Shopping for ingridients

I get regular questions on where I buy the ingridients to my recipes. Here is a list of the online shops I have purchased from so far. I have also found what I need in food stores, health food stores and stores that sells art supplies.

Alchemy Works US-based. I have bought synthetic civet and ambergris. Also sells resins and herbs.

Mountainrose Herbs US-based. Herbs, spices and oils, many of them organic. Sadly they stopped shipping overseas just after I recieved my first order.

Naturkosmetikmagasinet Swedish-based. Herbs, essential oils and various comsetic bases. Also sells bottles and jars.

Naturally Thinking UK-based. Essential oils, jars bottles and various cosmetic bases.

The Perfumer's Apprentice US-based. Sells perfume bases and blends

Sally Pointer UK-based. I have purchased white lead substitute as well as cometic grade Iron oxide. Sells other histoical cometics as well.

Spådom Swedish-based. Have a nice collection of resins like labdanum and bensoe.

TKB Trading US-based. Cosmetic ingridients. I have bought carmine, bismuth and real pearl powder from them.

Örtagubben Swedish-based. Herbs and essential oils.

Learning by doing

A large part of this blog is that I am by no means an expert on historical beauty. Passionate about it and interested, but I am constantly learning more and sometimes I need to retract from previous statements, simply because I have learned more, or because I have misunderstood something. Like the following.

Lead white can be substituted with Titanium dioxide. The problem with this statement is that I have never actually tried comparing the two. However, Sally Pointer has and has found that the best substitute is actually Titanium dioxide, corn starch and Talc! She sells that her web shop and I have ordered it to try out.

Cuttlefish bones. Here I stumbled because English isn’t my native language and I naively thought it was the same as fish bones and have this treated it equally in recipes. Not so, which I am sure most of you already know. A cuttlefish belong to the same family tree as squids and octopuses and the “bone” is a kind of porous internal shield, basically made out of aragonite, a crystal form of calcium carbonate. So even if I haven’t been completely wrong with equaling it with calcium carbonate, the texture is different. Cuttlefish bones are easily obtained in pet stores. If you ever kept birds, then you have probably given it to your birds. It’s very easy to ground, given its porous nature, so next time I use a recipe with it as an ingredient, I will try it.

Bismuth. Additional information- I was unsure if Bismuth discolours, and have now learned that it does, it can become greyish. So the recipes from this post seem to indicate that it is Bismuth and not real pearl powder that has been used.

In addition to the Lead substitute I have ordered some bismuth. Just for testing as I am allergic to it, but I plan a post where I test all the white pigments I have to compare them. I would like to see how Bismuth really looks along the substitute I have used, Titanium dioxide with mica. In the same order I will also get some Carmine, so some rouge posts are coming up as well. As with the patch post. I found that the more I looked, the more I found when it came to beauty patches and I have had to stop my research. Not because there aren’t more to be found, but because this is “just” a blog and not an academical paper. It’s turning out both long and picture filled, so it will probably be posted in two parts and hopefully pretty soon.