How It's Made: Lipstick

Throughout history, women have enhanced their lips with color.

Cleopatra led the way over 2,000 years ago.

She used crushed ants and beetles to redden her lips.

Today a tube of lipstick does the job nicely,

no need to mess around with crushed bugs.

Lipstick comes in a case that also serves as an applicator,

and that's the beauty of it.

Just twist the stick and apply color to make lackluster lips look luscious.

Lipstick ingredients include waxes, pigments, and moisturizers.

A worker pre-weighs everything following a formula.

The exact blends are usually a company secret.

She pours the measured ingredients into a kettle that melts and mixes them together.

She adds a plant-based gel known as plantolatum.

It will act as a skin softener, and also enable the lipstick to be smoothly applied.

Different waxes - carnauba, candelilla, and beeswax - add body to the mixture.

The waxes will also give the lipstick a certain sheen upon application.

With the base mixture prepared,

she now whips up a batch of pigment using different iron oxide colorants.

She scoops it onto rollers that grind the pigment particles while rolling it into sheet form.

It takes three passes through the rollers to fully grind the pigment.

It's ready to be added to the base mixture.

She lowers the heat in the kettle to avoid scalding the ingredients.

She adds pigment until the mixture thickens and becomes creamy.

It's now the right consistency to be shaped into lipstick.

It's over to the next station, where another worker pours the lipstick liquid into a filling machine.

This filling system also has a mixer that keeps the consistency creamy.

She places a mold under the filling machine and activates a lift.

It serves up the mold to nozzles that pump lipstick liquid into the slots of the mold.

She continues to fill lipstick molds until the supply in the machine has been depleted.

She places the molds on a conveyor,

which takes them through a nearly 5-foot-long cooling tunnel.

The chilly trip causes the lipstick liquid to solidify.

The lipsticks are now ready for their swiveling tubular containers.

She places a rack on top of the mold, and inserts the cases into slots in the rack.

The slots are aligned with the lipsticks in the mold.

Then it's over to the turnaround machine.

Bursts of air gently push the lipstick out of the mold and up into the cases.

To assist, little pushers apply pressure to the bottoms of the cases.

The lipsticks have made their transfer without a smudge.

She sets them down and removes the transfer rack.

On another conveyor, the lipsticks pass by heat guns.

The hot air melts the lipsticks just a little to make them shine.

Continuing on, the lipsticks travel pass rollers that turn the cases to cause the lipsticks to swivel down.

A tester samples a lipstick from every batch to determine the melting point.

This is important, because lipsticks should be stable enough not to melt in a purse on a hot day.

He smears lipstick shavings onto a glass disk and examines their consistency.

He places the sample on a heating element and swings a magnifying glass overhead for a close-up view

as the lipstick shavings melt into a puddle.

Checking a thermometer, he confirms that the melting point is within an acceptable range.

Another worker then compares the color of the freshly made lipstick to the standard,

and it's a match.

So they wrap up production with a plastic cap.

The cap is clear to showcase the shade of the lipstick.

It has taken about a day to manufacture this lipstick.

It's time to freshen up.