Several minor things, which I pen a novella about.

   You should see our tables right now. There are several long steel tables (the sort used in kitchen prep), and one is used only for working on new shades, product changes, or any needed shade reformulation. It's currently covered in little test plates, numerous large bags and pails of colourants, two microscopes, and a mess of notes in my horrid handwriting. I had a couple of really neat shades, which worked great in two tests, then once I mixed a larger amount and added the rest of the ingredients to check, they went to Mudville. The satiny green highlight I had on one didn't play nice at all with the particle size of one of the main base colours, so it morphed into an uninteresting, rather mucky appearance. Layering 150µm sparkle onto a matte or blending into 25-50µm shimmer is no problem, but 5µm gets drowned out by the larger particle shimmers, so instead of an obvious highlight, you end up with a blend of shades. That can be fine sometimes, but wasn't going to work with these hues. On the other hand, we have a lilac shade which turned out quite beautiful, it just hasn't been named yet.

   Also, I am now re-thinking the satin mattes we had ready about three months back. Mattes just are not hot sellers, and these, albeit bright and easy to blend, are rather basic shades. We'll see. There's a tangerine-yellow, which I know won't do well. People should buy yellow shadows more often! It looks really good on many people, especially when in a look with vibrant greens or warm red/pink.


   Royalty sure has been selling rather fast. Years ago, Seduce was rarely purchased, but I'm guessing people are getting more comfortable with purple blushes? I did consider bringing back our red (Intrigue - it was a real red, more vibrant than Spellbound), and perhaps will in the future.


Why it takes us so long to get the pressed shades re-stocked:

   For several years we've maintained a rather unique (at least I assume it is) production process of eye shadow. Some are much more involved than others. For instance, due to particle size layering, heat treatment, and such, a shade like Because Cats takes considerably longer from start to finish than Space Kitty. Housework Pearls takes much longer than Koala. Most can't be done in a very large volume at once. We prepare the shades for being pressed with their loose counterpart, then separate out what's needed for pressing (usually about 500g or 1kg) and finish each respectively. The pressed shades need to be just the right consistancy before going into the machine, and the same ratio of wet ingredients don't work well with each shade. Mephisto doesn't have a high amount of mica, and mica is great for pressing because the microscopic platelets fit together almost like tiny puzzle pieces. It does have some silica and other ingredients which have a rounder or more uniform particle shape. So that one was slightly modified to work consistantly, though still ends up a bit fragile. The mixing and adjusting, then the cleaning up parts between shades...all adds up to a very time-consuming process. We can't very well manage more than two or three pressed shades per day, and those are done when there isn't a very large pileup of other tasks. Always, current purchases in the queue take precedence over all else, so re-mixing of needed colours and package filling is done before pressed re-stock or tinkering with new things.


Sample/freebie amounts:

   It's been asked, and sometimes mentioned in blog posts, regarding the size of the blush, finishing powders, highlighter, and free samples. It's varies. The eye shadow Minis (we started calling them that when the size was changed from 1/4 to 1/3 tsp on the regular shades a few years ago; plus if you get more than just a few uses out of something, It's not really a "sample") are measured uniformly: we have these little scoops which hold exactly 1/3 tsp and 1/4 tsp of powder. But for the face products, one generally uses more each time than with eye shadow. So, these are usually a tiny bit more than 1/3tsp; the measure is rounded when we fill the jars. The free samples are not really measured, it's generally a little more than half the size of a mini or regular sample size of that product. Except when we include a trial size Lip Lustre or Pixie Epoxy free, those are all the same volume. 


Since this is a holiday weekend and no shipments are outgoing Monday, that gives us a little extra time tomorrow, so if the Giant Pile Of Things To Get Done is mostly finished by tonight, a couple shades may get prepped to press tomorrow. At any given time there are 200-350 orders in the queue (we average 50 to 100 incoming each day), but with every new release that amount doubles right away. 


* Edited to add: Sorry about the little jars being out from the 21-22. The missing ones turned up, fortunately.

1960s Retro Collection and other notes.

Good evening (morning, or afternoon, be it so where you are). You may have noticed out new collection went up on 3/30. I would have announced it here yesterday, but the absolutely insane volume of sales (this is a good thing, but sometimes you people catch us off-guard; Spring is usually a low sale time) has kept us quite busy in studio and office.

If you have never used our loose shadows, or haven't bought since before late January this year, ours are not free-flowing loose powder. They have had various particle-binders for the past few years, and in January we greatly minimized the flyaway, fallout, and increased adhesion as detailed on a previous post here. The greatest difference is with the most sparkly shadows such as Dinosaur Plushie and Book Of The Dead, and some of the pale shades like Crimson Ghost.

Thank you for all your patronage, and we hope your week is off to a good start!

Email address, 50s Retro Collection

   Good day. At least I hope it is for you. Not too bad here, thank you for asking. :)

   It was brought to my attention a few days ago when a long-time client asked about a couple emails her friend had written us, as they went unanswered. As it turns out, they went unreceived. They had been sent to order@fyrinnae .com, which never has been a valid email address. We don't use a catch-all (hey there giant 300mb folder of nonsensical spam), and info@ and staff@ have not been valid emails in a very long time. Unfortunately, PayPal had info@ listed on our profile, and it took me forever to get that off there for whatever reason. Regardless, the only valid all-purpose Fyrinnae email, except for individual ones we here all use for business contact purposes, is store@ , which is the one specified on the Contact page. Which is not to say we don't miss an email on occasion. If you don't receive a reply, first check your spam folder (Hotmail and Yahoo are terrible for this), and please send another. If possible, from a different email address, because a great many we reply to bounce as non-existent.

   By now you've of course seen, and likely bought some of, our newest collection, the 50s Retro. The shades were designed around the minimal colours used in the 1950s: bold red lips, subtly defined eyes, but little eye shadow, and most often in matte and satiny skintone hues. Late 50s showed more color options springing up, and by the mid-60s cosmetics were by far more diverse and vibrant, which is when our next collection is based. I'm unable to give an estimated time on that though, as we have so much else going on though March and April. Pressed shadows (which I am highly pissed off about and am actively searching and contacting other compact manufacturers) will be back as soon as possible, but most won't be up until the end of this month. 

Jar sizes, product amounts, and such. A tiny note from the Chemist.

Oddly, we get frequent inquiries about the size differences in products, most often the loose eye shadow. The sizes and weights noted in the catalogue are correct. Though the weights are sometimes a little understated. The weight of a mini jar of eye shadow is about half a gram, usually a tiny bit more. But the measurement is always the same: one-third (1/3) of a teaspoon, or 1/4tsp for Arcanes. Some may appear a smidgen more full than others when on their sides, due to density of ingredients and/or particle size, which I'll get to on later in this post. They're not blindly filled; we have measures for filling. The full size, however, are filled to the top, packed down, and topped off. This is how it often seems the Mini jars give about 1/3 or more of the size of a full jar.

The size of jars for Minis (these are most certainly not samples! A sample doesn't customarily last you weeks to months. They're small versions of the product) is notably smaller than the full size. The regular eye shadow jars, a common size, hold just about 5ml of liquid, while the Mini size holds 3ml. Below are comparison photos of the product and jars.

The weight for Fyrinnae's loose eye shadow is listed on the store and labels as approximately 3 grams. Some are close to 2.8, and many are over 3.5g. The US labeling regulations allow a very small variance in weight, usually if it may vary between shades or styles of the same product. For the Minis, we have it listed as .4 to .7gram. That's not quite correct, as the 1/3tsp of product weights a tiny bit more than that, but understating is always a bit better policy. You're still receiving the same amount, even if by weight it may be .5g for Cupcake Frosting, and .9g for Dragon's Wing.

Still with me here? Cool, as I'm going to keep typing. Let's discuss why some weigh more. In short, some colourants (pure dry powders in the form of dyes, inorganic pigments, micas, synthetic fluorphlogopite and silicates, etc) are much heavier than others. Chromium Oxide weights a lot more, and is far more dense, than standard cosmetic grade lake dyes. So for example, if a green eye shadow is based on chromium oxide for main colour and treated 10-25µm mica for shimmer and depth, it may weigh twice as much as a similar colour shadow based on blue 1, yellow 5, titanium dioxide, and 50-100µm sparkle mica. Make sense? The product appears the same size, and you get the same amount of product, but the weight varies. Most of the time it's not noticeable.

Now, that probably explained why the same size jar from X company is marked as a different weight than the same size container from Z company. Neither company is wrong, but X uses a smaller particle size borosilicate (40-150µm) for sparkle, and a considerable amount of stearates and iron oxide in their base, creating some rich opaque colours. This makes the jar net weight 4.5 grams (or whatever, I'm making this up as I type). Z contracts a manufacturer to produce a vivid product using dyes and treated mica, with big sparkle (100-350µm), in some of their shades. These jars are the same size as X's, but net weight of product is 2 grams. Consumers are not being cheated, company is not lying, but ingredients have varying weights. This applies for all cosmetic products, be they powder, creme, liquid, or wax based. Think of a bucket of sand versus a bucket of Legos. Besides the fact neither would be fun dumped across your living room floor, the Lego bucket will weigh less, even though both are filled to the top.

WHAT is µm?? That's the symbol for micrometre. That's how we measure the particle size in powders. An average shimmery mica colourant has a µm range of 5 to 100. The larger the number, the more sparkle (like 200-300), until we get past general cosmetic use and into nail polish (huge flakes of silicate and synthetic mica!). Smaller numbers such as 5 to 10 are most often in the satin and low-shimmer products, where you have a sheen but no sparkle. 

December 31st update

Greetings, Earth dwellers.

We're rather busy (what's new?) this evening, but I promised an update here, and am actually getting to it. Five new shadows and a highlighter have appeared in the past several days, in addition to Atomic Afterglow being re-introduced, but it's technically a few years old. Pygmy Hippo and Ocelot (Lip Lustres) came early this month, and both have been extremely popular, thanks to many of you. We are hoping to push forth a couple more shadows very soon, but no promises. Even without new products or colors, it's constantly hectic around here, and we musn't get behind schedule.

The mauve highlighter/contour (which could be used as eye shadow highlight, too) looks daunting, but warms up to a more human-like hue upon application and gentle blending. We've had this sitting aside for several months, and kept meaning to add it to the catalog, as the poor highlighters haven't seen a new fellow-product in years.

Tonight, we work on checking through ingredient stock and pressed eye shadow inventory, and most likely replenishing a couple pressed shades. 

Witchy Woodland Creatures and Velveteen Werewolf are the frontrunners.

No surprise, the browns are the top sellers so far. Ghost's Kiss was really fast-moving on 10/1 & 10/2, which was new; usually a new Lustre shade doesn't sell well until some blog reviews are out. Especially since the trial size Lustres weren't available again until 10/3.

I was right about the new products selling insanely fast, but at the time I didn't know just how right I was. 10/1 & 10/2 were a madhouse (or rather, madstore?), and the days since have been nearly as busy. Of course, Fall is the Indie busy season, at least for some industries, so it's expected. But this year: whoa.

Yes, it's great! We're thrilled you anticipate and like our products so! Thank you very much for that. I'm just mentioning all that because it did indeed have an impact on the time frame, though not by an absurd amount, and at times I miss seeing an email or two, et cetera.

Chances are great that I forgot something I'd intended to write about, but it's after 11pm. We'll be in the studio early tomorrow working on Tuesday's outbound shipments. Monday is a US holiday (why is Columbus Day a USPS holiday??), though UPS and FedEx are operating as usual - which is good because apparently several big shipments ended up being scheduled to arrive  on the same day.

Good night!

"Duochromes", Arcane effects, and other matters.

Frequently I see people refer to our Arcane line (or shadows/nail/lip products with similar effects) as "duochrome", what we refer to as "Dualcolors" for Fyrinnae. In the color cosmetic field, this generally refers to one color with another color mixed into it or laid on top of it, in the case of a sheer highlight on top of an opaque base color. These are formulated in a way to allow 2-3 distinct hues to be visible at once. For example, our eye shadow Wicked is a satiny dark violet with a lighter turquoise shimmer on top. The particles are mixed together, but upon application the highlight appears to lay on top of the other colour. There are many, many colors like this in the cosmetic world. The Arcanes, however, are different. Sure, some are also two distinct colors such as Faerie Glamour and Conjuror, but when brought to the light or viewed at an angle, the highlight changes hue, sometimes to more than 3 variants, so you can see more than just a couple flat shades. The pigments used in creation of these eye shadows (they show up better in nail polish which you probably know; the enamel or liquid helps reflection) do shift to various hues, depending on angle, proximity to light, and yes, the color-vision of the viewer. We all see colors differently. Reflection of light shows you varying colors, in the same manner a prism gives off a rainbow. These variations stay in the same color families, though. You won't see a bright yellow change to royal blue, but a coppery yellow may shift to orange to warm pink or red.

When we pen the Arcane descriptions, the initial colour or mix is given for how the shadow appears viewed straight on, at about arm's length, with indoor lighting. About the distance, or a little closer than other people will see it on you. Some of these look fairly blah in sunlight, or it kind of blends the hues together.


On to the Samhain set for this year: This weekend we did raise prices on most products, though pressed shadows, Pixie Epoxy, gel primer, and most face powders stayed the same. Shipping was raised from free at $50 to free at $75. Giving free international shipping adds up fast, but I don't want to eliminate that. Changing some mini prices caused an odd glitch so those had to be done one by one, which took hours, hence the store being closed for most of a day while it was completed and checked. The new colors were posted earlier today, but I never announce it, because there is always a sudden mad rush to buy them, and especially with the recent pressed shadow release, we usually have as much business as we can handle without working exceedingly long hours (and there are five of us here which crowds the studio when hours greatly overlap), which a couple of us do anyway. We always try to get everything out the door quickly, but if suddenly incoming purchases triple (or more, as happened last September), the waiting time frame will increase. For example, if at work or school you (or your group) can get 10 tasks done in an hour, then one day a supervisor comes and says you must now get 30 tasks done in that same hour...you get the picture. I don't want to have to close the store for orders, but that may end up happening this year given the overnight popularity of our pressed shadows. Daemon's Tail, Te Amo, and Polar Bear keep selling out the fastest. I'll wager that is odd of me to write, but I strive for honesty with customers, and keeping our products developed and produced here as they always have been. Remember, we never do limited editions, so the Samhain-theme products will still be here next month and the next, and so on.

I'm not in the office now, but will be down there and reply to email later today.

perfectly

, unless someone else gets

New

The application/durability testing by a couple local artists was completed In July, and in the past few days  recipients of the eye shadow giveaway have posted or emailed feedback and pictures:

http://www.perilouslypale.com/2012/09/fyrinnae-pressed-eyeshadows-te-amo-and.html

http://bloodfeatherslipstick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/thats-what-she-said-fyrinnae-pressed.html

https://twitter.com/99Raina99/status/241380778322305024/photo/1



Rapunzel didn't fare well, but we feared that in the first place and have since made a slight alteration to the  base, changed dimethicone viscosity, so it seems good now. I used to press some all by hand a few years ago, which were never up for sale of course. The available shades are going to be rather limited. Very few of the sparkly shadows, and we're keeping out most that are similar to shades available elsewhere, such as the ghost-types and Koala. They will be added to gradually, and as I mentioned before, some shades will pressed-only. The picture below shows Damn Paladins, Te Amo, Rapunzel, and Purgatory.

(In which Damn Paladins appears too pale and Te Amo photographed splotchy for some reason)

We did have to switch manufacturers of the pans about a month ago, due to a great number of them ending up being either 25mm or nearly 27, which not only was annoyingly inconsistent, but created obvious problems with pressing equipment and the compacts. There will not be blush, highlighter, or other powder products in pan form in the foreseeable future.

I'm going to try and have these available starting in two weeks, maybe sooner or later, but we don't want that too close to the Halloween/Autumn release, as September and October are almost always the busiest months of the year. Speaking of which, if you thought last year's Halloween colors were good, these are unreal. In fact, there were too many gorgeous shades that we moved some out and pushed them to a future release, perhaps winter.

Also, in several random orders shipped this past week (and a few more that will be on the way this week), a silicone long-handle applicator was included as a gift, so a few of you may see one show up. Unlike brushes, these can be washed right off and dried, ready for another color, so it may be something we add. A friend reported that they work great for adding glitter or shimmer onto lips without gunking up other tools.