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....

Damn you, humidity!

I made a bunch of terribly cute little bath bomb pumpkins to embed in bigger bath bombs, but the humidity has gotten to them and they look all fuzzy! Grr! I wonder if there is any way to pretty them up again. Maybe I'll just have to call the bombs "fuzzy pumpkin."

Lotion for a greasy face

Tonight I made an attempt at an item on my wish list, the lightweight moisturizer for my face. I decided to try out an emulsifier I got a little while ago but haven't used yet: Ritamulse SCG, aka glyceryl stearate (and) cetearyl alcohol (and) sodium stearoyl lactylate. Know your INCI names, people! I accidentally just ordered some more of this because I didn't remember the INCI! Thankfully the package I have and the package on the way are both smallish.

I wanted the oils to be minimal in this lotion, so I decided to put in only 1.5% tamanu oil, and I only caved and put that one in because I've had success using a lotion containing it to help get rid of post-acne hyper-pigmentation, which I've been having a fair bit of lately. Frankly, it smells bad, and it makes the lotion smell bad, but if it does what I want it to do I'll put up with it.

I included some cetyl alcohol for oil-free moisturizing and to add some structure to the lotion; I'll definitely reduce it by 1/3 or 1/2 if I make this again, because the lotion is super thick! I think the cetearyl alcohol that is part of the emulsifier probably thickens it up just fine.

I also went a bit crazy with the goodies. I included 5% niacinamide (because of which the lotion needed to have a pH of 6), some ceramide complex, allantoin, honeyquat (oops, Susan at Point of Interest recommends not using cationics with Ritamulse SCG, but it's just a tiny bit, and it looks thick and stable so far!), silk amino acids, and hyaluronic acid. You only get one face, best to look after it! ;)

Hopefully the niacinamide helps with my post-inflammatory hyper-pigmentation (PIH) a bit.

Anyway, it was a regular heat and hold process. I drizzled the water phase into the oil phase slowly while mixing (with an Ikea milk frother), per Susan's recommendation. It thickened right up almost instantly. I didn't have to mix for long since I was only making a 10 g test batch and it cooled really quickly. Once it was good and cool (also per Susan's instructions, to prevent horrible curdling), I added the cool-down ingredients and gave it another stir with the frother. It is so thick that even the frother doesn't whip air into it. I gobbed it into an airless pump container and it was ready to go!

I tried it out after having a shower and using my acne meds. It felt crazy thick and heavy going on, but after a few minutes it had, rather remarkably, settled down to a soft, somewhat powdery, and maybe very slightly waxy feel. It is really quite light once dry. It isn't the greatest spreader because it is thick and dries quickly; I didn't include any 'cones in it because I didn't know how they'd fare with this emulsifier, but I'll probably add some next time. I do love my silicones!

Overall, not too shabby.

Wish list

Sigh, I'm stuck in a poxy hotel room, working out of town again. All I can think about are the alchemy projects I'd rather be working on, so I have decided to make a wish list, mostly to remind myself when I'm sitting at home wondering what to do.

Shark Sauce - Have most of the ingredients and a few more are on the way. Just missing licorice extract, aloe vera juice, and normal molecular weight hyaluronic acid. Plan to leave out the oils, or substitute something I have/is super light because, y'know, grease-face and acne.

Dupe of the formerly AlphaHydrox 10% AHA Oil Free Formula (now known as Alpha Skin Care Essential Renewal Gel 10% AHA, with corresponding price increase). Need to figure out what gelling ingredient to use, bearing in mind pH stability and price. I'd like to be able to factor in the feel, but seeing as I've only ever used natural gums before, that's probably not gonna happen.

A nice, light facial moisturizer, for when I run out of the Spectro Daily Facial Moisturizer for Blemish-prone Skin that I'm currently using in the evenings after my retinoid... maybe Shark Sauce can replace this. It should be moisturizing.

About a bajillion little tubs of reredux body butter for xmas presents.

A gentle, creamy facial cleanser that is nice, and works for my crappy skin, and is nothing like this.

Maybe some kind of a booster to apply with my sunscreen, since there is rarely anything good in them aside from the sun-protectors, and I refuse to use a separate moisturizer when I'm putting on sunscreen.

That's all I can think of for now!

I have been bombing... bath bombing that is.

The fruits of my recent labours. The beige one is oatmeal, milk, and honey, and contains colloidal oatmeal and goat milk powder. No actual honey because sugary things can cause yeast infections. :/ The pink and white one is rose scented, the solid light yellow-y one is champagne and smells hella boozy. The turquoise, orange, and yellow one is called tropical honeymoon, and is scented with a mix of pineapple, coconut, frangipani, and margarita. The frangipani was incredibly strong and overpowering when it was first made, but thankfully it has mellowed a bit and you can actually smell the coconut now. And the purple and white one on top that is not wrapped yet (because I just made it) is called seduction; it is fragranced with a mix of jasmine and sandalwood, a combination I quite enjoy. The white dots are 1:1 sodium bicarb:citric acid with no oils or solubilizers, to provide some really active fizzing, and maybe some spin; there are a few more white chunks buried inside.

My first genuinely aggravating cosmetic chemistry experience - creamy face wash

I've been eyeing Susan's cream cleanser recipes for a while now; particularly the second one on this page, the cream cleanser for normal to oily skin - for people who aren't big on oils, because I have oily skin. In the past, I have been really attracted to cream cleansers; my skin is sensitive and prone to tightness and itching after cleansing, cream cleansers help mitigate those reactions. Plus I just really like the way they feel on my skin.

I was also excited to try using sodium cocoyl isethionate (SCI), a solid surfactant, and the key ingredient in Dove bars, which have been my go-to body cleanser (and occasional face cleanser) for the last 15 years or so. I know I like the feel of this surfactant.

So yesterday I got out my alchemy notebook, where I had modified Susan's formula to make it a bit simpler (I'm not as fond of extracts, hydrolyzed proteins, and film-formers as she is... particularly not in a rinse-off product), and got cooking. I believe Susan usually uses SCI in prill form containing 35% actives. Mine is in flake form with 85% actives. I didn't change the percentage being used, although possibly I should have. I put the flakes (which are actually more like small chunks) in a beaker with the cocamidopropyl betaine called for, which acts as a solvent for the SCI, into a double boiler and heated it up. And stirred. And heated. And stirred. And heated. Ad nauseum.

It took for. ever. In fact it might have literally taken forever, but after 90 minutes or 2 hours, I got sick of waiting. I dumped the paste into a frying pan and put it directly on the heat. It gelatinized a tiny bit. I poured in the second beaker of heated ingredients (including decyl glucoside, another substance that helps to dissolve SCI), and mixed it up hoping to thin it out a bit and maybe melt some more of the SCI chunks. The vapours of sizzling decyl glucoside were too much. I took it off the heat and pressed the whole horrible mess through a strainer, scraping the waxy chunks of SCI out of the mesh periodically. I ended up with about a third of the volume I expected. I put in my preservative, honeyquat, hydrolyzed protein, and Crothix and mixed it up. I included 1% salicylic acid in it, as I have acne, but when I tested the pH it was 6, probably due to the high pH of the decyl glucoside. I didn't adjust it since I was doubtful that it was going to be a nice thing to put on my face anyway.

Now that it has cooled, it is beyond thick. Thicker than Plasticine in winter. I gouged out a chunk and kneaded it into a thinner paste with some tap water and rubbed it around on my face. It kind of burned. The pH was almost neutral, so it shouldn't be caused by that; I'm wondering if my skin doesn't like decyl glucoside, as my micellar water test that included it was also exceptionally burn-y.

So, this was a frustrating process with an unsatisfying outcome. Maybe I will try to invent my own recipe for a cream cleanser now that I have put a bunch of my SCI through the blender to powderize it....

Body butter reredux

I made my third attempt at duplicating the Body Shop's body butter. Attempts one and two were kind of fails. The second one was less bad than the first, but after I stirred the bubbles out of it some time after it had cooled it was pretty liquidy. It also got really hot here for a while and the body butter got even more liquidy and looked like it might be separating... or at least something was solidifying out of it. One of the oil-soluble ingredients probably.

Anyway, I switched from copying the Body Shop mango body butter to the strawberry. I left out ingredients that I didn't have (this only applied to ingredients found lower down in the list, therefore used at low concentrations anyway) such as strawberry seed oil, which is surely only included for label appeal, but stuck to the relative proportions of each ingredient as determined by the ingredient list. This one includes cetearyl alcohol as well as shea and cocoa butters, so I hoped thickening would be less of an issue than it has been up to now. Glyceryl stearate (and) PEG-100 stearate seems to be a tricky emulsifier. Maybe not as tricky as the conditioner/emulsifier, stearamidopropyl dimethylamine (I'm not linking to the bajillion posts I wrote about that, since, frankly, it makes up most of the blog at this point), but pretty tricky. Certainly much harder to work with than emulsifying wax NF and BTMS-50.

My hopes in this recipe seem not to have been misplaced. It thickened nicely as it cooled, although it is still not as firm as the Body Shop strawberry body butter (it is more similar to the Body Shop mango body butter in consistency, actually). We'll see, it may still firm up some more; it is only a few hours old right now. It feels nice on the skin, spreads well due to the fairly high cyclomethicone content, and smells great! I scented this test batch with a copy of BBW's rice flower and shea from Canwax.

Overall, pleased.


UPDATE - Sept 6, 2016: The body butter has thickened up a little more over the last day and a half. It is really nice. I think I might stick with this recipe, or a very similar one with maybe a touch more cetearyl alcohol. We shall see. I have read that it can take up to a week for products made with  glyceryl stearate (and) PEG-100 stearate to come to their final viscosity.

Also I love this fragrance.

Woot.


UPDATE - Sept 9, 2016: It's been 5 days since I made this body butter, and I've got to say, I'm loving it. It has thickened up quite significantly since it was made, and it's pretty much perfect. It is still not as firm as the Body Shop's strawberry body butter, on which the recipe is based, but I think it may actually be thicker than the Body Shop's mango variety. I think this recipe might be the one I stick with, at least for my xmas gifting plans. I could easily swap out a percentage of the shea and/or cocoa butters if I wanted to include some mango butter or something, but I quite like it the way it is. It has some lasting power if I apply it through the day; I'd say the greasy feel lasts about half an hour and I can still feel it until I wash my hands. However, when applied after a shower, my skin seems to be drinking it up. The dry-down is what I would call silky.

And yeah, the fragrance. Rice flower and shea is amazing


UPDATE - Sept 14, 2016: I still love it. In fact, I'm probably 2/3 of the way through my test batch, which is a definite indicator of how much I like it. This one's a keeper for sure.

Bath bomb redux

Soooo... I tested out the half-bomb from my black tea bomb batch. It fizzed great. However, there was a major issue. I had scented them at 2%, per Bramble Berry's fragrance calculator (using some random fragrance), for a medium-strength scent. They were way, way over-scented. Also, the fragrance oil was not emulsified, so when I set off the bomb in the sink, the oil all floated on the surface of the water. Since fragrance oils are concentrated and not meant (or indeed safe) to be used straight on the skin, I don't think they are usable. Aside from the fact that using it would be like a lemony tea kick in the face.

I tried again today with a smaller batch. (Is it possible to crush up and re-batch bath bombs the way you can with soap? I have 5 black tea bombs that could be diluted and emulsified....)

This time I made enough mix for just one bath bomb with some leftovers for making wee testers in an ice cube tray. I included some oat flour and powdered goat milk, polysorbate-80 and oatmeal, milk, and honey fragrance oil (at 1% this time). The polysorbate-80 should make this more of a foaming bath bomb than a fizzing one, but that's fine, it's meant to be a calming milk and oatmeal bath, not an exciting bubbly bath. ;)

The testers are like little bath bomb jujubes!

I definitely need to test this one before I let anyone use it. With a milk powder in it, there is a possibility that when it is put in water and the milk rehydrates that it might form curds due to the presence of the citric acid. Cheese is awesome, but not in the bath water. :D


UPDATE - Sept 6, 2016: I tried out one of the little tester bombs in a bowl of water yesterday. I made a video of it that I thought of uploading here, but the file was huge and was taking forever to upload from my phone to my Google Drive and I ran out of patience. Suffice it to say, it was a great success compared to the last batch. The bomb fizzed and foamed nicely. It smelled good and not overwhelming. The oils (FO and sweet almond oil I decided to include in this recipe) were reasonably well emulsified by the polysorbate-80, though perhaps I could use just a touch more. The milk powder didn't turn into curds and whey in the presence of the citric acid. And the only floaty bits were tiny pieces of ground oatmeal, which were 100% expected.

Verdict: Much better.

Quote of the day:

"Where are you, candy thermometer? Oh, there you are. In the measuring cup... with my quinoa."

Dreams DO come true!

How quick was that?! 100 g of citric acid, 200 g of baking soda, some colourant, some fragrance, and a spray bottle full of denatured alcohol, and here we are, 5.5 - 1.75" diameter bath bombs later!

Cue the Staples button: "That was easy!"

The fragrance is New Directions Aromatics black tea, which is quite lemony. The colours didn't quite work out as I had planned; I'd hoped for brown and yellow, but I used liquid dyes so they kind of balled up in the powder. Maybe I really do need to buy more ingredients....

Pining for the fizzy fjords

I want to make bath bombs! I definitely have ingredients to do it, so I should probably just use what I have instead of visiting every supplier's website and making ever-expanding shopping carts.... I also don't know why I have a sudden bath bomb obsession, especially since I've never actually used one. I made a trail bomb a few months ago in the peak of summer's humidity. I had to aim a fan at it for 24 or 48 hours as it was drying out so that the water vapour in the air wouldn't set off the fizzing reaction! I set it off on the floor of my shower some days later to try it out. It was scented with spearmint essential oil and was uncoloured.

I kinda want to try making pretty ones. I have concentrated lab colours that that should work in bath bombs, and dog knows I have fragrance oils! Maybe that will have to be a project for tonight, or for the upcoming alchemy weekend I'll be having while my husband is away visiting friends south of the border. Can't wait!

Lip balm

I'm a lip balm junky. I collected Lip Smackers as a young teen, and I've been totally addicted to Burt's Bees original peppermint lip balm for about 10 years, and was a fan of Blistex's Lip Medex before that. I've made lip balm lots of times in the past but never been totally satisfied with the outcome. I thought it was time to rectify that.

I tried to duplicate Burt's Bees about 6 months ago. I had the right ingredients, but it turned out way harder than I wanted. About 2 months ago, I rebatched the hard lip balm, adding more coconut oil, and got a really nice consistency but wasn't sure what the actual percentages were! The other day, I made an educated guess at what the recipe ought to be and tried it out with some new lip balm flavouring (mai tai punch, very nice!) I picked up from Candora.

Glam's Lip Balm Recipe
49% coconut oil
25% beeswax
24% sweet almond oil
1% vitamin E
1% flavouring

I melt my oils/wax in a little metal dish on low heat on the stove, but I would think microwaving/stirring intermittently would work too. When the wax and coconut oil are all melted and stirred in, I add the flavouring and vitamin E, give it a stir, and pour it into a lip balm tube.

A regular lip balm tube holds about 4.5 grams. I made a single trial tube (not quite full) by using 2 grams of coconut oil, 1 gram each of beeswax and sweet almond oil, and a few drops each of vitamin E and flavouring oils. It's a good way to try the recipe out to see if the formula is to your liking.

This is how full the tube is using the 4 g version of the recipe.

This lip balm is smooth (not grainy), of medium thickness (not too hard, not too runny/gooey), has decent longevity, and is not shiny.

If you wanted to make this like Burt's Bees, use peppermint oil for your flavouring, and, if you are making a larger batch, the tiniest bit of rosemary oil. One drop of rosemary oil in a single tube would be too much, so just leave it out if you are making only one or two tubes.

NOTE: Feel free to use this recipe, even sell products you make using it (you, of course, would be responsible for any liability for products you sell), just don't claim it is your recipe. Give credit where credit is due. If you re-post my recipe, please reference it properly and provide a link back to here. Enjoy!

Rosewater, glycerin, and shea cream

Wow, I actually had time to do a little alchemy last night! It feels like it has been forever!

I've been itching to use some of the floral water I bought a few weeks ago, and since I have about a million trial batches of micellar water on the go I couldn't excuse making more of that (although it will be a future project), so I made a cream! I thought the rosewater would add a nice light fragrance without including a fragrance or essential oil.

I used a very similar recipe to the one I used for my mom's shea and avocado cream, but I swapped the avocado oil for sweet almond, and replaced half of the water with rosewater. I also used liquid Germall Plus to preserve it instead of sodium benzoate/potassium sorbate.

I used emulsifying wax NF to hold the phases together. It has quite a high oil content, with 10% shea butter and 15% sweet almond oil, so it is quite greasy going on, but it is all absorbed on my hands (the main area I plan to use it) within about 30 minutes and the after-feel is soft and a little powdery. I quite like it; I knew I would because I liked the stuff I made for my mom! It is actually quite nice on the feet; once the initial greasiness has absorbed, it doesn't leave me with that wet-foot feeling I get from a lot of lotions (looking at you, Body Shop body butter...).

The only change I think I would make in an ideal world would be to either use more rosewater, or use a refined, deodorized shea butter, because I would like it to smell a bit more rosy and a bit less like unrefined shea butter!

PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides micellar water: excitement and frustration

My new order of ingredients came two days ago, and let me tell you, boy was I excited! When I got home from work and saw that the box there waiting for me was from Lotioncrafter, I pretty much dropped everything and busted out my alchemy equipment!

I had a recipe all ready to try out, with similar ingredients to Bioderma's Sensibio. It included distilled water, PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides (of course!), xylitol, cucumber peel extract, disodium EDTA, and a preservative. It was a simple one-phase mixing process, as there are no water and oil parts to emulsify.

As soon as I added the PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides to the water, it went kind of cloudy, which surprised me a bit, as the Bioderma formula is clear. I didn't worry about it, because the stuff I made with Cromollient SCE is also milky. I added in the rest of the ingredients. As expected, when I added the cucumber peel extract, the colour changed a bit. I'm using a powdered rather than a liquid extract and it makes things kind of yellow-y green. But it was fine and I mixered it all up.

I obviously can't leave well enough alone, so I tried it out right away. It felt okay, but not very much like the Sensibio. It was cleansing, but the dry-down wasn't the same; more residue-y, maybe from the cucumber extract or the gooey liquid Germall Plus I used to preserve it.

Anyway, within a few hours, I noticed something was settling out of solution onto the bottom of my beaker. I initially thought it was the Germall, since it looked pretty thick, but by the morning, the solution was clear with all the thick stuff sitting on the bottom, so now I figure it must be the PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides! What the heck! It's supposed to be a solubilizer, why is it coming out of solution?!

Clearly I need to have another go or two at this one. Sadly, it might not be for a while, since I have to help someone move this weekend and work out of town all next week. Boo. I guess I have time to contemplate what went wrong this time, since I still haven't figured that part out yet....

UPDATE Aug 28, 2016: So the strangest thing happened. I was more-or-less away for 10 days, so I just left this to sit. When I got home today, I mixed it up again with a frother-style mixer, and, lo! and behold, it is a clear solution! What the heck!? Did it just need some time, or did it just need some more serious mixing, or both? Anyway, I tried it again. It makes the same few tiny bubbles on the cotton pad as Sensibio (if you rub the two sides of the pad together), and it does not feel nearly as "residue-y" as I remember from before. Maybe the cucumber extract hadn't entirely dissolved before. Anyway, it is quite nice. Definitely an improvement on the last time I tried it. Perhaps a little more cleansing than Sensibio. Maybe they only use 0.75% surfactant in the commercial formula. Yay!

Polysorbate-20 micellar water - 2nd try

I had another go at micellar water made with polysorbate-20 tonight. I kept with my super simple testing formula as follows:

1% surfactant (polysorbate-20, in this case)
q.s. preservative (used 0.5% liquid Germall Plus)
q.s distilled water to 100%

It is nice and clear, and doesn't foam or feel soapy on the skin or the cotton pad the way the decyl glucoside and the caprylyl/capryl glucoside did. It seemed to clean off my sunscreen and day's worth of oily-face adequately. The dry-down is nice, definitely not sticky, maybe a little powdery, even.

Compared to the Bioderma Sensibio, I feel the polysorbate-20 at 1% may be just a fraction more drying. I wouldn't call it a drying cleanser though; my face feels less dry after using this than it does after using one of my old standbys, Cliniderm Gentle Cleanser, which is designed for "senitive, allergic, reactive or dry skin." I'm in no particular rush to apply a moisturizer.

Plus, it doesn't burn on my face like my last try did, since there's no Optiphen in it, wooo!

Verdict: I like it. This is a good option for DIY micellar water. Polysorbate-20 is a common, easily accessible ingredient, it's pretty cheap, and it does the job nicely. I haven't done in-depth research on this, but I haven't heard of anyone being sensitive to it (not to say it never happens, people can be allergic to literally anything). It's gentle enough that it is the surfactant used in Bioderma's ABCDerm H2O micellar solution designed for baby skin. I bet my basic recipe could be prettied up with all kinds of things like aloe or allantoin or panthenol to make something fairly decent.

I don't know how it works on makeup, since I rarely wear any (I'm definitely more into skincare than makeup). If you try it, lemme know how it does!

Micellar water update

So, I picked up a couple little travel-sized bottles of Bioderma Sensibio, since it is the gold standard of micellar waters, in order to have a reference point of what a commercial product is like when I am formulating. Wow, it's really nice! I could totally get over my squickiness about a leave-on surfactant product if it feels like that does... at least for one cleanse a day. I've got my benchmark!

Of all the formulas I've tried so far, I think the polysorbate-20 feels the most similar to the Bioderma, though I want to try that one again with a non-Optiphen preservative.

I also have grand plans for my micellar water recipes, and I haven't even got my PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides surfactant yet! I picked up some rose water and some orange blossom water from the international foods section of a local grocery store and I think I'll try to include them in some recipes. I'm so excited! :D

Linen spray

So this one is not really a cosmetic, but it would be if I sprayed it on my body instead of on my sheets! It's got the same ingredients as if I were to make a scented body spray (minus any nice things I might add, like aloe or panthenol).

It is crazy-simple to make, just four ingredients: fragrance, solubilizer, water, and preservative!

My recipe was as follows:

1% fragrance oil
1% solubilizer (I used polysorbate-20)
q.s. preservative (I used Optiphen Plus, since it's not going on my skin... my skin doesn't like Optiphen Plus, and I have a bunch of it that needs to get used up somehow.)
q.s. distilled water to 100%

Mix and pour into a spray bottle.

That's it.

I scented mine with a clone of Johnson's Baby Bedtime Bath fragrance from Indigo Scents. It's more lavender-y than I was hoping, although it could be totally true to the North American version of the fragrance, which I'm not familiar with. I was hoping it would be a dupe for some Johnson's baby talco para antes de dormir (bedtime baby powder, for those who don't read Spanish), that I brought home from South America, which I love the scent of. It's not that similar, really. The South American stuff definitely contains lavender, but is also a bit... fruity? It's hard to place, but it's lovely.

It's funny how scents vary internationally. Even the original Dove bar has a different fragrance for markets outside of North America, although I know from experience the European and South American versions smell the same. Personally, I prefer the North American version, as I'm a fan of powdery smells, but the international version is similarly clean, mild, and soapy smelling. I've found the international version of the Dove in dollar stores here in Canada... some wayward imports, perhaps?

Polysorbate-80 micellar water

The one solubilizing surfactant I own that I haven't tried in a micellar water yet: polysorbate-80.

I've continued on with my stripped down testing method, making the micellar water with just distilled water, 1% surfactant, and preservative.

Maybe 1% surfactant is not enough, or maybe polysorbate-80 is just a sticky one, but my skin feels moist and not terribly clean after using this product. I must say that it is a good-looking product though, making a nice, clear solution.

I have to say, so far I prefer polysorbate-20 and PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil to the others I've tried. But... I just ordered some PEG-6 capric/caprylic triglyceride from Lotioncrafter (why they've trade-named it SurfPro CC-6, I'll never understand, it makes it so hard to find). This surfactant is the one used in the celebrated Bioderma Sensibio/Crealine, so I have high expectations even though I haven't tried the original. (Hint: Watch for a Sensibio dupe attempt coming up once I receive my ingredients!)

My biggest ever batch of soap

This post is going to be a little diversion into soap making, since I do that too and made kind of a milestone batch last night. Generally I made really small batches, my regular loaf mould makes 5 100 g bars, plus I like the variety of making lots of different fragrances and colours. I think the biggest batch I have ever made was about 700 g. However, I recently got a wholesale order from a friend who wants to felt the soap and sell it at craft fairs. She ordered 2400 g of the same fragrance... and of course it is plain and uncoloured because it is going to be inside its little felt cocoon. So I made an enormous 2400 g batch of soap last night. 2400 g is just the oils, the water increases the weight too, but some of that will evaporate off in the curing process.

I initially put the oils in an 8-cup measuring cup, but by the time I got to the final oil I had to move them to my stockpot, there just wasn't enough room. I moulded it in a shoe box that once held hikers....

It is fragranced with oatmeal, milk, and honey from Voyageur. I really like that FO and had sort of been hoarding it, but I had to use up almost all of my supply in this batch. That is the price of doing business I guess! I will have to buy more. :)

I am excited to cut the soap tonight. I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do it, maybe I will cut it into loaves so I can use my wire cheese slicer cutting board to cut the bars like I normally do.

I have to make two more smaller batches, one lavender and one patchouli, for the same friend, plus I have orders for another patchouli loaf and a mint/nag champa with pumice loaf (for someone who has really weird soap preferences ;) ). I fear I am going to run out of my base oils before I make all of these.... Why does everyone want soap now that all I want to make is body butter?! It's a good problem to have.

Oil-based cleansing balm, and a possible revelation

I've been reading skin care stuff online as one does, and have come across oil-based cleansing balms a few times now. The Eve Lom product piqued my interest, because who the hell spends the UK equivalent of $100 on 100 ml of cleanser?! It also interested me because Eve Lom is a facecloth advocate, and I think facecloths are quaint. Another balm and facecloth champion is Caroline Hirons, a UK celebrity esthetician and blogger with about a million loyal minions.

The whole oil cleansing thing seems so bizarre to me, especially as a sensitive, oily, acne-prone skinned person who wholly refused to moisturize until I started using a prescription retinoid 2 years ago. I understand, and agree with, the chemical principle of like dissolving like, but... residue! How are you supposed to get all that residual oil off your skin without following up your oil cleanse with a proper cleanser?! Ain't nobody got time for that! I tried oil cleansing a whole of one time. I believe I mixed up 7 g of grapeseed oil and 3 g of castor oil (supposedly a good mix for oily skin), rubbed it on my face, and then scrubbed the bejesus out of my skin with a facecloth trying to get all the oil off. I'm pretty sure that within 30 minutes I had gone back and re-cleaned my face with a normal surfactant-based cleanser. It just wasn't for me.

So I read the ingredients of the Eve Lom stuff. Colour me skeptical when I saw that the first ingredient is mineral oil. Cheapest. Ingredient. Ever. Anyway, I kept reading and saw that her product contains not just oils, but also emulsifiers (a couple different PEG lanolins). That's where I started to see the light. I still think that the "all natural" oil cleansing is kind of bunk, especially for oily-skinned people, but if you add an emulsifier to your cleansing oil, that will increase its solubility - and therefore rinse-ability - in water. So it might actually come off your skin.

I decided to have another go at this oily nonsense, so I whipped up a super-simple pseudo-dupe of the Eve Lom cleanser, complete with 75% mineral oil. I substituted PEG-40 castor oil for the PEG lanolins, since it's the most similar emulsifier I have, and threw in some cetearyl alcohol and cocoa butter. I added the tiniest amount of clove and eucalyptus essential oils, and that was it.

Per the instructions of both Eve Lom and Caroline Hirons, I applied the stuff (similar consistency to Burt's Bees hand salve, if you are familiar with that) to my dry face and gave it a good rubbing-in. It felt oily. I wet a facecloth in hot water, wrung it out, and held it over my face for a few seconds. I repeated this step a few times, since the heat is supposedly essential for oily skin as it allows the cleanser to penetrate into my greasy pores. Following that I used my hot, wet facecloth to scrub the cleanser off, rinsing it a few times along the way. Lo and behold, my skin felt clean! Not oily! It was pretty remarkable. I felt like the balm rinsed cleanly off my hands too, and my facecloth did not feel like it was saturated in oil after rinsing. All so unexpected.

After drying my face off with a towel and giving it a few minutes to evaporate off the leftover moisture, I touched my skin. It felt really, incredibly soft.

Anyway, I've been at this for a few days now and haven't had any catastrophic results yet. I'll update if my acne explodes or anything, likewise if my skin suddenly becomes my best feature (a girl can dream, right?).

A note on facecloths: I've tried using them in the past, as my skin doesn't seem to react too well to the high levels of alcohol contained in most chemical exfoliants. I've always found that the added stimulation increases my oil production, and since starting prescription acne meds 2 years ago, I have stuck to hands-only cleansing with surfactant-based sensitive skin cleansers (either Cliniderm gentle cleanser or Cerave foaming cleanser). This system has worked quite well for me in combination with the meds, and Cliniderm protective lotion SPF 45 in the day or Spectro blemish-prone moisturizer overnight. I'm still using my meds and moisturizers and will switch back to my cleanser system if I have any problems... and probably when I run out of this balm, at least until I finish up the products that I already have.

UPDATE (Aug 8, 2016): So, after about 3 days of using this, I was developing 2 new pimples on my chin, boo. I went back to a regular cleanser the evening of Aug 5 and haven't had any new ones appear since then. Oh well, I only have one application of this stuff left anyway, maybe I'll use it up as a pre-cleanse and be done with it.

Blue shampoo

I ran out of my rhubarb shampoo a while ago, so I thought I'd make some more. I used basically the same recipe, although I reduced the panthenol a bit and added 0.5% glycol distearate, since I liked it so much in my sister's all-in-one wash. Other than that, just the colour and fragrance are different.

This time I went with blue colourant, as I think it goes nicely with the Crabtree and Evelyn's Nantucket Briar clone FO from Canwax that I used. I wasn't 100% impressed with all the FOs I ordered from them (toffee treats smells like burnt sugar and dissapears in CP soap while making the soap weirdly soft and sticky), but this one is pretty killer. Although I see the irony in describing the quintessential old lady fragrance as "pretty killer." I love it. I drink tea and smell like a grandma. :D

A second try at body butter

Following my last fairly miserable, if deliciously scented, failure, I made another attempt at duplicating the Body Shop's mango body butter recipe. The last one was way too oily and thin (and ended up separating), so this time I reduced the oil by 75% and doubled the proportion of mango butter. I still kept the relative proportions of ingredients in line with the Body Shop's ingredient list, since I am a sucker for punishment.

I also tried adding xanthan gum this time. I mixed it with my water as the first step in my formulation and let it hydrate for 15 minutes or so. Considering that I only made a 50 g sample batch, measuring out the 0.2% (i.e. 0.1 g) of xanthan gum was an inexact thing. My scale measures to 0.01 g, but I'm sure the accuracy is not that good, and it doesn't like sensing much under about 0.5 g, so I got it to measure 0.2 g and then removed about half of the xanthan gum in the dish. Honestly, the "gel" it created was hardly a gel, it was only marginally thicker than water. Anyway, I used it.

Once again, this was a regular heat and hold lotion process, and everything went normally. I added the silicone, fragrance, disodium EDTA, preservative, and colourant after cool-down. This one took its time thickening up, probably 24 hours before it reached its final consistency. This body butter, like the last, is thinner than I want, although this recipe was a marked improvement over the previous one. It is solid enough not to move when the jar it is in is turned upside down, but feels really thin when applying.

As an aside on the fragrance, I used a guava fig fragrance from Candora Soap, which smells freaking amazing, but sadly has that same weird after-smell as my rhubarb fragrance from Saffire Blue, and my pomegranate mango fragrance from New Directions Aromatics. Boo. I expect it will be better off in a wash-off product, as the rhubarb did well in shampoo.

I have decided that my next attempts at body butter will contain thickeners other than the butter and emulsifier. I've read the ingredient lists on some of the other Body Shop body butter flavours I own, and many of the others contain cetearyl alcohol, so I think I'll be adding some of that on the next go. It's a learning process!

Gersh-wash 2.0

My sister liked the last all-in-one wash I made her and she is running out, so she requested a refill, this time in sandalwood flavour.

I made a few modifications: I decreased the glycerin from 15% to 3%, to see if it made much of a difference, and reduced the glycol distearate from 1.5% to 0.5% in hopes of boosting the foaminess. I also left out the hydrolyzed silk protein to make it a more vegan-friendly product; she's not vegan, but pretty close.

This time I also had Crothix to thicken it, so the need to use so much glycol distearate for thickening purposes was not a factor. 0.5% Crothix was required to thicken in to a similar consistency as the last batch with the additional GD.

This process included a heated water phase and a cool-down phase only, as there is no emulsification to do here. The gylcol distearate is a waxy solid though, so requires thorough heating to melt and incorporate.

The reduced glycol disteaerate made a noticeable visual difference in the formula. The last batch with 1.5% was more-or-less opaque. This time with 0.5%, it is pearly and quite gorgeous.

I made a 300 g batch to fill a 250 ml bottle with the hopes of having a bit left over for me. That didn't really happen. I filled the bottle to the top, and had enough left over for a single shower. Oh well, I still got to try it. It foamed up really nicely on my bath pouf, much more than the last version, and of course smelled fabulous with the sandalwood FO.

I think this recipe is a winner, and may become my basic body wash recipe that I can tweak as desired.

Duplication attempt - body butter

I have some grand plans for xmas presents involving body butter, so a while ago I made a first attempt. I thought I'd go for a Body Shop-esque recipe, so I got out my mega-tub of mango body butter and copied down the ingredients.

water - okay, fine
mango butter
sweet almond oil
cocoa butter - oil phase should total about 25% for a body butter
glycerin
glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate - this is the emulsifier, exact same ingredients are available as Lotion Pro 165 from Lotioncrafter or as Simulsol 165 from Windy Point, and probably elsewhere; usage rate is 1-5%
cyclomethicone - for glide!
phenoxyethanol - preservative
parfum - smellies, </= 1%
benzyl alcohol - preservative
methylparaben - preservative
propylparaben - preservative, these are generally at </=1.5% each
xanthan gum - thickener
disodium EDTA - chealator, 0.2%
sodium hydroxide - pH adjuster (if needed)
potassium hydroxide - pH adjuster (if needed)
citric acid - pH adjuster (if needed)
CI 75120 - colourant

I subbed in ingredients I had, using the recommended usage rates to figure out how much of each to put in. I ended up with a 25% oil phase, 15% hard oils and 10% liquid oils. I used Simulsol 165 as the emulsifier at 3.5%, added 3% cyclomethicome because I love 'cones, subbed preservatives for ones I have, left out the xanthan gum (perhaps foolishly), and left out the pH adjusters because I didn't need to adjust the pH. Scented with 1% banana coconut FO from Candora, and omg! I love this fragrance. It is what sunscreen would smell like in my ideal world.

It was a normal heat and hold process with oils and water done separately. Emulsification looked normal, but the lotion didn't thicken virtually at all as it cooled. Maybe leaving out the xanthan gum was a bad idea. It was so runny! It was also very oily when applied to my legs. I feel like the 10% liquid oil was too much by a lot. My legs are dry-ish and the oil didn't sink in for probably 8 or 12 hours.

Anyway, within 2 weeks the lotion had separated. I'm not really sure why, since the glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate is supposed to be able to emulsify 20-30% oil at 2.5% usage, and I used 3.5% for 25% oils. Maybe it didn't like the preservatives or fragrance I used, or maybe it needed a thickener/stabilizer like xanthan gum. Who knows. All I know is I am addicted to that fragrance.

CE and ferulic serum

Hey look, I'm like officially a "natural beauty" blogger now that I have a DIY vitamin C serum post! Ew, I feel so dirty even typing that.

<misanthropic rant>For the love of dog, please do not follow the vast majority of DIY vitamin C serum recipes out there. I'm pretty sure this one (No! Adding vitamin E will NOT adjust the pH of your serum! It just makes my skin crawl... and the many others like it...) is why this "why not to DIY vitamin C serum" blog post also exists. The why-not-to article has salient points. Lots of them. And considering the intelligence of the average person, and the fact that a full 50% of all people are even stupider than that, probably most people shouldn't DIY a vitamin C serum... or anything else for that matter, except maybe feeding and dressing themselves... and we all know how well they do that...</misanthropic rant>

Here's a good DIY tutorial, for those of you who have at least half a brain, understand concepts like solubility, pH, the need for preservatives, and sanitary manufacturing processes. I used her simpler 8-ingredient recipe, due to not having much of the stuff needed for the complicated one.

I will admit I substituted tocopheryl acetate for tocopherol as the vitamin E because that is what I have. I know full well that tocopheryl acetate is not as good an antioxidant as tocopherol, but I also know that it is a good moisturizer, that the ferulic acid will help stabilize the vitamin C too, and that when the serum turns orange it is time to throw it out because it has oxidized and is no longer effective. I also substituted liquid Germall Plus for the Optiphen Holy Snails recommends (and adjusted the water accordingly), since my face doesn't like Optiphen.

The instructions for putting it all together are in Part 2 of the tutorial; there are links at the top of the post.

Anyway, I had to warm it a bit to get the polysorbate-80 to dissolve, in addition to warming the propylene glycol and ferulic acid to get the FA to dissolve. My pH tested at about 3.5, which is fine.

Frankly, I don't like how it came out. It is mad sticky. It also itches and tingles like crazy on my skin to the point where I had to wash it off. Bear in mind that I have quite sensitive skin, but geez, no one would want that sticky, shiny mess on their face. Maybe that is another reason not to DIY vitamin C serums. I may try this again with PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil as the solubilizer for the vitamin E in the hopes that it will be less sticky, and less L-ascorbic acid to hopefully rein in the itch-and-tingle, but we'll see.

Micellar water: critical micellization concentration (CMC) of different surfactants

As I hinted in this post, there is a property that surfactants have called critical micellization concentration (CMC). I did a bit of research on it when I was trying to find out how much surfactant is used in a micellar cleansing water (which is obviously a different amount for different surfactants)... it can't be "micellar" water unless there are micelles! If you don't know what a micelle is, go spend a few minutes at the University of Google, and meet me back here.

So, to simplify, the CMC is the lowest concentration of a surfactant that will form micelles in water (or whatever diluent the researcher is determining/stating the CMC for... we are really only concerned about water), so it is the lowest concentration of surfactant you need to be able to call your solution a micellar water!

These values didn't end up being super helpful in determining proper surfactant concentrations for micellar cleanser, since they are so low as to likely be inadequate for cleansing purposes, but they are interesting nonetheless and, by definition, form the lower limit for surfactant concentrations in a micellar cleanser.

The ones I have collected are for surfactants I own; if you know others you'd like to submit to this list, please comment with the values! CMCs are listed in various units including ppm (parts per million), mol/L (moles per litre), and g/L (grams per litre). I am listing in grams per litre of water, since that is most useful in cosmetic chemistry formulating, but if you are a nerd like me you can sort out how to convert from mol/L to g/L (that's how I got the value for decyl glucoside).

CMCs of various surfactants
1.7 g/L caprylyl/capryl glucoside
0.7 g/L decyl glucoside
0.06 g/L (60 mg/L) polysorbate-20
1.1 g/L PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil

N.B. It is just my assumption, but I would think that the CMCs refer to concentrations of active chemicals in your surfactants, since they can come in different strengths. That is, you'd need 10 grams of a 10% active surfactant to get 1 gram of the actual surfactant ingredient into your formulation. The stuff as it comes out of the bottle is not 100% active; for example, the decyl glucoside I have is 51% active. Note that I write my formulas for "as it comes out of the bottle." So my decyl glucoside micellar water that was "1% decyl glucoside" actually only had 0.51% active decyl glucoside in it.

PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil micellar water

I hadn't opened my container of PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil (hereinafter referred to as PEG-40) yet, so I thought I'd give another micellar water a go using this as the surfactant. Given that I liked how my skin felt using the polysorbate-20 version (after rinsing off the nasty stinging Optiphen Plus), I was hopeful that I might like this one too; they are both non-foaming surfactants, usually used as solubilizers.

Following the formula of my last couple of batches, this one was just water, surfactant, and preservative. I switched out my 1% of Optiphen Plus and used 0.5% of liquid Germall Plus instead. This time I heated the water and PEG-40 together so the PEG-40 would melt; it's quite thick at room temperature. Once it cooled down, I added the preservative.

My opinion of this one is that it feels much nicer than the caprylyl/capryl glucoside and the decyl glucoside versions due to the lack of soapiness and not feeling crazy-dry after using it, and better than both of those and the polysorbate-20 version due to not having the Optiphen sting. I also think I like it better than my first Cromollient version because it's not as sticky, but I think that is the fault of the glycerin in that recipe.

My skin felt clean-ish and fresh after using this recipe. Bear in mind that I don't wear makeup, but I do use a prescription lotion and a sunscreen, as well as having really oily skin, which is what the cleanser was having to deal with after a full day at work. I don't know if I'll ever really be able to get behind a leave-on cleanser (I'm totally neurotic about rinsing toothpaste out of my mouth too), but it will be a convenient thing to have when camping or working outside in the summer, which is something I do fairly regularly.

Of all the recipes I've tried, this is my favourite so far, but I definitely want to give a fair chance to the Cromollient and polysorbate-20 by trying them in recipes without stuff that me and my skin don't like.

Polysorbate-20 micellar water

After the unwanted foaminess with the caprylyl/capryl glucoside and decyl glucoside attempts, I decided to change course and go for a definitely-non-foaming surfactant, polysorbate-20.

I followed the same strategy and processing as in the decyl glucoside formula, with just water, surfactant, and preservative, at the same percentages.

I couldn't believe it when this one stung too! Polysorbate-20 is recommended at up to 20% of a formula (and is mostly used for leave-on products)! That's when I figured out it wasn't likely the surfactants stinging... it was the Optiphen. Looks like my skin prefers parabens and formaldehyde donors... on my face, anyway. Oh well, I'm not afraid of well-tested ingredients. I also feel like powdered Germall Plus is on its way to becoming my favourite preservative anyway; it's so much cheaper and you use so little of it!

My skin felt good after using this formula (after rinsing it off to stop the Optiphen sting), not crunchy like with the last one. So, I'll be trying this one again some time with a different preservative.

Decyl glucoside micellar water

I have learned to start simple now. At least after two semi-fails.

Next surfactant on the to-try list is decyl glucoside. After the stinging I experienced with the caprylyl/capryl glucoside recipe, I stripped this one down to three ingredients: water, surfactant, and preservative. Just distilled water, 1% decyl glucoside, and Optiphen Plus.

Boiled the water, added the surfactant, cooled, added preservative, and mixed.

It foamed and stung when I used it. Boo. I had to rinse my skin after applying this, and it felt stripped, as though I had used a strong-ish rinse-off cleanser. That decyl glucoside is powerful stuff.

At this point I still hadn't put two and two together regarding the Optiphen stinging, I was too taken aback by all the foam!

Caprylyl/capryl glucoside micellar water

Given that I have a camping trip coming up in a few weeks, and that I am neurotic about twice-daily face washing, I figured I should design myself some nice micellar cleansing water so that I only have to make the trek to the shower station once a day...

You might have already read about my previous micellar water experiment, but I felt like it was kinda sticky, probably from the few percent of glycerin I put in it, so I wanted to improve my recipe.

I also have several surfactants to try, so I think I will have a little series of micellar water posts. This one will be using caprylyl/capryl glucoside as the surfactant.

I still haven't learned to start simple, as you will see in this post.

Micellar water, as the name implies, is mostly water, with some surfactant added in at a sufficient concentration to form micelles. That "sufficient concentration" I refer to is different for each surfactant, and in chemistry is referred to as the critical micellization concentration, or the CMC. More on that in a later post. Micellar waters also contain things to make them nice for your skin, and also preservative(s) so they don't start looking like kombucha and/or give you a nasty infection.

The recipe I invented this time included water with 1% caprylyl/capryl glucoside and 1% or less of the following: hydrolyzed oats (general niceness), allantoin (occlusive), propylene glycol (dirt solvent/moisturizer), xylitol (for slip), lactic acid (exfoliation), and Optiphen Plus (preservative).

I pre-boiled the distilled water, and mixed everything together, and that was it.

It was waaay sudsier than I expected, including foaming up a bit on the cotton pad and on the skin when used. Perhaps my surfactant concentration is too high, as this is way too foamy and feels too much like a rinse-off cleanser.

Also it stings when I use it. Initially I thought that was from the lactic acid, but given that I can use 10% lactic acid gel with less stinging, I was suspicious. Upon further experimentation, I believe my face is sensitive to the Optiphen.

surfactants in micellar water

Here's a link to an interesting article on surfactants, with a section on surfactants used in micellar cleansing waters. It gives some idea about types of surfactants used, and the usage rates.

Fangirl moment

OMG, Perry Romanowski, the most famous cosmetic chemist in the world according to Google, just answered my post on the forum of his Chemist's Corner website!!!!1111~

Hahhah, okay, I'm done with that nonsense now. ;)

My version of "facial wash with a ton of extracts"

Hot on the heels of my conditioner success, I thought I'd go for a more-or-less guaranteed success: a surfactant product. I modified a version of Susan Barclay-Nichols' Facial Wash with a Ton of Extracts, from her Formulating Facial Products ebook, to suit me and to include some extracts I got in my most recent ingredients shipment (it arrived before the postal strike, woo!).

Frankly, Susan's version of this looks like a mix of blood and mud, but that is due to the extracts she chose to include, not due to the basic ingredients. My version contains the green tea and cucumber peel extracts, so it is yellow-y green. I also put in 2% salicylic acid, which seems to have precipitated after the mixture cooled, but is staying mostly dispersed, so I just shake it up before using.

I don't know if it is the undissolved SA (don't think so as I've made a 2% SA cleanser that had the same problem before), the cucumber peel extract (Susan says some people can be sensitive to it), or the surfactants I chose, but I find it a touch burn-y along the edges of my eyelids when I wash my face with it. I didn't make that much of it, so I'll just use it up. I'd like to come up with a SA recipe I really like, as I've been noticing more blackheads on my nose lately. Maybe because it's summer.

SD conditioner try #7, lucky #7

For this attempt, I decided to strip it right down. After the 6th failure, I'd started asking the internet for help. My prior research had not turned up enough to let me succeed, so I came out of my introvert hamster ball for a few minutes to see if other humans could help me. One helpful individual suggested I leave out the preservatives until I have something stable. That was a good idea and I decided to leave out all the fancy things too. The same person mentioned pH, and that got me to thinking that I hadn't been calculating the neutralization ratio for the SD for each recipe (1 part citric acid to 5.88 parts SD, theoretically), rather I had been picking a recipe and modifying one ingredient at a time... which is a good approach if your foundation is solid, but otherwise potentially useless.

I also went back to putting the SD in the oil phase, because, if you recall, back in that first attempt I did get emulsification doing that, until I added the cool-down ingredients.

So my bare-bones recipe was as follows:

A
81.8 g water
0.6 g citric acid

B
6 g cetearyl alcohol
3 g stearamidopropyl dimethylamine

Heated and held. Mixed. Emulsification was very thin. I added an additional 0.4 g of citric acid after checking the pH (was about 5.5) to total 1% citric acid. It thickened! Really nicely!

Relishing my modicum of success, I left it for 24 hours, using it in the shower that evening. It felt fine, though of course I missed my 'cones. The next day, it was still together and still as thick as Greek yogurt so I decided to be reckless and add things to it. I had just received a shipment with some powdered Germall Plus in it, so I thought I'd try that, so in went 0.14 g. Everything looked fine. Added 1.5 g of liquid panthenol and stirred it up. It didn't thin! I'd gotten a new fragrance oil too that I was loving, so I put in 0.2 g of Crafter's Choice citrus and sage fragrance... that was all I needed! It's actually not an in-your-face fragrance, very soft and fresh at the same time, but you don't need much. It was fine! Aaaah! It is still fine 2 days later! So exciting!

Now all I have to do is get the silicones in there and I'll have what I want! I may have to do another batch for that, since I've read that the dimethicone should go in the heated oil phase and the cyclomethicone should go in immediately following emulsion.

YAY!

SD conditioner trys #5 and #6

Fifth attempt included 4% SD and 0.2% citric acid and less silicones than the previous one. Suffice it to say there was once again separation. Arg.

Sixth attempt omitted cyclomethicone on the logic that "it's watery and my conditioner is coming out too watery." Poor reasoning in chemistry, but whatever, I was running out of patience. I was going to wait a day to add any cool-down ingredients, but it separated before that, so woohoo, I didn't waste any preservatives.

SD conditioner try #4

For attempt number four I decided I'd try to follow a recipe as closely as I was able in hopes of better results. I chose this one: Shiny Locks Intensive Conditioner. The only thing I had to change was that instead of 4% stearyl alcohol and 3% cetyl alcohol, I had to use 7% cetearyl (i.e. 3.5% each stearyl and cetyl) because I don't have any sterayl on its own. I also added 0.5% dimethicone instead of 0.1% by accident. I used a mix of 1% sodium benzoate and 0.5% potassium sorbate as the preservatives, dissolved in a little water I reserved for the purpose.

The heated water phase contained 2% stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, 0.3% citric acid, 0.5% panthenol, 3% cetrimonium chloride, and q.s. water. The heated oil phase contained 7% cetearyl alcohol, 2% cyclomethicone, and 0.5% dimethicone. I heated to 70°C and held for 20 minutes, poured the water phase into the oil phase, and mixed. The result was white (not instantly separating) and water thin. I added the preservatives in the bit of reserved water at 45°C and left it to sit for a while.

It separated again.

SD conditioner, thrice-attempted

After my last catastrophic failure, I went straight into the next attempt. I kind of had to, since I had a dish full of cool down ingredients waiting to be used.

This time I tried as well as I could with the ingredients I have (and the cool down ingredients I had already measured out) to follow a recipe (Shiny Locks intensive conditioner from this document). The only change I had to make was to substitute 7% cetearyl alcohol for the 4% stearyl alcohol and 3% cetyl alcohol, because that is what I have, and to use the cool down ingredients I had from last time (dimethicone, cyclomethicone, silk amino acids, fragrance oil, disodium EDTA, liquid Germall Plus), which is an addition of silk amino acids, leaving out the panthenol, and different amounts of dimethicone and cyclomethicone.

I followed the instructions in the recipe, putting the water, SD, citric acid, and cetrimonium chloride in the water phase, and the cetearyl alcohol in the oil phase (the dimethicone and cyclomethicone were already mixed into the cool down ingredients so I put them in at the end).

Per the instructions, I heated the water and oil phases to 65°C before mixing the water into the oil. I stirred with the milk frother for 3 minutes. The emulsification was thick and nice.

I waited until the mixture cooled to 40-45°C before adding the cool down ingredients. Upon adding, the emulsion thickened to nearly solid, them thinned to quite runny but not water thin.

Overnight it separated.

Try, try again

So I gave the stearamidopropyl dimethylamine conditioner another shot, this time putting the SD in the oil phase, per the instructions of the supplier.

Water phase was water and citric acid, oil phase was cetearyl alcohol and SD, cool down phase was dimethicone, cyclomethicone, silk amino acids, fragrance oil, disodium EDTA, and liquid Germall Plus.

I heated the water and oil phases to 70°C and held for 20 minutes before pouring the water into the oil. Mixed with my milk frother for three minutes, with no emulsification. Continued trying to mix for about another 10 minutes with no emulsification.

Dumped the unemulsified liquid down the drain and reserved the cool-down ingredients for the next attempt.

Argh.

New conditioner experiment

The couple of ingredients I ordered from the States arrived a few days ago so I was all excited to try the new conditioner ingredient I got. It was the reason I sucked it up and put in a cross-border order; stearamidopropyl dimethylamine doesn't seem to be available at any Canadian suppliers, BMTS-25, BMTS-50, and cetrimonium chloride are, but not the one that is in my most favouritest, and of course discontinued, conditioner.

The conditioner I'm referring to is the old version of Herbal Essences Totally Twisted conditioner, the one with "lavender and jade extracts", not this "berry twist" business they now sell under the same label. The two are not even close to the same product; the old one used stearamidopropyl dimethylamine as the conditioner, and the new one uses BTMS... it's a pretty fundamental difference. I mean, I don't hate the new one, it at least doesn't contain the film-forming cationic polymers I dread, but I really liked the old one.

Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine is kind of distinct as far as easily-available conditioning ingredients go, in its ability to remove build up of silicones and cationic film-formers, and in that respect it's outstanding for fine hair like mine. I think this ingredient is why I loved the old conditioner formula so much, it just left my hair feeling so light but also not static-y (SD does that too, a wonder product!).

Anyway, the ingredients of the old version are as follows: Water; Stearyl Alcohol; Cyclopentasiloxane; Cetyl Alcohol; Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine; Dimethicone; Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Flower/Leaf Stem Extract; Jade Plant (Crassula Argentea) Extract; Fragrance; Glutamic Acid; Benzyl Alcohol; EDTA; Methylchloroisothiazolinone; Methylisothiazolinone; Citric Acid; Ext Violet 2. Thank goodness for the internet and its vast repository of obsolete information! :D

As far as ingredient lists go, this one is not overly complex, and I now have the ingredients to more-or-less recreate it. Water, is of course the easiest; I buy my distilled water from the grocery store. Stearyl alcohol is next; this I only have as part of cetearyl alcohol (50/50 mix), but that is fine because two ingredients down the list is cetyl alcohol, the other half of what makes up cetearyl; so I just used cetearyl alcohol to replace both the stearyl and cetyl. Next is cyclopentasiloxane, also known as cyclomethicone, have that. Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, now I have that too! Dimethicone, have that. Lavender and jade plant extracts; I have lavender essential oil and nothing made of jade plant, but I'm pretty sure they are just there for label appeal and to justify the naming of the product; I could put in lavender, but I didn't because I wanted it to smell like rhubarb. Fragrance, rhubarb, obviously! Glutamic acid is a single amino acid, I don't have that, but I do have silk amino acid, so I used those instead. Benzyl alcohol, methylchloroisothiazolinone, and methylisothiazolinone are all preservatives, I substituted what I have, Optiphen Plus in this case. EDTA is a chealating agent, I have disodium EDTA, so I used that. Citric acid is used to adjust pH, I have that. And violet 2 is the dye; I used the same red one I used for my rhubarb shampoo.

The process I followed for making the conditioner was adapted from a sample formula found on Making Cosmetics for a conditioner containing stearamidopropyl dimethylamine. I basically just used it to figure out which phase to put the SD in. By the way, I'm not sponsored by any company (free ingredients? I wish!), so if I mention a company it's because I have ordered from them, because I like/want/think you might want to know about a product they sell, or, like in this case, because they have a resource that I've found useful. I've ordered from Making Cosmetics a few times and they seem decent, but I didn't order my SD from them that I used in this conditioner.

So I put the SD in the water phase (A)... along with the water, and the cetearyl alcohol went by itself in the oil phase (B). Everything else was left for the cool-down phase. A and B went into the double boiler. The melting of the SD was kind of weird, it didn't exactly dissolve in the water, at first it floated like an oil. I tested the pH of the water phase and it was crazy-high. I had to add quite a lot of citric acid to bring it down to 5. Once the pH was at 5, I gave it a stir and the SD seemed to solubilize into the water. I think what happened was that the SD and the citric acid reacted together to create a salt, which is what is supposed to happen. Anyway, I went ahead and made the recipe I had planned out based on the expected usage rates of the ingredients in the Totally Twisted ingredients list.

When I mixed the oil and water phases, it looked good and thickened up nicely as it cooled. The problems started when I added the cool-down ingredients. I added the disodium EDTA first, separately from the rest of the cool-down ingredients, and gave it a bit of a mix before pouring in the rest of the additives. Once the cool-down ingredients were in and I started mixing, the conditioner thinned drastically. I thought it might thicken up gradually, as I have had other conditioners do that in the past. It didn't.

The following day it was still runny. I tested the pH again to make sure it wasn't crazy, since I had added so much citric acid the day before. It was really low, like, 2. So I added some sodium hydroxide to bring it back up to my intended pH of 5. As I did that, it looked like it was thickening up, however when it mixed it with my milk frother it looked more like it might be curdling. I bottled it up and let it sit for a while.

Dun dun dunnnn... It separated! My first broken emulsion! I feel like it was such a haphazard construction of this product that I'm not really overly surprised. I also feel kind of like this might be a rite of passage in learning to formulate.

I have also learned that the supplier I bought my SD from says it is oil soluble, and to put it in the oil phase... so maybe that was part of the problem. I also used Optiphen Plus, and I don't know if this applies to the "Plus" version, but regular Optiphen is supposedly notorious for breaking emulsions.


Anyway, I'll try this one again soon.

Nag champoo and conditioner

My mom is running out of shampoo, so it is the duty of her dear, alchemist daughter to remedy the situation!

I came up with a formula similar to the rhubarb shampoo I made for myself, but increased the amounts of glycerin, dimethicone, and cyclomethicone a bit to account for her thick, dry hair. I also left out the sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate and replaced it with a blend of sodium lauryl sulfoacetate and disodium laureth sulfosuccinate, two gentle surfactants. Otherwise I used the same ingredients.

Of course I fragranced it with nag champa, and for fun I coloured it green.

Then I made her a matching conditioner. I used 4% BTMS-50 along with some cetyl alcohol for slip and the synergistic magic it does with the BTMS, and some cetrimonium chloride for detangling. I added some other non-oil goodies like glycerin, panthenol, and hydrolyzed oats. I didn't want to make it too thick or heavy, since I know my mom doesn't like to wash her hair every day and I didn't want her to get greasy too quick. Since it's a matching pair to the shampoo, it is also green and smells like nag champa.

I hope she likes them! I know she likes that I called it nag champoo, because she is a word nerd. :D

Third try at shampoo - rhubarb!

I was down to one little blob of my sandalwood shampoo, plus I had just received a new shipment of ingredients, so it was time to make another batch! My new ingredients included some different surfactants and (insert singing angels here) proper surfactant thickener!

My last two shampoo attempts saw steady improvement directly correlated with a steady increase in the concentration of surfactants. I was not totally happy with the cleaning ability of the last one as it took some work to get it onto my scalp and into any kind of lather there, so I increased the surfactant concentration again. I also decided to include one of my new suractants, sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate, which, according to Susan, is a gentle but effective degreaser, along with my regular cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium laureth sulfate. I was aiming for 50% surfactants, but a pouring mishap meant I ended up with 55%. I included a bit of glycerin, though I have reduced it a bit from last time because my hair tends toward frizziness. My formula also included water, of course, cyclomethicone and dimethicone, hydrolyzed oats, panthenol, and a preservative. I needed only half a percent of thickener (Crothix, INCI PEG-150 pentaerythrityl tetrastearate (and) PEG-6 caprylic/capric trigylcerides (and) water), and it is perfect shampoo consistency. Hooray!

It is fragranced with a fragrance oil called ruby rhubarb. So good! Rhubarb is one of my favourite things ever. I want to be a rhubarb farmer. I received some colourants in my shipment too, so I coloured it a pinky red. I considered trying to somehow make a rhubarb-esque red-to-green gradient, but realized it would just end up brown as it mixed.

I've used it once so far, and it's pretty great. I don't need to use much because it has a high surfactant concentration. It lathers really well and leaves my hair and scalp (yay) feeling clean. It is definitely not very conditioning, and I don't think I'd dare trying to run my fingers through my hair as I rinse it out for fear of tightening knots and breaking hairs. Running my fingers through as I rinse shampoo is a habit I've gotten into over the last couple of years and I'm trying to stop, since I think it is contributing to my split ends and breakage. Once I applied conditioner, my hair felt great and easily untangled with my fingers.

24 hours after using this shampoo, my hair was abnormally grease-free, to the point where I actually debated washing it again. That never happens, and certainly not on a 30° day. I think this formula might be a winner!

Spot treatment

I picked up a couple of samples of Paula's Choice BHA9 last year and have been using them once in a while. What I like about Paula's Choice hydroxy acid products (in particular, but this is true of all their products) is that they don't contain alcohol. When I was a teenager, I often tried to use salicylic acid (aka beta hydroxy acid or BHA) products, but they all contained alcohol; I ended up with dry, crunchy, red, flaking skin, and often broken capillaries when I used them on thin-skinned areas like across the bridge of my nose. I don't have this problem with alcohol free products, so I've deduced that the alcohol, not the SA, is the problem.

What I don't like about Paula's Choice is the price, the exchange rate, and the international shipping (when there's not a free shipping event on, anyway).

The BHA9 in particular is a pretty simple formulation consisting of propylene glycol (solvent/penetration enhancer), PEG-75, PEG-8 (thickeners), water, salicylic acid (beta hydroxy acid/time-released exfoliant, 9%), glycerin (skin-repairing ingredient), avena sativa (oat) kernel extract (anti-irritant), butylene glycol (slip agent), Boerhavia Diffusa root extract (antioxidant plant extract), Sea Whip extract (soothing plant extract), arginine (amino acid/skin-conditioning agent), polysorbate 20 (stabilizer), and disodium EDTA (chelating agent).

Frankly, the key ingredients are salicylic acid and glycols, which are needed to dissolve the SA. So I mixed about 8% SA with 92% propylene glycol for a bare-bones DIY version costing probably a thousanth of the price. Now I won't be hesitant to use it due to the cost.

By the way, I am aware that 8% SA is well above the 2% recommended usage rate for regular OTC acne treatment; it is also well below the 30% peels that are available for home use (and also include the burning evilness of alcohol). I tested it on my arm before using it on my face. I have now used it multiple times and it has been fine for me. That doesn't mean it will be fine for you; make and use at your own risk!

I use it as a spot treatment. I would never put it all over my face, as I'd be coated in a shiny, sticky slick of propylene glycol.