Articles and guides
Practical advice, ingredients and stories about solid cosmetics.
In-depth guides
Choose a topic and find practical answers.
Ingredient Atlas
Ingredient origins, textures and practical answers about cosmetic labels.
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Solid Cosmetics School
Practical lessons for using, storing and travelling with solid cosmetics.
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Which One? Comparison Studio
Clear comparisons for the cosmetics you use, the routines you enjoy and the gifts you give.
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Gift & Gifting Encyclopedia
300 articles about thoughtful gifts: people, occasions, traditions, beautiful presentation and words that feel like you.
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Body Cleansing Explained
Does your skin feel tight after the towel? Are you choosing a bar, or wondering where to put it when it’s wet? Start with the part of the shower you’d like to make easier.
Read the guideArticles: 1444
Ingredient Atlas
CI 42090 · blue colour
A blue ingredient need not make a blue bar. CI 42090 can join other colours in a carefully balanced mixture, giving a familiar-looking solid a colour story that is more...
Ingredient Atlas
Vinegar
Before vinegar becomes a familiar sour liquid, two different microbial transformations have taken place. Its appearance in a shampoo bar adds another chapter: a kitchen-familiar material becomes one part of...
Ingredient Atlas
Babchi or bakuchi seed oil
Babchi, bakuchi, Psoralea and bakuchiol can sound like variations of one beauty ingredient. They are not. This seed-oil story is valuable precisely because it separates the plant, the oil and...
Ingredient Atlas
Apricot kernel oil
Before there is apricot oil, there is spring blossom, soft orange fruit and a stone most of us leave on the plate. Inside that stone is another useful part: the...
Ingredient Atlas
Tetrasodium glutamate diacetate
The long name hides a very practical task: keeping metal ions from making mischief in a formula. Once you recognise the shorter name GLDA, it becomes easier to spot this...
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium thiosulfate
The same name turns up in the history of photography and near the end of a soap label. The connection is chemistry: a modest salt can be useful for what...
Ingredient Atlas
Amla seed oil
Amla can mean a sour fruit, a powder, an infused hair oil or the oil from its own seeds. Following that last route reveals why a familiar traditional name can...
Ingredient Atlas
Açaí sterols
The familiar purple açaí story takes an unexpected turn here. A selected fatty fraction can become a pale, waxy cosmetic material—far removed from the fruit bowl that its name first...
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium sulfite
A tiny spelling change takes us from a mineral salt to an ingredient that can help manage oxidation. Sodium Sulfite’s story is about keeping unwanted chemical changes in check.
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium sulfate
A mineral salt, a desert-lake story and a common label mix-up. Sodium Sulfate is a useful reminder that the full name matters more than a familiar fragment.
Ingredient Atlas
Zinc oxide
A white mineral powder can arrive at a cosmetics factory as something that looks more like a cream. Zinc oxide dispersions reveal a useful hidden stage: particles are prepared with...
Ingredient Atlas
CI 47005 · quinoline yellow
Yellow has more than one material identity. CI 47005 is the code associated with quinoline yellow, a colour that can be a quiet partner in a wash bar rather than...
