Because the pigment blends in Make it Up are all by volume, I had to do a bit of weighing to get my percentages for the pigments, and go from there. I’d snug the tube down around the exposed nub, pull up, and be left with an empty tube and a nub with some new grooves it it.

The lipsticks that broke on me almost looked like they’d been torn; I could really see the powdery texture in the cross section. Firstly, our advice was to change the grade of aluminium that the ejector piston was manufactured from. castor oil to try to account for how the original recipe specified the use of pure pigments pre-distributed in castor oil.

Secondly, we recommended using one of our hard-anodising polymer composite coatings – Apticote 350F. To use the mold, rubber band the two parts together and oil up the inside of each cavity with a cotton bud dipped in oil. New: A brand-new, unused, unopened and undamaged item in original retail packaging (where packaging .

Having never made molded lipstick before, I started with the TKB Trading Lip Stick Base, micas, and their pre-dispersed liquid lip colours, as recommended, so I could start with something that should work and get a feel for it. Knowing this one would probably be tricky to unmold, I decided to use some dimethicone 350 to lubricate the mold instead of an oil. Lipstick is a fatal temptation for women, but lipstick color is difficult to meet their requirements. I found I generally preferred more pigment than they recommended, but not as much as I usually put in pot/jar lipstick.

I’m now confident that the TKB base performs wonderfully and will work well as a constant, so now it’s time to dive into using my own lipstick base recipe and see how that goes in comparison. Definitely much more pigmented, though the addition of the powdered pigment required more blending (which isn’t at all surprising). I’ve learned a lot from working with the TKB base—it’s much firmer than the ones in my book, and much less powdery. Replacing the coloured mica really impacted the colour and brightness, though—this one has an almost gel-like appearance/colour pay-off. Vicky's whipped up this tasty gin baba to showcase the fabulous Formaflex moulds from Pavoni Italia.