3D printing your own cosmetics with Mink

If you’ve never wore makeup or do not know how much it costs a quality makeup, let me explain you guys more about this art and aweome Mink project:

Will be Mink the Makeup answer? Makeup is an ancient practice which has been around for thousands of years. We originally used it to protect ourselves from elements like wind and sun — Queen Cleopatra wore eyeliner not only for aesthetic purposes but to protect herself from eye infections.— Nowadays we do not only relate this with beauty habits, for many of us, it’s a professional and social norm. As Olga Khazan affirms  in The Atlantic:

“It works by enhancing facial contrast […] the color difference between your lips and nose, for example. Facial contrast is closely associated with femininity, and femininity with female beauty, in Western cultures”

It might sound too superficial, but truth is that another study found participants were more likely to award “prestigious jobs” to women who were made up than to the same women when their faces were unadorned.

Today, American women spend around $60 billion a year on cosmetics and beauty products, which means the average woman will spend $15,000 USD on makeup in her lifetime. So to be totally realistic here, at one point those beauty products are going to expire (6 months after being opened to be clear, and probably  you never used them again since then), but anyways the moment you need it again, you’d have to throw away the remaining product –which for me often is almost 85% of the container– and empty your wallet at Sephora’s one more time, it is the never ending story in an industry that only sells in massive, but hopefully not forever: Grace Choi is a pioneer in digital cosmetics fabrication who has created Mink, a 3D printer that can print makeup and instantly transform any image into a wearable color cosmetic.

It all started when Choi wondered if there was a way to use the four computer printer colors (Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow) to allow anyone mix their own makeup colors cheaply from home; It took Choi one month to figured out how to turn an HP home printer into a 3D makeup printer, then, with Choi as the sole founder and employee, the modified printer was successfully presented at The Disrupt NY 2014 Startup Battlefield competition.

As a girl who usually do makeup, I’ve had trouble finding beauty products suited for my skin because no one could match in terms of colour and coverage. Similarly, Grace Choi had struggled to find skin care products that catered to her Asian skin tone, which is another of the issues her invention solves efficiently because now we have complete freedom over the colors that we choose and ingredients that fit us better.

I’m often interested in this kind of girly projects, so rate my post if you liked to read more of this around…