Hey Green Junkie,

Lorraine Dallmeier, the founder of Formula Botanica, is back with me today and we are talking specifically about how to formulate your own beauty products at home.

The DIY beauty world can be really confusing, overwhelming and a little scary to jump into – because let’s be honest, we don’t want to ruin our skin.

So Lorraine is easing our fears and helping explain how we are all born formulators and how we can use that inherent knowledge to develop our own powerful, simple skincare products.

In this episode I will touch on:

• The history of formulation in the beauty industry
• How to formulate your own beauty products
• Easy products you can make at home
• How to identify skin problems by making your own products

If you love this podcast be sure to leave a review and share a screenshot of this episode to your IG stories. Tag @thisisstephaniemoram so I can shout you out and publicly say thanks. 

Thanks for listening and being here.

Your green bestie,

Xoxo Stephanie

Hang With Lorraine

https://www.lorrainedallmeier.com

https://www.instagram.com/lorrainedallmeier/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorrainedallmeier/

Checkout Formula Botanica

https://formulabotanica.com/

https://www.facebook.com/FormulaBotanica

https://www.instagram.com/formulabotanica/

https://twitter.com/formulabotanica

https://www.tiktok.com/@formulabotanica

https://www.youtube.com/c/FormulaBotanicaSchool/videos

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/green-beauty-conversations-by-formula-botanica/id1350581005

Previous Episodes Mentioned

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1850972/10080887

#31. What’s Really Hiding in Your Home with Loni Brown

#54. Greenify Your Self-Care and Bathroom Routine

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Wanna go the extra green miles? Binge (and download) my complimentary audio series to reduce your waste and learn how to consume less in just five days!

Produced by: Alecia Harris

Music By: Liz Fohle

LISTEN BELOW

TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 59

Stephanie Moram 0:08
Hey Green Junkie it's Stephanie Moram your host and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Lorraine Dallmeier the founder of Formula Botanica. Lorraine is a biologist, chartered environmentalist, and the award winning seven figure CEO, she runs Formula Botanica, the accredited online organic cosmetic formulation and Business School, where she and her team have trained 17,000+ organic formulators in over 180 countries around the world to start or grow their own indie beauty business

Stephanie Moram 0:47
You can head over to Instagram and TikTok and you can follow me @thisisstephaniemoram. You can also download my free five part audio series Live a Little More Green, you will find all the information in the show notes below. And don't forget to subscribe to the Green Junkie podcast on whatever platform you get your podcasts. That way you'll never miss another green living episode.

Stephanie Moram 1:14
So thank you, Lorraine for being here. I really appreciate it. I'm really interested in formulations.

Lorraine Dallmeier 1:22
Thank you so much for having me back on the podcast. It's really lovely talking to you.

Stephanie Moram 1:25
You know, your business is formula Botanica. And it's all about formulating, and that kind of scares me like as an average person that uses skincare very minimally, I don't use a ton. I don't buy a lot, but I use like what I need to use to keep my face clean. But it scares me when you say you can formulate your own. I'm scared of like, am I using the right ingredients for my skin? Do I have the right preservatives? You know, am I mixing everything correctly? So I'd love for you to talk about that. Like what does that look like for the average person to be able to make their own skincare?

Lorraine Dallmeier 2:00
Absolutely. Well, that's a great question. I think it's worth remembering that humans have been formulating their own skincare and haircare and makeup for millennia. Perfumes as well. You know, you can go back 1000s of years and discover that formulation was as common as cookery, people used to be able to just create their own skincare. In fact, the oldest known written formulation was discovered on a 5000 year old Egyptian scroll and was titled transforming an old man into a youth, which I thought was hilarious, because it shows that literally nothing has changed in 5000 years, except obviously now it's about women more so than men, why men are being dragged into the conversation for sure. So I mean, you can go through the history of formulation and discover a lot more of this. You know, archeologists discovered this really well preserved Roman face cream dating back to 150 ad when they were excavating a site in London. And it was fascinating. If you can look up the photo for this face cream, it still has the preserved fingerprints in it. It's just incredible. And when the scientists who were analyzing it actually looked at what it contains, they found that it contained fats and starch and a mineral. And when they they actually replicated the cream, which I thought was awesome to read. And they found it was really nice on the skin. And they found that modern day cosmetics still use many of those ingredients for the same purpose. So things hadn't actually changed in you know, 2000 years. And it just goes on and on. You know, you've got I have dry beauty books myself dating back to the 1500s and 1700s. And you still see so many techniques that come back like gelling and warm blending and whipping and distillation and solubilization emulsification. And many of these techniques are also used by chefs, which is why I think there's been this brainwashing from the mainstream beauty industry to sort of go you have to be a chemist to do this. And in fact, it's probably one of the most common questions that we get at Formula Botanica from people before they enroll with us.

Lorraine Dallmeier 3:59
And when you look at I mean it was really the the beauty pioneers at the early 1900s Like Helena Rubinstein absolutely genius marketer. I mean, hats off to her. She was incredible. And what she created was incredible. But she decided that she was going to wear a white lab coat in all of her sales materials, even though she had no qualifications in science. I think the the extent of her qualifications extended to her a two month tour of European skincare facilities, which I suppose is a bit like sort of visiting the university gift shop and buying the sweater and saying You went there. She was wearing these white lab coats and then she got the women because it was women in her in the department stores who were selling her cosmetics to wear them to. And if you go into department stores nowadays you will be able to find brands where their staff wears white lab coats. In fact, I sometimes play lab coat bingo when I go out because it's just so ubiquitous. And those people aren't chemists. They're not Scientists, they're just salespeople. But by doing that very carefully, they have injected this idea of, you have to be a scientist to do that. And that's why so many people have basically gone, not me, no, I can't do this, it wouldn't be safe. And yet actually, humans have been doing it for such a long time that I'm trying to, and my team is trying to bring this skill back to everyone. Because it would allow us to step out of the madness of the beauty industry and become less reliant on the products that they sell us. But it also brings people a lot of joy and fun, because you can surround yourself by amazing natural and botanical ingredients.

Stephanie Moram 5:34
Yeah, and I think I'm part of that, like, I'm petrified, not petrified, it's like a strong word. But like, for certain things, I'm like, Yeah, I can't DIY that. Like, nope, no, even though I probably could. Yeah, and like, a couple of examples, like, what are a couple of things that are quite easy to make, like, just like, like quick little examples, of, you know, maybe a skincare that, you know, you might have some of the ingredients at your house already, that would be you know, safe for somebody with, you know, normal skin.

Lorraine Dallmeier 6:08
Well, the place that everyone starts with is with anhydrous products or products that don't contain water, because then you don't have to think about preservation, it's pretty easy going. So you could start with a basic lip balm, literally everyone can make a lip balm, you just take equal parts of an oil like almond oil, or even olive oil that wouldn't use your cooking oils for this. A butter like shea butter, or maybe a harder one like cocoa butter and then maybe a wax like beeswax or if you're vegan, you know, carnuba wax candelilla, wax, Marika fruit wax, whatever, there's loads of them. And you just melt that down very, very gently in a water bath. And then you you stir it together until it starts to very gently trace that which means it starts to sort of show a trace in it as your spoon is going through it. And then you pour it into a container. And hey, presto, you've made a lip balm, it is that simple.

Lorraine Dallmeier 6:59
And then you can move up a stage where you start to work with water, maybe just pure water, we work with flour waters, they're called hydrosols. They're distilled from the plant, they're sort of like the byproduct of essential oil distillation, but far less potent. And we work with those they smell amazing, you can then learn how to make toners with them, or maybe gel them when you add like a gum. There's lots of amazing natural gums that from different plants and, and resins. And then you can move up to solid products where you're making bars like shampoo bars, shower bars, conditioner, bars, that sort of thing. And then you can work your way up to foaming products, which are actually really easy to make and emulsions even where you combine oil and water. And if anyone listening is familiar with Cookery, then you if you've ever made mayonnaise, you've made an emulsion and making a cosmetic emulsion whilst you're obviously not using an egg yolk to bind it, it still has that same principle. And it isn't as complex which is why we tend to teach in our big free master classes how to make an emulsion. And in fact, last masterclass, we taught 63,000 people took part. So you can see that people really are hungry for this information, which is it's exciting because everyone can do it because it is so much fun. Much like Cookery, right?

Stephanie Moram 8:15
And I make my own Foaming Soap at home and I love it. I don't buy it, I just keep reusing the same container over and over again. I have made my own lip balms. I think it's what scares me as a consumer is like the stuff I'm putting on my face, you know, I have rosacea. So there's certain things I shouldn't maybe not use my face, like using a lot of oils on my face, makes me break out more. So I think that's what scares me personally, is that when you have maybe a little bit of a skin condition, you're like, ah, should I really make my own? Like, am I gonna ruin my face? If they're gonna make it worse? You know, so I think that, you know, being a consumer, like an average consumer, I think that's what kind of scares people a little bit, you know, because like, we have been brainwashed to think, if you're not a scientist, if you don't know everything about botanicals, if you don't know everything about the waxes and butters, then who are you to make your own product, when, like you said, it's like cooking? Yeah. And yeah, I'm not going to open up a restaurant to be a chef, know how to make some food in my kitchen.

Lorraine Dallmeier 9:17
Yeah, but that means you could still make a formulation. And wait I would add to that is when you go into the supermarkets or the stores and you turn over some of the products that are in there, you know, very, very long ingredient lists. And anyone can react to any ingredient. And that includes natural ingredients. You know, I know people who can't tolerate rosewater on their skin, for instance, or aloe vera, even though, you know, those are some of the most ubiquitous natural ingredients out there in cosmetics. But if you react easily to different skin ingredients, and you buy a product that has say 14 ingredients in it, even though it's been marketed at sensitive skin, then you could still react to that. And yet if you make your own and you keep it really really simple This is also our mantra, you know, really keep it simple, then you can actually identify which ingredients skin really loves, and which one maybe doesn't love. So much like you said about the oils, you know, you might find, for instance, get on really well with a light hydrosol. Or maybe not, it depends entirely on your skin, you have control of that when you formulate, and you're not beholden to the ingredients that the mainstream industry is forcing on you.

Stephanie Moram 10:24
And the different courses that you offer and free master classes do dive into that, like the different skin types as well. Like, what's better for someone with more sensitive skin, what's better for someone that has more oily skin? Do you dive into that as well?

Lorraine Dallmeier 10:39
Not so much, because we're not a dermatology school. We are teaching you how to make the products, there is actually a small component of this going into one of our course updates coming soon. But I will say that for us, it is literally about teaching you how to work with your ingredients, how to layer them, how to work with the maths that's required in order to calculate how much of everything you need to put in there, how to set up your lab and work safely with your equipment. And by lab. I mean, literally, it could be the corner of a table in your house. So don't be scared by the word lab. You know, we have students who have literally formulated, and we had one student who formulated in a 99 square foot mobile home, which was just awesome. And another one who told me that she used to carry all of her formulation equipment and ingredient in a small suitcase that she took from hotel to hotel, she was traveling for work. So it's it's not? Yeah, so we very much focused on that formulation component. And then those techniques that you use in order to create your formulations such as, as I said, emulsification, solubilization, warm blending, whipping that sort of thing.

Stephanie Moram 11:43
That sounds so interesting, I need to jump into one of your master classes.

Lorraine Dallmeier 11:47
Yes.

Stephanie Moram 11:49
So we are gonna link in the show notes below. You know how to find Lorraine and her amazing company. And you know how to, you know, if you want to get into one of our master classes where you would find that. So that'll all be below in the show notes. But I find this such an interesting conversation because like you said, people are just afraid of it. But in reality, you know, you just step back and say, Okay, I just want to learn how to make a foaming soap right now because I don't want to buy the stuff that's in the store because it contains XYZ ingredient that I don't want, then it's you know, like you said, you move on to, let's say, lip balm. And then when you're comfortable with that you move on to the next thing. So then you're not overwhelmed with I need to make a redo everything in my house. lLke, start slowly, like maybe it's make a deodorant, maybe it's make like a skincare, maybe it's a lip balm. And I think just the cosmetic industry has just told us that we can't do these things. And so then we believe it, right?

Lorraine Dallmeier 12:47
Absolutely stop listening to them. That would be my main piece of advice, stop listening, all the crap that the mainstream industry comes out with, they're just trying to sell through fear and insecurity. And we can all do a hell of a lot better than then buy some of their products, which is why I'm such a big fan of indie brands. And we have over I think it's about 300 different graduate brands listed on our website with this gallery at the top and you can even search by location, go and buy from them. They're amazing. They deserve all the success in the world. So I want everyone listening to go and buy some indie beauty products today.

Stephanie Moram 13:19
And if you get nothing else, but don't listen to mainstream beauty brands. That's what that's what the big takeaway for today is. Yes, everyone can formulate and you don't need to listen to the big brands that say you cannot formulate.

Stephanie Moram 13:38
So again, thank you for being on. I really appreciate it. We've had this is like our second conversation. It's been a great conversation. So again, thank you for being here. You can catch Lorraine's first episode, it'll be episode 56. So you can go listen to that one. If you've listened to this one first, you can go back and listen to that one. It doesn't really matter the order, but it's number 56. Also, we talked about greenwashing in the previous episode, so like listen to episode 24, where we talk about greenwashing. And another really great episode that I love is episode 31 Where I spoke with Lonnie Brown, and it's what's really hiding in your home. So you can stay connected with me on Instagram and Tiktok @thisisstephaniemoram. Don't forget to subscribe to the Green Junkie podcast on the platform you're listening to. And you can download my free five part audio series live a little more green. You'll find everything in the show notes and Lorraine Can you just quickly tell people where they can find you and and Formula Botanica?

Lorraine Dallmeier 14:40
Yep, we're formulabotanica.com. Come over to the website. We've got loads of blogs got the podcast I host the green beauty conversations podcast. We always have a free course of some kind ongoing and come on follow us on Instagram and on Tik Tok at formula Botanica and me as well as Lorraine Delmeier

Stephanie Moram 14:57
So thank you again for being here. Um, they've been to great conversations and I appreciate you taking the time.

Lorraine Dallmeier 15:04
Thank you so much for having me. Stephanie, it's been really lovely.

Stephanie Moram 15:07
You're welcome. And thank you for listening everyone and I'll see you next Tuesday Green Junkie.