean them on a regular basis if you don't already.

I'll be posting again soon with ideas on simple beauty products to add into your routine without breaking the bank.

KPFA, Soap, and Dusk

Ivre de Fleurs will be selling at the KPFA Crafts Fair this year! I went to this show when I first moved out to the SF Bay Area, and I've been there a few times since, including last year. My husband and I bought so many presents there last year. I'm a bit sad it won't be 3 blocks from where I live this year, but crossing the bay is worth it.

I've just poured some soap- it smells great, and it has so many amazing things in it- blueberry, cranberry, and acai powders, but I have to admit, it's not looking so pretty now. I do intend to sell it, since if it all works out well it should be a nice bar of soap, but it won't be a looker. Which isn't so bad when you think about it- soap washes away to nothing, leaving no trace of its beauty or lack there of.

And it's not like it's the ugliest soap I've ever made.

On to dusk. I don't even really know how to describe how I made it- it just kind of guided itself, in a way that I don't normally make scents. Oftentimes I have an idea, and I just add a little here and there to complete the idea. With this one, I just kind of went with the flow, and the result is a fragrance that reminds me most of dusk- the darkest stage of twilight. There's a good dose of patchouli in the base notes, which probably gives it that feeling. There's a heavy dose of florals and some spice, but no overwhelming note. This scent is really more of a feeling than an idea, with things of beauty barely visible, awaiting the darkness to come.

The Lab #6 Dusk is available from Ivre de Fleurs and Etsy for $20.

Learning About Lotions Part 4 - Other Ingredients

I've concentrated on preservatives and emulsifiers, since those two are key ingredients that are to find in a natural and effective form. After those two ingredients, it should be easy to find everything else as close to natural as you care for it to be.

Water- The simplest choice is distilled water (not purified or tap, since those might introduce things to your lotion you don't want). You can also try hydrosols and aloe vera juice, plus some other things I'm sure I'm not thinking about. Some hydrosols and aloe do include preservatives, so you might want to consider that when choosing your liquid.

I wonder if you could use wine or beer in a lotion, like you can with a soap. Though you might end up smelling like you've been at a bar all night and had too much to drink.

Oils- So many kinds, including the butters like cocoa, butter, and shea. I use strictly plant based oils, but there are animal oils (lanolin, emu, etc.) that are available. Looking at some suppliers, I'm surprised to see all the oils I never knew existed!

Humectants- Humectants draw in water or help to retain it, making the lotion a better moisturizer for your skin. Glycerin is a well known natural humectant, with the disadvantage that it can be kind of sticky. I've taken to using sodium lactate instead of glycerin, since I think it feels better, and it also can be added to soaps help them harden. Sodium lactate is derived from the fermentation of sugars, usually from corn or beet. Since I began looking into lotions, I've become interested in Honeyquat, a conditioning humectant derived from honey.

Antioxidants- Use these to extend your oils so they don't rancid too quickly. Rosemary oleoresin extract (ROE) and Vitamin E T-50 are both good choices- I often use one or both in my oil based products.

Additional Additives- There are a lot of additional things you can put in lotions- waxes, thickeners (like xanthan gum), and extracts, plus other ingredients depending on your goal. If you want to add a little color to your lotion, you can add a bit (not too much, since you don't want to color your skin!). Use essential oils for a natural scent or fragrance oils if you're fine with using those. For colors and fragrance oils, make sure you're only using things that are safe for the skin.

Art vs. Craft vs. Science vs. Gimmick

I was looking for spring/summer craft shows to apply to, and I looked at the pages for some art shows. These types of things go by all sorts of names, so I'll look at pretty much anything that sounds sort of promising. Of course these art shows are "fine art" shows, and fragrance is not an included category. I realize a lot of what I make wouldn't fall under the category of fine art, but I strongly feel that fragrance doesn't get the respect it deserves.

Most perfumes that people buy are more about marketing than scent. Sure, the scent counts, but most of the money goes into making the packaging pretty and paying for all the ads. I don't know if the people making these scents consider it an art, or if they're sitting in their labs looking at what's needed and figuring out the cheapest way to get there while still making a scent that people will wear. Those scents are mostly science- a degree in organic chemistry is actually very useful to anyone wanting to work in a big perfume house. There are some commercial perfumes, and definitely a lot of niche perfumes, that are art. To me it seems like what separates the fine art of fragrance is the passion that goes into, making the best you can with what you have, and creating a scent that has some meaning, even if that will never be clear to 99% of the population. You need mastery over the materials, just like you would with any other fine art.

I aim to be a perfume artist, and hope that if I'm not there yet, I will be soon. Working with scent can be a craft as well. When I assist at a perfume's class, the scents that people make are sometimes nice, but they don't rise to the level of art. That's not to be harsh, but a great perfume requires more time and thought than can be fit into an 8 hour class.

And a lot of what I do is craft- hair oils, lip balm, foot balm, lotions bars- those really aren't art. The scents are usually blended so that the product smells pleasant, usually with hopes of bringing hopes of some benefits to the product as well. So there's a bit of science in there too- nothing that would make me a scientist, but I do research which ingredients do what. Soap makers are working with science and craft. I don't know if those who make fancy swirls and designs consider their soaps works of art or not. I've seen some truly beautiful soaps (nothing I've made- I'm lucky if mine aren't plain ugly), but I'm not sure if there will be a gallery of beautiful soaps, or soap displays at museums. I guess in that sense perfume is getting a little more recognition, since there are occasionally exhibits dedicated to scent.

Beauty products are usually somewhere between craft and science. The ones you see at chain stores are probably mostly science, though don't necessarily fall for all the claims on their boxes. Just because something is made by people wearing white coats in a lab, it doesn't mean it will make your wrinkles disappear. Those who make beauty products on a smaller scale probably do use some science knowledge. You need to understand things like emulsion, preservative systems, and what each ingredient brings to the finished product. But these are handcrafted, not made on an industrial scale.

And then there are beauty products that are gimmicks. These are the most painful to me. I see single oils (like argan oil) being bottled up and sold at a large mark up. If you want 50ml of pure argan oil for less than $48, email me and I'll make you a bottle for less. While some of my products only use a few ingredients, I don't create single ingredients products and then sell them for a huge profit. Though I suppose if those companies are spending a lot of money on marketing, they might not be making such huge profits after all.

TL;DR- I want perfume to enter the world of fine art, and hope to be a fine perfume artist myself. Most of my products are craft, with a dash of science. And I will not sell you a gimmicky product like a single ingredient at a high mark up, unless you ask me to (at which point I'd reduce the markup).

Product Spotlight: Floral Perfume Balms

Neroli Balm, 1 ounce Size, available in all but Plumeria.

The floral balms I make are probably my most unique product. Both highly fragrant and moisturizing, they can work like a solid perfume, or as a balm for cuticles or other rough skin. My Etsy shop has all sizes of the floral balms available. You can also purchase the quarter ounce jars directly from the Ivre de Fleurs website, where I offer free shipping on all orders.

Floral Balms from Etsy

Quarter Ounce Jars from Ivre de Fleurs Website

The balms are centered around the floral waxes. These are made when the respective flower is washed with a solvent,creating the concrete- the fragrant materials and waxes of the flowers. The concrete is washed with alcohol to make the absolute, leaving behind behind the wax. 

The floral balms combine the wax of the flower, shorea butter, various oils, and a little bit of extra scent from the  to match complete the scent of the wax- for example, the Neroli Balm pictured above uses orange flower wax, and has a little bit of neroli (orange flower) essential oil for a more rounded scent.

.25 ounce jars of all varieties.

I've tracked down as many floral waxes as I can- I've seen lotus and champaca before, but not in stock. I have rose, tuberose, orange blossom (neroli), mimosa, plumeria (frangipani), and jasmine. The jasmine uses two varieties for both the wax and absolute- Jasmine Sambac and Jasmine Grandiflorum. 

All six are available as a set on Etsy for a reduced price.

Minis! Each lasts for awhile. Available in all but rose. 

Try three minis!

Try five minis!

So how to use these unusual beauties? I use them mostly as cuticle balms- a little goes a long way, and I get to enjoy the scent while doing something I find tedious. While it probably wouldn't work as an all over body moisturizer, rub some into particularly rough spots, like elbows. 

They would also work as a moisturizing solid perfume, either using one or layering a few to create a custom fragrance. Please note that since they are natural, the scents won't last as long as commercial perfumes. You can also apply it before putting on your favorite fragrance, giving it a scent unique to you.

Women and Science

I love science. There is so much out there in science, and I really regret not pursuing it in college. I was rather good at chemistry, did well in biology, and had so much fun in bacteriology. I never did physics, mostly because I wasn't going to be able to get into "honors" class since I didn't take the "honors" Algebra II class. I'm not much of a math person, though I did well in the classes that I did take. My chemistry class in college was simpler than the chemistry class I took in high school, and while it was interesting, it was practically a joke.

I see stuff in the news about getting little girls interested in STEM subjects, with Goldie Blox and what not, but I think there needs to be more focus on keeping teenage girls interested in science, and let them know what studying science can lead to career-wise. I'm more interested in science (in particular the parts that relate to beauty products and scent), but technology, engineering, and math probably have interesting career paths that should be considered and promoted.

Science feels like it's come up a lot for me personally in the last few years. Being married to a software engineer (who reads physics textbooks for fun) certainly helps with that, but in other ways as well. At my most recent show, I was asked by a few people whether I had a science background. While most of the beauty products I make don't involve complex scientific knowledge, there is still science to them. I study the properties of different oils and butters- the types of fats in them can change how they work, so the oil you need depends on the type of product you're making.

Soap making is fun, because it involves a chemical reaction right before your eyes- lye (either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide in water) combines with oil to make soap! At least real soap, not the detergents you'll see sold at most stores. You need to use some math (not scary math, and there are calculators available online just for this purpose) to calculate how much lye you need to saponify your oils. Different oils have different requirements for lye, and typically you're using more than one type of oil to make your soap. This goes back to the above, where the composition of the oils bring different properties to your soap. Since you don't want any lye left over in your soap, you superfat your recipe, which means you need to calculate your lye so that not all of the oils are saponified. Superfatting  means you're left with some left over oils in your soap, which makes it good for you skin.

Lotions present a different set of science issues- like soap, you're combining oil and water, but you want different results.An emulsifier is needed to keep the water and oil from separating. You have water phases and oil phases, you keep track of their temperatures, and combine them into a magical creamy lotion. Then you need a preservative- this is where biology and bacteriology come in. Lotions are good breeding grounds for all sorts mold, bacteria, fungus, etc., so a preservative slows that growth down.

I've been getting my science fix that way for awhile, but now I'm spending more time studying chemistry in regards to perfumery. There's the components of the essential oils, plus I'm reading up on some of the aromachemicals out there.

Preservatives

Recently, I went to open a sample bottle of toner (from a fairly well known brand) when I noticed something dark on the side. I thought it might be a smudge on the outside, but it was in the bottle. It was a dark flake of something, probably mold. I definitely wasn't going to use that toner. This was a sealed bottle, stored in a dark, cool, dry spot. Looking at the ingredients, there were no obvious preservatives.

Preservatives come in different forms (parabens are one type that many have heard of and are trying to avoid) and protect aqueous products from growing mold, bacteria, and other nasty things. Products such as scrubs that don't contain water, but are likely to end up getting water in them, might also contain preservatives. Generally, only a small amount of the preservative is needed- you will usually see them at the bottom of the ingredients list.

I sidestep the preservative issue by not making products that use water. This way I can keep Ivre de Fleurs preservative free, while not worrying about if my product is safe. I add antioxidants, Vitamin E and Rosemary Oleoresin Extract, to many of my products to increase their shelf life. Oils might not turn moldy on their own, but they can go rancid, and the antioxidants keep the oils fresher for longer.
I know a lot of people don't care if their products have preservatives, but others don't want to use products with any preservatives in them. I try to minimize my use of products with preservatives, since I don't know what the long term ramifications of using them will be. I don't avoid them completely, though. If I'm using a lotion, I'm fine with the small amount of preservatives in it, since I don't want to deal with the more immediate issues of mold and bacteria.

Patchwork Show this Sunday!

As stated on here and a few other places, I will be selling at the Patchwork Show in Oakland this Sunday! I will have all of the products featured on my website and my Etsy store. We have six flavors of lip balms, including the Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balm featured in Conscious Box this month. Our five floral balms will also be available, along with our foot balm.

We are also launching three new products at this show! These will be available online once the show is over.

New Products:
Pumpkin Seed & Cocoa Body Butter- Limited run for November, this is a decadent body butter that is solid in the tin, but melts easily in your hands. While it is made only from oils and butters, it doesn't leave you feeling greasy.

Hair Oils- We have four scents- Lavender Herbal, Geranium Floral, Soft Woods, and Ylang Ylang & Sandalwood. Containing argan oil, camellia seed oil, and shea oil, these oils nurture you hair without the use of any silicones.

Everywhere Oils- Available in Rose Otto, Lavender, and Ylang Ylang. The oils are lightweight, and can be used on your face, hair, or body. The primary oil used in these is camellia seed, a rejuvenating oil filled with antioxidants.

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New Products, New Stores

I have two new lip products that will be available for soon- a moisturizing lip gel and a lip butter.

There's very little wax to the lip gel, so it has a soft texture and no waxy feel to it. It comes in a little pot with a silver lid. It uses sunflower wax, meadowfoam seed oil, castor oil, and extracts of evening primrose and orchid. I flavored it with fresh ginger and ylang ylang essential oils, giving it a spicy and exotic flavor.

The lip butter uses rice bran wax and mango butter, but otherwise uses the same extracts and oils as the lip gel. This one is flavored with rose geranium. It's softer than a normal lip balm, but not as soft as the lip gel- basically a nice middle ground between the two. It comes in little pots as well.

Unfortunately, the lip butter pots were overfilled, so all the tops got squished down once the lids were put on them. This brings me to the new stores part- I will be opening a seconds shop on Storenvy this weekend, where I will be selling products with packaging issues at reduced prices. I will be selling the Rose Geranium Lip Butters there. While the lip butters themselves are great, I'm not satisfied with the way the tops look after I put the lids on them.

I will have several Mocha and Lemon Cream Lip Balms for sale on Storenvy, since the original packaging doesn't really work- the labels on the boxes don't stay down, so they don't look that nice. There will be one Rose Otto Lip Balm available, since the box on that one has a small scratch, and one Jasmine Balm where there's a small dent on the lid.

I will also have products for sale on my website soon, as opposed to buying through Etsy. I will still have some products on Etsy, just not as many. Once my new website is up, I will be introducing two new promotions- one product will be sold for a reduced price, and a monthly limited edition product.

For the month of November I will have Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balms on sale for $7.50- it's a new lip balm flavor, a sophisticated orange. The limited edition product will be pumpkin seed body butter. It won't smell like pumpkin, because there is no pumpkin essential oil, but it will have pumpkin seed oil and extracts, providing your skin with a plant based Omega-3 boost.

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.