White pigeon beauty bar

So, I'm gonna make an admission. I am a sucker for Dove soap. I mean Dove "not-soap." I mean "part soap, part not-soap." If I'm confusing you, let me explain. The Dove brand likes to make a big deal of being not soap, and gentler than soap, and so on. The thing is, it contains soap. It also contains synthetic detergents. It is what is known as a semi-syndet bar, as in semi-synthetic (and therefore also semi-traditional) detergent bar. The main synthetic detergent in Dove, and the one that gives it its characteristic properties - like being a solid bar, having that soft lather, and leaving a conditioned feel on the skin - is sodium lauroyl isethionate.

We DIYers can get pretty much the same ingredient (from loads of different suppliers) under the INCI name of sodium cocoyl isethionate, also often called Baby Foam due to its gentleness. The "cocoyl" part indicates it is derived from coconuts. Lauric acid makes up something like 50% of coconut fatty acids (by far the largest proportion)... and this purified version is what is used to make the sodium lauroyl isethionate listed on the Dove bar ingredients.

The "one quarter moisturizing cream" claim, what about that one? So, it's not actually moisturizing lotion. Obviously right? It's a cleanser bar, not a lotion. However there is some truth to the claim. There is an ingredient called stearic acid in Dove, which is a really good moisturizer that is an ingredient in plenty of moisturizing creams, and just happens to work really well with sodium cocoyl/lauroyl isethionate! It adds moisturizing without ruining the lather, which is what most moisturizing ingredients would do. And what percentage do you think they use it at? I'd be willing to bet it's 25%.

As a soap-maker, the people who know I also love and use Dove think it's pretty ironic... and maybe even deceitful... that I'm such a two-timer with my bar cleansers. Frankly, each has its benefits. I don't find that Dove removes deodorant really well, but soap does. Soap can be made way prettier than a syndet bar any day. And since I make soap, I can make it smell like whatever I want. I love the smell of original Dove, and some of their new fragrances are pretty great too. I love the feel of the lather and the gentleness of Dove. And I love the fact that they offer a fragrance free sensitive skin option that is affordable and readily available to all of us with dainty hides (and "fragrance sensitivites," though I have my doubts that many of the people who claim this affliction would use Dove, made by eeeevil Unilever, after all...).

So how am I to reconcile my conflict of interest? Make a syndet bar, of course! 

I've had some sodium cocoyl isethionate for quite a while (an 85% active variety... it comes in a wide range of concentrations and formats, with or without pre-added stearic acid, so you have to pay attention with this ingredient), but all of my previous experiments were dramatic failures due to the fact that I thought it was supposed to melt into a clear liquid... it's not. If it is being put in something with a large percentage of other liquid surfactants, it will fully melt into the liquid. If you are making a bar product or cream cleanser with less liquids in it, it will melt into a white paste. Don't try to get it clear and liquidy with ever-increasing stirring and heat... it will burn, it will stink, and there will be burnt orange bits in the thing that you make. Ask me how I know this.

So I analyzed the ingredient lists of Dove's sensitive skin bar and their pear-and-aloe scented GoFresh variety (which are a little different, but have the same key ingredients, and when there are different ingredients, you can match them based on the function they fulfill in the bar). I used this information to come up with my own recipe, with the sodium cocoyl isethionate and stearic acid making up over 75% of the ingredients. A few bits of liquid surfactant, water, dipropylene glycol, sodium chloride (i.e. non-iodized table salt), tetrasodium EDTA, colour, and fragrance oil finish it off.

It turned out quite nice. I have only used the residue so far to wash out the beakers and measuring cups used to make it, and washed my hands once, but I think I like it! So am I breaking up with Dove? I dunno, probably not. It's so damn cheap, it's probably way more expensive to make it myself. But we'll see how it goes. :)

Emulsification experimentation

Long time no post!


So last week-ish I did some experimenting with some new-to-me emulsifiers. I tried out Montanov 68 (Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Cetearyl Glucoside), Simulgreen 18-2 (Hydroxystearyl Alcohol and Hydroxystearyl Glucoside) - both available from LotionCrafter, and CreamMaker CA-20 (Cetearyl alcohol, ceteareth-20) from MakingCosmetics. I was excited about the first two, as they are supposed to be liquid crystal emulsifiers, meaning they create a layered structure in the emulsion instead of the usual spherical micellar structure. It is supposed to more closely mimic the lipid layering of the skin, and therefore provide more effective moisturizing.

So I made three tiny batches of lotion, with all the same ingredients save for the 3% of each of the emulsifiers.

My lotion featured cetyl alcohol, dimethicone, rosehip oil, squalane, evening primrose oil, and vitamin E in the oil phase, and glycerin, niacinamide, and water in the water phase. Powdered Germall Plus and cyclomethicone rounded out the cool-down section.

The phases were heated and held, and mixed at about 70 degrees C. I used the whisk attachment for my mini mixer, which as we see later, may have caused some issues.

The lotion made with Montanov 68 was very, very thin to start with. However, it held together okay, and had thickened up to a normal, medium thickness lotion consistency by the following morning.

The lotion made with the CreamMaker CA-20 thickened pretty normally. As soon as the mixture started to cool during mixing it became a medium thickness lotion. It has held up nicely, but looks a little "grainy" (if you are a soaper, you'd call it light ricing). It shows no sign of separation, but looks like it could have used a little more thorough mixing perhaps.

And finally the lotion made with the Simulgreen 18-2. It thickened so nicely, really thick right away. The texture was nice and smooth, and my hopes were high. It looked really great for about 48 hours, after which soupy water started coming out the tube I'd put it in before the thick part would squeeze out. It had separated! Boo! I've since thrown this one out.

So, I think the root of my problem with the Simulgreen 18-2 was my mixing. Susan over at Point of Interest, coincidentally mentioned a few days after I made these lotions, that the Montanov and Simulgreen are meant to be mixed with a high-shear mixer (like a stick blender) before switching to a low-shear mixer (like whisk or hand mixer). I double checked the usage instructions on LotionCrafter's website, and sure enough she was right. None of mine got high-shear mixing. The one with Montanov seems to have tolerated my omission, the Simulgreen has not.

I can't really comment on the relative moisturizing capabilities of each emulsifier. I am a very oily girl to start with, and these lotions contain waaaay more oil than I am used to applying to my face. I chose the oils carefully, to be high in linoleic acid and therefore hopefully beneficial for acne-prone skin, and they haven't broken me out at all, but they do feel distinctly more oily than I am used to.

Anti-aging cream cleanser... a return to the SD problems

Oh hi there. I finally got back into my la-BOR-a-tory (a corner of my unfinished basement) yesterday, and did a bit of alchemizing. I made a cream cleanser... well, I tried. It was a bit of a revisit to the frustrating days of my stearamidopropyl dimethylamine condiotioner experiments.

My recipe was based on one from chemical supplier, Inolex, but I substituted a lot of their feature ingredients for more common equivalents. For example their cationic conditioner is brassicamidopropyl dimethylamine... which, from the name, I assume is made from broccoli seed oil or some other brassica. I used stearamidopropyl dimethylamine because that is what I have and none of my suppliers sell that brassica stuff. I also substituted their emollient ester, dicapryl succinate, with Cromollient SCE, their brassica alcohol fatty acid with cetyl alcohol (they do like their brassicas, don't they?), and their co-emulsifier, glyceryl stearate, with a complete emulsifier I have that is high in glyceryl stearate; it's composed of glyceryl stearate (60%), cetearyl alcohol (25%), and sodium stearoyl lactylate (15%).

The anti-aging part, aside from being a gentle cleanser, is the inclusion of some exfoliating fruit extracts (I used Multifruit BSC from Voyageur), and I guess the salicylic acid. Sal acid is more of an anti-acne ingredient, which is a more immediate problem for me than aging... but it's an exfoliant and pore-improver.

Anyway, it has separated. I think I'm going to take it back down to the lab and dump in some more citric acid, since that is what solved my conditioner woes.

UPDATE: Nope, didn't work. Adding 0.5 g at a time, I added 4 extra grams of citric acid. No thickening occurred. Boo. I suppose I should go back to leaving out the expensive ingredients until my base is stable.

Neglect!

I have been so neglectful of my blog! I have good excuses though. Along with my two craft shows, I also moved and started a new job!

I have only just started alechmizing again. I made a custom order of body wash for a lady who came to my craft shows... body wash in Jean Naté fragrance! Remember that stuff!? When I was a kid it felt like every bathroom I ever visited had one of those mini bottles of Jean Naté after-bath-splash gathering dust on a shelf over the toilet. Bizarrely, the fragrance is growing on me a little; it's very lemon-y and a bit powdery too. It's a strange combination, but kinda nice.

Anyway, the formula is very similar to Gersh-wash 2.0, with a little added DLS surfactant (which I'm kind of feeling is really drying, even though it is supposed to be super gentle...), some added honeyquat for skin moisturizing, and minus the glycol distrearate, since if I recall what Gersh told me correctly, it may have separated out of her batch.

Still have to bottle it up and label it before I can let one very excited customer know her product is ready. Yay alchemy! :D

Soap, soap, soap!

Literally just a fraction of what I've made!

Smells like Chanel No 5.

Trippy, hippy nag champa.

Cute xmas soap.

Interesting goings-on of suppliers

I was at the New Directions Aromatics warehouse yesterday picking up some soap supplies. When I went to leave, there was a Saffire Blue truck parking me in! I'm pretty sure NDA imports their own products; I think this partly because they usually have the best prices by far, but also because there was a customs agent there yesterday when I was there. Saffire Blue probably buys in bulk from NDA and resells their products. So weird. I wonder if the products we buy all pretty much come from the same sources.

Absenteeism

Not posting much lately because I'm not doing much cosmetic chemistry lately. I'm making soap like a mad woman though. I've decided to sell at a few Christmas markets in November, and due to the one-month cure time soap requires, I'm in a bit of a hurry to get it made. Maybe I'll post some pictures soon of the more spectacular bars I've made....