Custom, truly alabaster foundation, for very pale skin

I'd been abroad for a while not too long ago and used that opportunity to try a lot of foundations by brands that just aren't available where I live. Brands that as a result of reading countless blogs and seeing many a seductive swatch, had my hopes rekindled that perhaps I too could buy a foundation actually suitable for my complexion straight from the bottle. It was great fun, particularly in the beginning, until the amount of samples I got became sort of overwhelming. I'm not going to discuss my discoveries in any more detail here, that will be the next post (or the one after, depending on my mood), but as I swatched them all in a uniform row on my arm and suddenly got the idea to throw my OWN foundation in the lineup, just for comparison purposes, I was reminded of just how lovely it is and how happy I am I've developed this recipe for myself. Yes, I had forgotten, but it had also been nearly two months of testing my finds, so forgive me my precious! So, without further ado, this is how I mix my own, custom foundation, to suit my very fair complexion.

To preface this, I have combination oily skin, which after a course of Roaccutane for cystic acne leans more towards combination dry skin (however my t-zone still produces a more than healthy amount of oil when it's even slightly hotter than my body likes), with a tendency for dehydration, and plenty of redness, hyper pigmentation and scars to deal with. So, not only does the foundation need to match my very fair colouring (if Mac made this colour, It'd be NC5), but it also has to compensate for the countless red marks and be opaque enough to cancel them out, plus play well with my skin type, which is a rather tall order considering that I have everything – oiliness, dryness and dehydration – somewhere on my face.

The four ingredients in this mixture are Diorskin Forever in nr. 10, YSL Le Teint Touche Éclat in BD 40, Illamasqua Cream Pigment in Bedaub and Illamasqua Rich Liquid Foundation in RF 100. You can see how the YSL and Dior swatch on my skin on their own in this post, and the two Illamasqua products here. Each of these components serve a purpose. The Dior is there for opacity, however, it is a foundation that has a very strong peachy pink tonality and since I have a lot of redness issues on my face, simply making in lighter isn't good enough – an extremely pale pink foundation makes those marks, and my face in general, look bluish purple, which against the very warm toned skin on my neck and body looks completely wrong, unflattering and ill. The Illamasqua green pigment is there to cancel out the pink tone of the Dior, to the point where it becomes almost gray-yellow. I'm not worried about overcompensating with the green at this point, because with heat the pink pigment in the Dior becomes even more pronounced, and the inclusion of heat is a vital step in this concoction. The Rich Liquid Foundation is obviously there to address the lightness. Of all the similar products on the market I chose this one because of how thick and pigmented it is, so that I would need as little of as possible and have it affect the texture and finish of the mixture as little as possible in turn (because its own finish isn't particularly nice, at least on my skin). Finally, the YSL's role is to dilute the first three rather opaque, dry and paste like ingredients, to give the foundation slip, glow and warmth.

I've had this concept in my mind for roughly a year and have been experimenting with it ever since I obtained the final ingredients last fall. My reasoning seemed so foolproof, I must admit I was disappointed when the first couple of batches didn't perform the way I expected them to. As logical as my choices seemed to be, these are after all very different formulations and making them merge and stick to one another, creating a universal mixture, was harder than I expected it to be. The Dior is a medium to full coverage foundation with an almost velvety, powder finish, the YSL is very slippery and luminous, and both Illamasqua products are very water resistant, not to mention the pigment is a solid cream. So, they really didn't want to interact in my little jar.

I used to start the process by scraping out some of the cream pigment, placing it in a plastic pot and keeping the jar afloat in a bowl of boiling water. The bowl of water however would lose heat faster than the pigment melted, and was distributed unevenly anyway. It softened the pigment, but wouldn't melt it, so I would have to manually mix it into the rest of the liquids and still be left with streaks of green on the walls of the pot that wouldn't mesh.

Next I would add the white foundation, simply because it comes in a squeeze-tube, with no way for me to measure how much I was adding, then the Dior and the YSL where I would count how many pumps of each it took per that mixture of the Illamasqua white and green, hoping to pen the perfect ratio. The best way to mix this concoction was with a finger, because I could mix and scrape off the product that was too solid to willfully merge off the walls, and force it to unite. It would have to be a very dense, soft tool – sponge or brush – to do this more hygienically, but since it's just me wearing the resulting product, I know for a fact I've kept my hands as clean as possible and also I'm not making a huge quantity to begin with, I prefer fingers.

I remember initially being ecstatic with the outcome, but only briefly. Yes the colour was right, but the thicker ingredients were overpowering the finish (particularly the Rich Liquid Foundation). The overall coverage was relatively sheer, but the highly pigmented white part of it clung very strongly to my drier skin and settled into the crackly textures. It also settled heavily in to the pores on my oilier skin. Peculiarly, the texture of the mixture improved the closer I got to the end of the pot and also became darker. I concluded that the water resistant components stayed sort of afloat, on top of the mixture, while the rest sunk to the bottom. They really didn't want to play nice together at all...

I tried doing a more diligent job at mixing the next couple of batches, but it performed the same way. Then for some reason I got this inspiration to use a glass jar instead, in hopes it would conduct heat better than plastic, and decided to place it into an actually boiling pot of water on the stove, not just a bowl of boiled water from a kettle. Sounds like a relatively crackpot idea, with no scientific merit behind it whatsoever, but I had nothing to lose so I gave it ago. This additional step made all the difference. The ingredients fused together as intended and the texture, colour and finish of the mixture remain the same throughout its lifetime. As happy as I was with the result, I was weighing the very real possibility that this was just a fluke. Dumb luck or not, the fact remains that I've repeated the process twice since then and had the same result. It works! Well, for me.

This is my current process and how I mixed up my last jar of foundation mid-February. I start out by scraping out a good amount of Bedaub with a little tool I got as a child with a toy (I don't know if they still produce these, but they used to sell various pictures of animals, flowers etc, covered with a black layer and a metallic image underneath, and you used this tool to follow the image shining through and scraping off the black layer revealing the shiny picture). Next I add some Dior, usually around 10 pumps, so the pigment has something to merge into when it starts to melt. I place the lid firmly on the jar and place it into a bowl of water on the stove, set to high.

Placing the first ingredients into the jar

If I want it to go faster, I'll put a lid on the pot. Once the water's come to a boil, I remove the lid and let it bubble furiously for about a minute or so, then turn the stove off completely, place the lid back on the pot and keep the jar in it until the water calms down completely. So, you see, the mixture stays there throughout the entire time it takes the water to heat up to a boil and to come down to a warmth that's just hotter than you'd comfortably touch. Also, while the water is boiling, it tosses the little jar around and really surrounds it by heat from all sides. Once its cooled, I fish the little jar out and proceed with more mixing.

Bringing the initial mixture to the boil and retrieving it after it's cooled

You can see how the shade the foundation has turned simply from being mixed with the green pigment, resulting in an almost grey colour, similar to Asian BB creams. The next step is to add the white foundation and lighten the mixture. I add quite a lot. Although I play it by ear and really work on the mixture until its right against my skin, I'm fairly confident the white makes up the second largest part of the foundation.

The mixture with Dior nr. 10 and Bedaub after being boiled and mixed

Adding RF 100 to the mixture until achieving the desired lightness

Once I'm happy with the colour, I start adding the YSL quite generously. Because it's such a sheer foundation with next to no coverage, I'm not at all concerned about overdoing it and making the mixture darker. The role of this is to tone down the thickness and the dull finish of the other thick ingredients. When I was mixing up that particular batch, I was running out of the YSL foundation and had to pour it straight from the bottle, because the pump wasn't really working anymore, but I start with about the amount of 20-25 pumps of product. Mix-mix-mix, and it is at this point the foundation might be ready. I typically try some on my cheek down to the jawline to see if the colour works and also if the formula isn't too dry. In this case it was so I added some more YSL until I was happy with the consistency.

Adding the Teint Touche Éclat to the mixture

Now, the foundation is ready. As an additional experiment, I boiled it once again that time to see if it made a difference, if it made the foundation even smoother etc. Frankly it didn't and it made a bit of a mess as you can see. I was worried the lid on the jar wasn't properly closed and all that hard work was leaking out, but it was just a miniscule amount of residue around the bottle that collected in flakes because of the water resistant components. 

Secondary boiling

I try to mix this up on days when I don't have to be anywhere, so I can take my time in the morning and use what's left on my fingers to do my makeup. Again, this works for me, and the amount of coating on the one finger I use for mixing, is actually a little more than I need to do a face of makeup, so I really don't want to let it go to waste.

The foundation is beautiful. Medium coverage, satin finish, cool yellow undertone, and for some reason it smells like yoghurt! My only dissatisfaction with it is that it best suits my skin somewhere in the middle, as in not the absolute driest bits, and not the oiliest. I wish I could apply it with fingers, but that just brings out certain textures more, it really needs to be buffed in with a brush. It's difficult to explain, but I'm certainly not blaming that completely on the foundation. It's a matter of working out a skin care routine that suits me best and works well under makeup.

As tedious as it is to mix this stuff up, a batch usually lasts me around a month and a half or two, and seeing as it's better than any foundation I've ever tried, it's something I'm willing to do. It's my baby and I'm very proud of it, enough to name it Le Teint d'Or, yup, after myself. I'll try to do a Face Of The Day wearing this in the next couple of days and really show my creation off!