When We Say 'Alchemy,' This Is What We Mean
A few months ago, Alex was approached by our tattoo artist; he’d liked our beard oil and asked if we could come up with a better tattoo lubricant and aftercare product — one that actually worked to help both the artist and the person being tattooed. Alex brought this to me, and I created Tatu Tsar. Our friend loved it so much that he dubbed me “The Alchemist” — I beleive the gist of the text exchange was, “Holy fucking shit, this shit is alchemical magic.” This is what happened in between.
Tattoos are art — let’s define this right now. They are self expression and individuality and catharsis. But, in their most basic form, they’re also wounds. Skin lesions. Scars. A needle peirces the skin, ink is injected, and the wound is left to heal. I had been asked to heal skin, not make it look prettier.
I researched potential ingredients. To make a better balm, I needed to know what was wrong with the other balm out there. I read ingredient lists of the big players and found that, when you discard all of the garbage fillers and preservatives, you’re left with a fairly basic list of the cheapest “natural” ingredients you can buy: castor oil, olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter — not one of which is good for wounds or healing. In fact, some of them can be outright irritating. (Never ever use cocoa butter on your skin, especially your face.) Even recipes for homemade tattoo salves on PInterest had these same shortcuts. This would never do.
So instead of looking for the ingredients all tattoo balms have in common, I looked for the uncommon ones. Yes, they are more expensive, but this is your tattoo — you paid for it to be awesome, so keeping it awesome isn’t something to cheap out on. I settled on two very promising base ingredients:
Mango butter is a soft, rich butter that has high amounts of Vitamin A for natural cell renewal. In essence, it encourages your skin to produce better skin cells. It soothes irritation, is anti-inflammatory, improves texture and elasticity, and protects against UV damage.
Kokum Butter is a hard, crumbly butter that is rich in essential fatty acids omega-3 and -6, polyunsaturated fats, and Vitamin E. It has a light texture and absorbs easily into skin, soothing iritation and inflamation. It’s known for its cell regeneration and degeneration properties.
Wow, OK, so those sounded perfect for a tatttoo healing. Naturally kokum butter has zero scent, and mango butter’s scent is so light you can’t really smell it at all. So, I had my base — now onto my essential oils:
Frankincense improves skin tone, maintains softness and radiance, nourishes with anti-inflammatory and tissue remodeling properties, reduces the appearance of wrinkles, age spots, scars, and stretch marks.
Heliochrysum acts as an antioxidant to protect collagen and elastin, wipes out microbes, has tissue remodeling effects to fade blemishes, offers anti-aging, wound-healing, and scar-fading benefits.
Sweet orange reduces dark spots and blemishes with vitamin C, fights off free radicals to prevent premature skin aging, has antibacterial properties, boosts skin circulation, promotes cell growth and collagen synthesis, shrinks large pores and firms skin.
Now, I can’t just give away my secrets, but it wasn’t as simple as tossing the ingredients together and poof. There were trials of different concentrations, densities, melting points, etc. My AP Chem and college Organic Chemistry came into play more than I ever thought they would. But in the end, I humbly accepted the title of Alchmist for the unbelievable concoction that is Tatu Tsar today.
It really does everything we say it does because of all these steps, perspectives, ingredients, and combinations. Is it magic? In the end, it was chemistry and good old-fashioned inution. Seems like perfect alchemy to me.