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.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
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.
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.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Micellar water
So, micellar water is all the rage in North American skin care at the moment. It also has, like, five ingredients. That's basically an invitation for a DIY version.
My version contains water, preservative, Cromollient SCE (INCI Di-PPG-2 Myreth-10 Adipate), which is an emollient, solubilizing surfactant, and a touch of glycerin and panthenol to make it nice.
It's not clear, so it doesn't look like water. Perhaps I should call it micellar milk and launch the newest trend. It makes my face feel a bit warm when I use it; I figure this may be due to the mild warming sensation glycerin can cause. It also makes my skin feel a little crunchy; I'm less sure about this part, it might be that the cotton pads I use it with are more abrasive on my dainty hide than my hands (which is how I normally apply cleanser), or it could be that the fact that it is a rinse-free product and is leaving residual surfactant on my skin.
It's not mind-blowing, but using it would certainly be better than not cleaning my face at all, which is one of the things I hate most in the world. I think it might be good for a mid-day wipe-off after, for example, going for a sweaty walk outside on a day like today, when the temperature is 34°C and the humidex is 40°C.
I may try to make other versions with different surfactants in the future, since I see how this could be a convenient product. I've seen other examples made with decyl glucoside and caprylyl/capryl glucoside, and also polysorbate 20.
My version contains water, preservative, Cromollient SCE (INCI Di-PPG-2 Myreth-10 Adipate), which is an emollient, solubilizing surfactant, and a touch of glycerin and panthenol to make it nice.
It's not clear, so it doesn't look like water. Perhaps I should call it micellar milk and launch the newest trend. It makes my face feel a bit warm when I use it; I figure this may be due to the mild warming sensation glycerin can cause. It also makes my skin feel a little crunchy; I'm less sure about this part, it might be that the cotton pads I use it with are more abrasive on my dainty hide than my hands (which is how I normally apply cleanser), or it could be that the fact that it is a rinse-free product and is leaving residual surfactant on my skin.
It's not mind-blowing, but using it would certainly be better than not cleaning my face at all, which is one of the things I hate most in the world. I think it might be good for a mid-day wipe-off after, for example, going for a sweaty walk outside on a day like today, when the temperature is 34°C and the humidex is 40°C.
I may try to make other versions with different surfactants in the future, since I see how this could be a convenient product. I've seen other examples made with decyl glucoside and caprylyl/capryl glucoside, and also polysorbate 20.
Gersh-wash
My sister is even lower maintenance than my shampoo-as-body-wash dad. She uses the bar soap I make on her hair (and face and hands and body and clothes - probably - ...), and I wish she wouldn't. Soap isn't good for hair, and hers is fine and recently un-dreadlocked. She said she'd use an all-in-one wash if I made her one, so I did. She has dry skin, so I factored that in too.
The surfactants I used were cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium laureth sulfate. After the previous all-in-one disaster, I wanted to keep it simple with something I could be reasonably sure would work. I put in 15% glycerin because a commercial body wash I like has glycerin as the second ingredient and she's a dry and itchy kinda girl. I added some glycol distearate to thicken it up as well as moisturize, and some cetrimonium chloride for detangling, as I knew this would be used on her hair.
Other bits I included for niceness were hydrolyzed silk protein, panthenol (pro-vitamin B5), and dimethicone for a bit of added hair conditioning. I fragranced it at half the rate of the cream for our mom that she had deemed over-scented; the result was just about perfect, fragrance-wise, in my opinion. I didn't include any quaternary cationics because her hair is fine like mine and I figured it might react the same way, namely with grossness.
All mixed up, this all-in-one wash was a nice consistency. It didn't need any additional thickener. It is quite creamy but not super bubbly. I think it will be very nice used with a pouf. I haven't gotten much feedback from her on it, as I just gave it to her and she is camping in a bathing-free environment for the next week, but I consider this one more or less a success! I guess I will have to make something more like this for my dad and husband, as an apology for the nasty concoction I gave them last time.
The surfactants I used were cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium laureth sulfate. After the previous all-in-one disaster, I wanted to keep it simple with something I could be reasonably sure would work. I put in 15% glycerin because a commercial body wash I like has glycerin as the second ingredient and she's a dry and itchy kinda girl. I added some glycol distearate to thicken it up as well as moisturize, and some cetrimonium chloride for detangling, as I knew this would be used on her hair.
Other bits I included for niceness were hydrolyzed silk protein, panthenol (pro-vitamin B5), and dimethicone for a bit of added hair conditioning. I fragranced it at half the rate of the cream for our mom that she had deemed over-scented; the result was just about perfect, fragrance-wise, in my opinion. I didn't include any quaternary cationics because her hair is fine like mine and I figured it might react the same way, namely with grossness.
All mixed up, this all-in-one wash was a nice consistency. It didn't need any additional thickener. It is quite creamy but not super bubbly. I think it will be very nice used with a pouf. I haven't gotten much feedback from her on it, as I just gave it to her and she is camping in a bathing-free environment for the next week, but I consider this one more or less a success! I guess I will have to make something more like this for my dad and husband, as an apology for the nasty concoction I gave them last time.
Man wash
My dad loves Method's green tea and aloe fragrance (this stuff in particular). So I thought I'd try to make him a green tea scented all-in-one wash, since I know for a fact he regularly uses shampoo as body wash. My husband decided he wanted some too, but in a different flavour, so I made a biggish batch and split it in half before scenting it.
This one was an adventure in surfactants. I figured I'd use cocamidopropyl betaine because I use it in all my surfactanty things, and sodium laureth sulfate because it's a popular one, and because my formulating idol, Susan, usually uses three surfactants in any given product, I thought I'd add the only other one I currently possess, decyl glucoside.
Now, I know about decyl glucoside, and how hard it is to thicken, but I thought that because 2/3 of the surfactants were not decyl glucoside that I'd still be able to thicken it with salt. Wrong! So wrong!
When I'd mixed up all my ingredients it was about as thick as water. I tried adding 3% salt. No dice. "Xanthan gum!" I thought, "that's a thickener!" I added about a gram before bothering to look it up, only to find that it's incompatible with cationics, like the honeyquat I had also included. Then I got desperate. I found some gum arabic I had from a candy-making experiment a bunch of years ago and got that out. I swear to Dog, I added about 30 grams of it, along with some additional preservative to compensate. Now it is whitish, minutely thicker than it was before, and separates when left to sit into sections with and without floaty particles of organic gums.
Oh well, it foams. I scented it up and gave it to the guys with a bath pouf each. Are we counting fails? What number is this now?
I don't know what I'm going to do with the half-litre of decyl glucoside I have. I'm not the hugest fan of the foamer bottles, but I may have to adapt in order to use this stuff up.
This one was an adventure in surfactants. I figured I'd use cocamidopropyl betaine because I use it in all my surfactanty things, and sodium laureth sulfate because it's a popular one, and because my formulating idol, Susan, usually uses three surfactants in any given product, I thought I'd add the only other one I currently possess, decyl glucoside.
Now, I know about decyl glucoside, and how hard it is to thicken, but I thought that because 2/3 of the surfactants were not decyl glucoside that I'd still be able to thicken it with salt. Wrong! So wrong!
When I'd mixed up all my ingredients it was about as thick as water. I tried adding 3% salt. No dice. "Xanthan gum!" I thought, "that's a thickener!" I added about a gram before bothering to look it up, only to find that it's incompatible with cationics, like the honeyquat I had also included. Then I got desperate. I found some gum arabic I had from a candy-making experiment a bunch of years ago and got that out. I swear to Dog, I added about 30 grams of it, along with some additional preservative to compensate. Now it is whitish, minutely thicker than it was before, and separates when left to sit into sections with and without floaty particles of organic gums.
Oh well, it foams. I scented it up and gave it to the guys with a bath pouf each. Are we counting fails? What number is this now?
I don't know what I'm going to do with the half-litre of decyl glucoside I have. I'm not the hugest fan of the foamer bottles, but I may have to adapt in order to use this stuff up.
Dangerously minty
A good friend of mine complained recently about how much conditioner she needs to use to feel like it makes any difference on her hair. I also know she likes minty things on her head. I thought I'd make her a super-conditioning minty conditioner.
I think I will have to double check with her on these, but I was going on the belief that her hair is thick, prone to frizziness and tangling, and not especially oily.
I included glycerin as a humecant, which may have been a poor choice (or could be used at a lower percentage) for frizzy hair. Frizzy hair doesn't need any extra water drawn into it to worsen the frizz.
I included cetearyl alcohol as an oil-free moisturizer, mostly because I had some and hadn't put it in anything yet. I have since learned that cetyl alcohol is better for tangly hair, since it is a bit slipperier and works with the conditioner/emulsifier and enhances it.
I used BTMS-50 as the conditioner/emulsifier because it's the only one I have. I have some stearamidopropyl dimethylamine on the way that I will try out too before making a final version of this conditioner.
I included cetrimonium chloride for its legendary detangling properties.
I included dimethicone as a shine-enhancer, de-frizzer, and slip-enhancer, as well as cyclomethicone to speed hair drying.
Panthenol (pro-vitamin B5) and hydrolyzed oats rounded out the formula with additional moisturizing and conditioning.
This conditioner also included 3% menthol crystals, which is waaay to much for sensitive skin like the scalp.
I've tried this conditioner and it is okay on my fine, oily hair. I don't think it's even close to conditioning enough for my friend's hair, so I'll probably just use it up. It is also dangerously minty. When I use it, my scalp has hot-and-cold flashes, and I feel like I've put Icy Hot or something like that on my neck. The menthol crystals make it smell like Vicks Vap-o-rub, so I think I might try peppermint essential oil next time. Nicer to smell like a candy cane than a medicine cabinet.
I think I will have to double check with her on these, but I was going on the belief that her hair is thick, prone to frizziness and tangling, and not especially oily.
I included glycerin as a humecant, which may have been a poor choice (or could be used at a lower percentage) for frizzy hair. Frizzy hair doesn't need any extra water drawn into it to worsen the frizz.
I included cetearyl alcohol as an oil-free moisturizer, mostly because I had some and hadn't put it in anything yet. I have since learned that cetyl alcohol is better for tangly hair, since it is a bit slipperier and works with the conditioner/emulsifier and enhances it.
I used BTMS-50 as the conditioner/emulsifier because it's the only one I have. I have some stearamidopropyl dimethylamine on the way that I will try out too before making a final version of this conditioner.
I included cetrimonium chloride for its legendary detangling properties.
I included dimethicone as a shine-enhancer, de-frizzer, and slip-enhancer, as well as cyclomethicone to speed hair drying.
Panthenol (pro-vitamin B5) and hydrolyzed oats rounded out the formula with additional moisturizing and conditioning.
This conditioner also included 3% menthol crystals, which is waaay to much for sensitive skin like the scalp.
I've tried this conditioner and it is okay on my fine, oily hair. I don't think it's even close to conditioning enough for my friend's hair, so I'll probably just use it up. It is also dangerously minty. When I use it, my scalp has hot-and-cold flashes, and I feel like I've put Icy Hot or something like that on my neck. The menthol crystals make it smell like Vicks Vap-o-rub, so I think I might try peppermint essential oil next time. Nicer to smell like a candy cane than a medicine cabinet.
Facial moisturizer for Mom, aka Crème de la Mère :D
I made my mom a facial moisturizer to stop her from putting the heavily-scented body butter I made her on her face. She's funny that way; if it's something I made, she tends to put it on her face. She does it with soap too.
Anyway, I thought I'd make her something nice, with lots of fancy ingredients (y'know, sort of unlike the $170 cream I'm spoofing in the title...). She's gotten concerned lately about big pores and the potential for blackheads, she's also 63 and has generally dry skin.
I included sooo many things:
Niacinamide (vitamin B3) for its anti-aging, pore-reducing, anti-acne, and general skin-awesomeness effects
Retinol for anti-wrinkle, pore-reducing, anti-acne, sun damage-reversing, cell-proliferating, there's-nothing-this-ingredient-can't-do effects
Haloxyl for reducing under-eye circles due to unabsorbed blood components
Vitamin E for anti-oxident properties
Allantoin for its healing and occlusive properties
Glycerin as a humectant
Hydrolyzed silk protein for moisturizing and conditioning
Panthenol (pro-vitamin B5) as a humectant/emollient/moisturizer
Dimethicone as an emollient and occlusive
Cetyl alcohol as an oil-free moisturizer
Shea butter at a low percentage because she likes it
Jojoba oil as a non-comedogenic emollient
Tamanu oil because I've had a good experience with it helping to reduce post-acne red marks on my own face
Hydrolyzed oat protein as a moisturizer and anti-irritant
BTMS-50 as a dry-feeling emulsifier
Water
And of course a preservative
Whoa, that is a totally maxed-out lotion. My mom is a low-maintenance kinda lady, so I figured that all the good stuff would have to go in a single product; she's not a multi-product kinda girl. The only things I considered but didn't include were hydroxy acids, because they require a lower pH to be effective than the niacinamide, so the two are incompatible in a single product. The retinol will act as an exfoliant to help get the old, dead skin off, so hydroxy acids might have been overkill anyway.
She's used it at least once and said it felt kind of "coating" at first. I've tried it on my chest and neck, and I agree. I would reduce the dimethicone by half if I make it again. However, when I asked her about it a few hours after she applied it, she said it had absorbed nicely and that her skin felt soft. I suggested it could be used at night. I can smell the tamanu oil in it (which is not the best smelling stuff), but she can't smell it, so that's great. I hope she likes it, and I hope the ingredients do something nice for her.
Anyway, I thought I'd make her something nice, with lots of fancy ingredients (y'know, sort of unlike the $170 cream I'm spoofing in the title...). She's gotten concerned lately about big pores and the potential for blackheads, she's also 63 and has generally dry skin.
I included sooo many things:
Niacinamide (vitamin B3) for its anti-aging, pore-reducing, anti-acne, and general skin-awesomeness effects
Retinol for anti-wrinkle, pore-reducing, anti-acne, sun damage-reversing, cell-proliferating, there's-nothing-this-ingredient-can't-do effects
Haloxyl for reducing under-eye circles due to unabsorbed blood components
Vitamin E for anti-oxident properties
Allantoin for its healing and occlusive properties
Glycerin as a humectant
Hydrolyzed silk protein for moisturizing and conditioning
Panthenol (pro-vitamin B5) as a humectant/emollient/moisturizer
Dimethicone as an emollient and occlusive
Cetyl alcohol as an oil-free moisturizer
Shea butter at a low percentage because she likes it
Jojoba oil as a non-comedogenic emollient
Tamanu oil because I've had a good experience with it helping to reduce post-acne red marks on my own face
Hydrolyzed oat protein as a moisturizer and anti-irritant
BTMS-50 as a dry-feeling emulsifier
Water
And of course a preservative
Whoa, that is a totally maxed-out lotion. My mom is a low-maintenance kinda lady, so I figured that all the good stuff would have to go in a single product; she's not a multi-product kinda girl. The only things I considered but didn't include were hydroxy acids, because they require a lower pH to be effective than the niacinamide, so the two are incompatible in a single product. The retinol will act as an exfoliant to help get the old, dead skin off, so hydroxy acids might have been overkill anyway.
She's used it at least once and said it felt kind of "coating" at first. I've tried it on my chest and neck, and I agree. I would reduce the dimethicone by half if I make it again. However, when I asked her about it a few hours after she applied it, she said it had absorbed nicely and that her skin felt soft. I suggested it could be used at night. I can smell the tamanu oil in it (which is not the best smelling stuff), but she can't smell it, so that's great. I hope she likes it, and I hope the ingredients do something nice for her.
Mango 'cado cream
I had been using the bit of my mom's cream I had kept to try out, and was quite liking it. I thought I might like to try to make something with a bit of a drier feel to it, since I'm a greasy sort of person to start with. I figured I'd give mango butter a shot; it's much drier feeling than shea butter when used on their own, and it would go well with the pomegranate mango fragrance oil I wanted to use. I kept the avocado oil as the liquid oil because I like it and it is not a super greasy feeling oil. I also decided to use a different emulsifier, choosing BTMS-50, which is supposed to give a more powdery feel, instead of emulsifying wax, which is more waxy. I substituted cetyl alcohol for stearic acid too, I wanted a more slippery lotion, and I hoped the cetyl might not make it as thick as the stearic.
My process for making it was the same as for my mom's cream. I'm evidently still a noob at this, because I got to having a bit of a panic as I was making it, worrying about how thick the BTMS-50 would make it (given my experience using it in conditioner). I thought it might be too thick to get the watery cool-down phase to incorporate nicely, so I added it a bit early, just under 50°C. I don't know if the extra bit of heat is the cause of it, but the fragrance I used has a funny after-smell to it that I'm not in love with. I've used the fragrance in soap before and never noticed it. Actually, that's a lie. I used it in a batch that I under-calculated the lye for, which I had to rebatch as a hot process, adding more lye; that one smelled weird when it was heated in the slow cooker.
Anyway, it's an okay cream. It got pretty full of air because I mixed it with the milk frother, and the bubbles are gradually coming out of it, making it settle in the container. It is thick, but not as thick as my mom's. And it is slipperier than hers too. I think I might like hers better though.
My process for making it was the same as for my mom's cream. I'm evidently still a noob at this, because I got to having a bit of a panic as I was making it, worrying about how thick the BTMS-50 would make it (given my experience using it in conditioner). I thought it might be too thick to get the watery cool-down phase to incorporate nicely, so I added it a bit early, just under 50°C. I don't know if the extra bit of heat is the cause of it, but the fragrance I used has a funny after-smell to it that I'm not in love with. I've used the fragrance in soap before and never noticed it. Actually, that's a lie. I used it in a batch that I under-calculated the lye for, which I had to rebatch as a hot process, adding more lye; that one smelled weird when it was heated in the slow cooker.
Anyway, it's an okay cream. It got pretty full of air because I mixed it with the milk frother, and the bubbles are gradually coming out of it, making it settle in the container. It is thick, but not as thick as my mom's. And it is slipperier than hers too. I think I might like hers better though.
Friday, June 17, 2016
An attempt at product duplication
Back before I became a scientist, and before I had seriously considered what the word "natural" means, and before I was considering efficacy at the same level (or above) as "natural"-ness, there was a face wash I liked. It is called DermaMed Acne Wash. It has only four ingredients listed, so I thought it might be a good starting place for attempting a product duplication.
The ingredients are water, green tea extract, cocamidopropyl betaine, and salicylic acid. There is no preservative explicitly listed in the ingredients. It seems likely that the anti-acne ingredient, salicylic acid, is also serving as the preservative. This is a common trick used by "natural" products companies; they tend to use multi-purpose ingredients so they can claim "no preservatives," which is a silly claim to make if your consumers have even the vaguest knowledge of biology.
Salicylic acid is allowable in European cosmetic products as a preservative at up to 0.5% (reference); the consensus seems to be that it is bactericidal, and works against mould and fungi, but that its efficacy is dependent on the formulation.
So, I gave it a shot. I took a guess at how much surfactant (cocamidopropyl betaine, the ingredient that makes this a cleanser) they might have used, my guess was 16%. I knew the salicylic acid was 2%, because they have to state the concentration of active/medicinal ingredients. Extracts are generally used at 1-2% or less, so I went for 1%. And water makes up the rest.
I boiled up my water and mixed it with the other ingredients. I was doubtful about the salicylic acid dissolving nicely, since I'd seen it precipitate before. Surfactants can help with the solubility though, so I was willing to try. I put my definitely-not-the-same-colour-as-the-commercial-product concoction into a foamer bottle, since it was super runny (runnier than the store-bought version, probably meaning I had used less surfactant than they did), and went about my business. The commercial producer likely used a liquid green tea extract (and a green dye by the looks of things), while I was using a powdered extract, so that would account for the colour difference.
A while later I had a look at my bottle of stuff; it seemed like the surfactant and green tea were sticking together and separating out of the water. I gave it a shake and let it be. Overnight, the salicylic acid precipitated out of the solution.
I liked how smooth it made my skin feel, so I used it in spite of its shortcomings, just shaking it up before pumping some out so I wouldn't get a face-full of salicylic acid, but I only made 50 g and I doubt if I will try this recipe again without major modifications. It really does make me wonder how accurate the product labelling is.
The ingredients are water, green tea extract, cocamidopropyl betaine, and salicylic acid. There is no preservative explicitly listed in the ingredients. It seems likely that the anti-acne ingredient, salicylic acid, is also serving as the preservative. This is a common trick used by "natural" products companies; they tend to use multi-purpose ingredients so they can claim "no preservatives," which is a silly claim to make if your consumers have even the vaguest knowledge of biology.
Salicylic acid is allowable in European cosmetic products as a preservative at up to 0.5% (reference); the consensus seems to be that it is bactericidal, and works against mould and fungi, but that its efficacy is dependent on the formulation.
So, I gave it a shot. I took a guess at how much surfactant (cocamidopropyl betaine, the ingredient that makes this a cleanser) they might have used, my guess was 16%. I knew the salicylic acid was 2%, because they have to state the concentration of active/medicinal ingredients. Extracts are generally used at 1-2% or less, so I went for 1%. And water makes up the rest.
I boiled up my water and mixed it with the other ingredients. I was doubtful about the salicylic acid dissolving nicely, since I'd seen it precipitate before. Surfactants can help with the solubility though, so I was willing to try. I put my definitely-not-the-same-colour-as-the-commercial-product concoction into a foamer bottle, since it was super runny (runnier than the store-bought version, probably meaning I had used less surfactant than they did), and went about my business. The commercial producer likely used a liquid green tea extract (and a green dye by the looks of things), while I was using a powdered extract, so that would account for the colour difference.
A while later I had a look at my bottle of stuff; it seemed like the surfactant and green tea were sticking together and separating out of the water. I gave it a shake and let it be. Overnight, the salicylic acid precipitated out of the solution.
I liked how smooth it made my skin feel, so I used it in spite of its shortcomings, just shaking it up before pumping some out so I wouldn't get a face-full of salicylic acid, but I only made 50 g and I doubt if I will try this recipe again without major modifications. It really does make me wonder how accurate the product labelling is.
Shampoo!
After my entirely lacklustre (pun sort of intended :P) first shampoo and relatively smashing success at conditioner, it seemed like the shampoo needed another go.
I stripped it right down and put in a fair bit more surfactants than last time. My water phase included just-boiled water (as I wasn't double boilering this time due to not including the solid glycol distearate), cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium laureth sulfate, and glycerin, and my cool-down phase included preservative, fragrance, and a touch of dimethicone. Once these were all mixed and cooled, I added 3% salt to thicken.
It worked! It was thick, maybe a touch too thick, but it produced okay lather and was much more like shampoo than the last one!
Personally, I think I will be adding still greater amounts of surfactants; what can I say, I have greasy hair and I like the feel of surfactants on it! Despite it being a somewhat-less-mild surfactant (and despite the opinions of the granola crowd and the uninformed, who think it is the devil), I really like the feel of sodium lauryl sulfate in my shampoos. I might buy some if I can ever find a supplier, preferably in Canada.
I don't always say it, but I always test the pH of my products and adjust if needed. I like to keep my products (especially leave-on products) at pH 4-5. The skin and hair are naturally acidic, and acidic products disrupt them less than alkaline ones. Also, having a more acidic pH means many preservatives will be more effective, especially the more so-called "natural" (can't say I get how they are natural), food-grade ones like sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate.
I stripped it right down and put in a fair bit more surfactants than last time. My water phase included just-boiled water (as I wasn't double boilering this time due to not including the solid glycol distearate), cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium laureth sulfate, and glycerin, and my cool-down phase included preservative, fragrance, and a touch of dimethicone. Once these were all mixed and cooled, I added 3% salt to thicken.
It worked! It was thick, maybe a touch too thick, but it produced okay lather and was much more like shampoo than the last one!
Personally, I think I will be adding still greater amounts of surfactants; what can I say, I have greasy hair and I like the feel of surfactants on it! Despite it being a somewhat-less-mild surfactant (and despite the opinions of the granola crowd and the uninformed, who think it is the devil), I really like the feel of sodium lauryl sulfate in my shampoos. I might buy some if I can ever find a supplier, preferably in Canada.
I don't always say it, but I always test the pH of my products and adjust if needed. I like to keep my products (especially leave-on products) at pH 4-5. The skin and hair are naturally acidic, and acidic products disrupt them less than alkaline ones. Also, having a more acidic pH means many preservatives will be more effective, especially the more so-called "natural" (can't say I get how they are natural), food-grade ones like sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate.
The Great Cyclomethicone Accident of 2016
I made some (crappy) shampoo, so of course I was compelled to make some conditioner to go with it.
Given two mostly-failures in a row, I really wanted this one to work.
I modified Susan's Modified Conditioner Recipe with Extracts and Hydrosols to suit my needs, leaving out both extracts and hydrosols, and replacing them with water, adding some glycerin and hydrolysed oats, and adding dimethicone and cyclomethicone in the cool-down phase.
The process for making a conditioner is the same as for making a lotion or cream that I outlined in this post. Conditioner is actually just a lotion made with emulsifiers that attach themselves to the hair (because they are cationically charged) instead of ones that rinse off. If you use an emulsifier that will not bind itself electrically to the hair, it's called a cream rinse, and it's just lotion for hair!
The water phase of my conditioner included distilled water, glycerin, and hydrolyzed oats, while the oil phase included BTMS-50 (behentrimonium methosulfate (50% active) and cetyl alcohol and butylene glycol) and (additional) cetyl alcohol. Once those were heated, emulsified, mixed, and cooled, I added preservative, dimethicone, cyclomethicone, and fragrance.
<anecdote>While weighing my cyclomethicone I spilled some all over my table and my formulating notebook. It was a greasy (rather silicone-y) mess. Thankfully, and unlike oils, cyclomethicone evaporates quickly, so my notebook is not ruined and no sign of the disaster remains except for the fact that I wrote "The Great Cyclomethicone Accident of 2016!" in my notebook! Neat!</anecdote>
So anyway, I followed the same procedure as to make lotion as for making my mom's nag champa cream. And guess what! It worked! It is very thick and might be better suited to a jar than a bottle, which wouldn't be a problem if I had any jars, and feels nice and condition-y on my hair! I used 7% BTMS-50 following the recipe, but I think that 4% might be enough, as this stuff is almost too thick to get out of the bottle.
:D
Given two mostly-failures in a row, I really wanted this one to work.
I modified Susan's Modified Conditioner Recipe with Extracts and Hydrosols to suit my needs, leaving out both extracts and hydrosols, and replacing them with water, adding some glycerin and hydrolysed oats, and adding dimethicone and cyclomethicone in the cool-down phase.
The process for making a conditioner is the same as for making a lotion or cream that I outlined in this post. Conditioner is actually just a lotion made with emulsifiers that attach themselves to the hair (because they are cationically charged) instead of ones that rinse off. If you use an emulsifier that will not bind itself electrically to the hair, it's called a cream rinse, and it's just lotion for hair!
The water phase of my conditioner included distilled water, glycerin, and hydrolyzed oats, while the oil phase included BTMS-50 (behentrimonium methosulfate (50% active) and cetyl alcohol and butylene glycol) and (additional) cetyl alcohol. Once those were heated, emulsified, mixed, and cooled, I added preservative, dimethicone, cyclomethicone, and fragrance.
<anecdote>While weighing my cyclomethicone I spilled some all over my table and my formulating notebook. It was a greasy (rather silicone-y) mess. Thankfully, and unlike oils, cyclomethicone evaporates quickly, so my notebook is not ruined and no sign of the disaster remains except for the fact that I wrote "The Great Cyclomethicone Accident of 2016!" in my notebook! Neat!</anecdote>
So anyway, I followed the same procedure as to make lotion as for making my mom's nag champa cream. And guess what! It worked! It is very thick and might be better suited to a jar than a bottle, which wouldn't be a problem if I had any jars, and feels nice and condition-y on my hair! I used 7% BTMS-50 following the recipe, but I think that 4% might be enough, as this stuff is almost too thick to get out of the bottle.
:D
Sham... poo? And the downfall of my favourite beaker.
With my last experiment a failure, I decided to go back to a recipe created by someone else. I thought I'd totally change course and try a surfactant product. After some research, I decided to make a shampoo based on Susan Barclay-Nichols' daily-use shampoo. I shampoo my hair pretty much every day because it is really oily - and looks it - because it is also fine, and I mean super, baby-fine. I thought a gentler, lower surfactant recipe sounded good because I do wash my hair so often and it is prone to breakage and crunchy, splitting ends; no use exacerbating those problems.
<anecdote>I actually discovered Susan's blog while researching hair products. Some commercial shampoo and conditioner I was using had recently reformulated recipes, and I found the changes left my hair feeling waxy, coated, sticky, and gross after using, in addition to getting greasy way faster, (having been pretty nice products before,) and I was trying to figure out what ingredients were causing the grossness. Turns out it was the polyquaterniums, which are film-forming, cationic conditioning agents. My hair hates them. It doesn't seem to matter which one it is, I've tried 76, 10, 7, 34(?) and likely a bunch of others, and I've come to the conclusion that I just have to avoid them in hair products. I like them in body wash though, and lots of people love them as conditioners. So needless to say, I left the polyquats out of the shampoo recipe I made.</anecdote>
Here are the tweaks I made to the recipe:
Surfactant phase
water = water
anionic surfactant = sodium laureth sulfate (an anionic surfactant)
cocamidopropyl betaine = cocamidopropyl betaine (an amphoteric surfactant)
polyquat 7 or honeyquat = left the heck out!
glycerin = glycerin
hydrolyzed protein = hydrolyzed oat protein
aloe vera = water (don't have any aloe)
= glycol distearate (thickener, moisturizer, pearlizer/opacifier)
Additive phase
dimethicone = dimethicone and cyclomethicone (my hair loves silicones)
panthenol = panthenol
preservative = preservative
fragrance oil or essential oil = fragrance oil
So not too many changes. Just left out the polyquats, subbed water for the aloe, added cyclomethicone, and added the glycol distearate.
My surfactant phase went into my favourite 3-spouted beaker and into a double boiler. Which was way. too. hot. My beaker made a "pop" noise and all my ingredients were in the pot of boiling water with pieces of beaker. Oops. I now start my double boiler from room temperature with beakers already in, it seems even Pyrex can't handle those kind of temperature changes.
I tried again with a different measuring cup, accidentally adding an extra 5% water, but went ahead anyway. I heated the surfactant phase until the glycol distearate had melted, gave it a little stir, and took it out to cool. I was impatient, so I put it in a cold water bath. Lo and behold, there came to be bits of white grainy stuff in my shampoo. The glycol distearate was solidifying and coming out of solution! I heated it again until it was melted and homogeneous and took it off the heat, letting it cool naturally this time. And again, white grainy bits. Back it went, onto the heat a third time. This time once the GD was melted, I mixed it with my milk frother. I had hoped to avoid using it so I wouldn't foam up the shampoo, but it was a last resort. This time it stayed mixed as it cooled!
Once it was cooled I added the additives, increasing the preservative a bit to compensate for the extra water. It was runny. Even after 24 hours it was runny. I added 7% more SLeS and a bit more preservative. It was still runny. I tried adding 3% salt to thicken it according to the salt curve. It thickened. A lot. Into a kind of gelatinous lump. Whatever, it was fine, it was usable.
When I used it I liked it even less. It made no lather and I had to use piles of it to get my hair feeling clean-ish, though it did get my hair clean-ish. 48 hours later it was liquid again.
So, I think I added too much (3%) glycol distearate, as too much suppresses foam, and there was none whatsoever. I also think that maybe the concentration of surfactants just wasn't high enough for the salt curve to work, but I'm less sure about that. Anyway, it smelled nice, but most of it ended up getting dumped out. Good thing I make small batches.
Also, it turns out my favourite beaker wasn't antique, irreplaceable lab-ware; they are available at Canadian Tire, where my mom got me a new one. :D
<anecdote>I actually discovered Susan's blog while researching hair products. Some commercial shampoo and conditioner I was using had recently reformulated recipes, and I found the changes left my hair feeling waxy, coated, sticky, and gross after using, in addition to getting greasy way faster, (having been pretty nice products before,) and I was trying to figure out what ingredients were causing the grossness. Turns out it was the polyquaterniums, which are film-forming, cationic conditioning agents. My hair hates them. It doesn't seem to matter which one it is, I've tried 76, 10, 7, 34(?) and likely a bunch of others, and I've come to the conclusion that I just have to avoid them in hair products. I like them in body wash though, and lots of people love them as conditioners. So needless to say, I left the polyquats out of the shampoo recipe I made.</anecdote>
Here are the tweaks I made to the recipe:
Surfactant phase
water = water
anionic surfactant = sodium laureth sulfate (an anionic surfactant)
cocamidopropyl betaine = cocamidopropyl betaine (an amphoteric surfactant)
polyquat 7 or honeyquat = left the heck out!
glycerin = glycerin
hydrolyzed protein = hydrolyzed oat protein
aloe vera = water (don't have any aloe)
= glycol distearate (thickener, moisturizer, pearlizer/opacifier)
Additive phase
dimethicone = dimethicone and cyclomethicone (my hair loves silicones)
panthenol = panthenol
preservative = preservative
fragrance oil or essential oil = fragrance oil
So not too many changes. Just left out the polyquats, subbed water for the aloe, added cyclomethicone, and added the glycol distearate.
My surfactant phase went into my favourite 3-spouted beaker and into a double boiler. Which was way. too. hot. My beaker made a "pop" noise and all my ingredients were in the pot of boiling water with pieces of beaker. Oops. I now start my double boiler from room temperature with beakers already in, it seems even Pyrex can't handle those kind of temperature changes.
I tried again with a different measuring cup, accidentally adding an extra 5% water, but went ahead anyway. I heated the surfactant phase until the glycol distearate had melted, gave it a little stir, and took it out to cool. I was impatient, so I put it in a cold water bath. Lo and behold, there came to be bits of white grainy stuff in my shampoo. The glycol distearate was solidifying and coming out of solution! I heated it again until it was melted and homogeneous and took it off the heat, letting it cool naturally this time. And again, white grainy bits. Back it went, onto the heat a third time. This time once the GD was melted, I mixed it with my milk frother. I had hoped to avoid using it so I wouldn't foam up the shampoo, but it was a last resort. This time it stayed mixed as it cooled!
Once it was cooled I added the additives, increasing the preservative a bit to compensate for the extra water. It was runny. Even after 24 hours it was runny. I added 7% more SLeS and a bit more preservative. It was still runny. I tried adding 3% salt to thicken it according to the salt curve. It thickened. A lot. Into a kind of gelatinous lump. Whatever, it was fine, it was usable.
When I used it I liked it even less. It made no lather and I had to use piles of it to get my hair feeling clean-ish, though it did get my hair clean-ish. 48 hours later it was liquid again.
So, I think I added too much (3%) glycol distearate, as too much suppresses foam, and there was none whatsoever. I also think that maybe the concentration of surfactants just wasn't high enough for the salt curve to work, but I'm less sure about that. Anyway, it smelled nice, but most of it ended up getting dumped out. Good thing I make small batches.
Also, it turns out my favourite beaker wasn't antique, irreplaceable lab-ware; they are available at Canadian Tire, where my mom got me a new one. :D
One sucess down, so let's try something HARD!
Let's be real for a minute here. I have crappy skin. I have since I was 11. I use two prescription acne meds, which have been awesome, but I've been starting to get pimples again lately. My own skin has definitely been one of my motivations to get into this experimenting, in addition to the fact that I love doing it. However, salicylic acid, one of the main ingredients that helps with acne, is really hard to work with. It's more-or-less insoluble in water, and though it is oil soluble, oil is exactly what you don't want to add to acne prone skin. It's also soluble in ethanol, but my skin is sensitive and doesn't love alcohol. So yeah, it's a tough ingredient. But I'm a smarty pants, so I can do this, right?
My super respectable string of one successes has made me cocky.
I planned to make a really simple salicylic acid toner kind of thing. (On a side note, I have never seen a satisfactory definition of "toner," it's such a weird product.) Only four ingredients: distilled water, salicylic acid, propylene glycol to dissolve the SA and act as a humectant, and preservative. Expecting this might be a failure, I only attempted 10 g. Yay for scales that measure down to 0.01 g!
So I got a wee beaker and mixed my SA, propylene glycol, and preservative in it. All looked good. The SA dissolved and I had a clear solution. Now to add the water... added slowly while stirring... and here I witnessed the magic that is precipitation! Tiny, hairy-looking crystals of salicylic acid forming in my beaker! Very cool science, but undesirable results in a skin care product. Boo.
Fail number one.
My super respectable string of one successes has made me cocky.
I planned to make a really simple salicylic acid toner kind of thing. (On a side note, I have never seen a satisfactory definition of "toner," it's such a weird product.) Only four ingredients: distilled water, salicylic acid, propylene glycol to dissolve the SA and act as a humectant, and preservative. Expecting this might be a failure, I only attempted 10 g. Yay for scales that measure down to 0.01 g!
So I got a wee beaker and mixed my SA, propylene glycol, and preservative in it. All looked good. The SA dissolved and I had a clear solution. Now to add the water... added slowly while stirring... and here I witnessed the magic that is precipitation! Tiny, hairy-looking crystals of salicylic acid forming in my beaker! Very cool science, but undesirable results in a skin care product. Boo.
Fail number one.
From scratch
My idea is to write a post for each product I attempt. These first few are going to be retrospective, because I've been at this about 3 weeks now. Prior to that I'd fiddled around adding things like niacinamide to commercially available products, with decent results, but this is about the things I really make!
My first attempt was a thick avocado shea cream for my mom. She's a shea butter fiend. She slathers herself with pure shea butter on a regular basis. However, she has dry skin; I had to explain to her that putting an occlusive product like shea butter on isn't going to do much to prevent moisture loss when you have no moisture to lose, that you need a product that combines actual moisture, a humectant to draw water from the air to your skin, and that favourite occlusive of hers.
So I designed her a fairly simple cream including distilled water, avocado oil, shea butter, glycerin, stearic acid, preservatives, and fragrance, all held together with emulsifying wax. My recipe was based on Let's make a thick cream! by Susan Barclay-Nichols, whose fabulous, science-y blog has been my main source of education.
If I'm totally honest, I was being a bit cheap with this recipe. I was realistic with myself about the very real probability of failure. So, I used emulsifying wax instead of the more expensive BTMS-50 emulsifier I also have, and potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate as preservatives instead of the more expensive Liquid Germall Plus. Liquid Germall Plus is a more complete and effective preservative than the ones I used, but I was making a small batch that I didn't expect to last for years, if it worked at all....
So how did I go about it? I put the oil soluble products, that is the avocado oil, shea butter, stearic acid, and emulsifying wax, in one clean beaker, and the water soluble products, the distilled water and glycerin, in another. I reserved some of the water in a little cup and dissolved the preservatives in it; they come in granular form and are water soluble, I expected the cream to be thick and didn't fancy the idea of trying to get them to dissolve directly into the thick cream! I also left the fragrance out until the end. I also tested the pH of my water phase (only aqueous solutions can have a pH), and adjusted it with citric acid to about 4-5, so that my preservatives would be good and effective.
The oil beaker and the water beaker both went into a double boiler to heat up and melt the solid oils. I only have one candy thermometer, so I put it in the water beaker. It had a larger volume of ingredients in it, so it would heat up slower than the other. I figured it would be safe to assume if the larger volume had reached the required temperature, then the smaller one had too. I heated the beakers in the double boiler to 70°C and kept it there for 20 minutes, per Susan's instructions, stirring each occasionally to ensure the ingredients were well mixed, and melted in the case of the oils.
After the 20 minutes of anticipation, I removed the thermometer, took the two beakers out of the double boiler, poured the water section into the oil section and stirred them together with a milk frother. Emulsification is pretty cool (I mean the ingredients are warm when it happens, but the process is cool!), the second you pour the two phases together, they become milky white and more or less homogeneous, no oil floating on water here! I blended for 3 minutes, or I tried to anyway. I had taken the beakers off the heat, so the lotion thickened super quickly as it began to cool. I mixed until my frother didn't want to mix anymore.
I set my mixture aside, putting the candy thermometer back in, to wait for it to cool to 40-45°C. Once it had cooled, I added the preservatives and fragrance. I chose nag champa as the fragrance because my mom loves it because she is an aging hippy. :) I kept a little scoop of the cream for myself, before scenting it, packaged up the rest and gave it to my mom. She really seems to like it, though I'm fully aware she likes most of the things I make due to some biological mother-bias.
For a first attempt, this really all went remarkably well! The cream emulsified and hasn't separated, nor has it grown mould or visible bacterial colonies! My observations of the cream were that it is very thick, that I can feel the water/glycerin component in that it feels kind of wet for a while after I apply it, and that the dry-down is fairly powdery and soft. My sister tried my mom's fragranced portion and thought that she might like it to spread more (it has a bit of friction thanks to the stearic acid) and that the fragrance was too strong. My mom likes the fragrance as it is, but her sniffer has been kind of malfunctioning lately (i.e. not able to smell things) and I scented it accordingly. I find it too strong too.
Yay, a success to begin my adventure!
My first attempt was a thick avocado shea cream for my mom. She's a shea butter fiend. She slathers herself with pure shea butter on a regular basis. However, she has dry skin; I had to explain to her that putting an occlusive product like shea butter on isn't going to do much to prevent moisture loss when you have no moisture to lose, that you need a product that combines actual moisture, a humectant to draw water from the air to your skin, and that favourite occlusive of hers.
So I designed her a fairly simple cream including distilled water, avocado oil, shea butter, glycerin, stearic acid, preservatives, and fragrance, all held together with emulsifying wax. My recipe was based on Let's make a thick cream! by Susan Barclay-Nichols, whose fabulous, science-y blog has been my main source of education.
If I'm totally honest, I was being a bit cheap with this recipe. I was realistic with myself about the very real probability of failure. So, I used emulsifying wax instead of the more expensive BTMS-50 emulsifier I also have, and potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate as preservatives instead of the more expensive Liquid Germall Plus. Liquid Germall Plus is a more complete and effective preservative than the ones I used, but I was making a small batch that I didn't expect to last for years, if it worked at all....
So how did I go about it? I put the oil soluble products, that is the avocado oil, shea butter, stearic acid, and emulsifying wax, in one clean beaker, and the water soluble products, the distilled water and glycerin, in another. I reserved some of the water in a little cup and dissolved the preservatives in it; they come in granular form and are water soluble, I expected the cream to be thick and didn't fancy the idea of trying to get them to dissolve directly into the thick cream! I also left the fragrance out until the end. I also tested the pH of my water phase (only aqueous solutions can have a pH), and adjusted it with citric acid to about 4-5, so that my preservatives would be good and effective.
The oil beaker and the water beaker both went into a double boiler to heat up and melt the solid oils. I only have one candy thermometer, so I put it in the water beaker. It had a larger volume of ingredients in it, so it would heat up slower than the other. I figured it would be safe to assume if the larger volume had reached the required temperature, then the smaller one had too. I heated the beakers in the double boiler to 70°C and kept it there for 20 minutes, per Susan's instructions, stirring each occasionally to ensure the ingredients were well mixed, and melted in the case of the oils.
After the 20 minutes of anticipation, I removed the thermometer, took the two beakers out of the double boiler, poured the water section into the oil section and stirred them together with a milk frother. Emulsification is pretty cool (I mean the ingredients are warm when it happens, but the process is cool!), the second you pour the two phases together, they become milky white and more or less homogeneous, no oil floating on water here! I blended for 3 minutes, or I tried to anyway. I had taken the beakers off the heat, so the lotion thickened super quickly as it began to cool. I mixed until my frother didn't want to mix anymore.
I set my mixture aside, putting the candy thermometer back in, to wait for it to cool to 40-45°C. Once it had cooled, I added the preservatives and fragrance. I chose nag champa as the fragrance because my mom loves it because she is an aging hippy. :) I kept a little scoop of the cream for myself, before scenting it, packaged up the rest and gave it to my mom. She really seems to like it, though I'm fully aware she likes most of the things I make due to some biological mother-bias.
For a first attempt, this really all went remarkably well! The cream emulsified and hasn't separated, nor has it grown mould or visible bacterial colonies! My observations of the cream were that it is very thick, that I can feel the water/glycerin component in that it feels kind of wet for a while after I apply it, and that the dry-down is fairly powdery and soft. My sister tried my mom's fragranced portion and thought that she might like it to spread more (it has a bit of friction thanks to the stearic acid) and that the fragrance was too strong. My mom likes the fragrance as it is, but her sniffer has been kind of malfunctioning lately (i.e. not able to smell things) and I scented it accordingly. I find it too strong too.
Yay, a success to begin my adventure!
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
It begins...
Alchemists love bathing, right? Well this one does.
I've always been kind of fascinated by making my own stuff. I have a minor obsession with self-sufficiency, and a more-or-less insatiable lust for knowledge. Also I have a thing for smelly things; pretty sure it's genetic, as I've been like that since I was a baby. Enter my forays into cosmetic chemistry (among other adventures including sewing and gardening). I started making soap about three years ago after being told by a soap-making co-worker that it's easy enough, and to just do it. It was a gateway drug.
Some people and their skin love real soap, and some don't. I like it for getting deodorant off my armpits, but I have sensitive, acne-prone skin, and I'm an elitist when it comes to elegant formulas, so as much as I like soap, I find it kind of limiting, and frankly, I want more options. I plan to keep making soap, since a lot of people I know just can't get enough of it, and probably talk about it from time to time on this blog, but I'm branching out into other, more specialized, skin care products because that is what I'm interested in and what I want to use. Hopefully this will serve as a chronicle of my becoming a really great cosmetic formulator, a companion for others on the same journey, and maybe a guide for others who want to do the same some day. So join me!
Also a note: I'm a scientist (though not a chemist), and I subscribe to science-based decision-making. Please don't refer me to SkinDeep or Mother Jones and tell me some ingredient I'm using is bad. If they are not supported by peer-reviewed academic publications, I reserve the right to tell you your ideas are bunk and shoo you off my blog. :)
I've always been kind of fascinated by making my own stuff. I have a minor obsession with self-sufficiency, and a more-or-less insatiable lust for knowledge. Also I have a thing for smelly things; pretty sure it's genetic, as I've been like that since I was a baby. Enter my forays into cosmetic chemistry (among other adventures including sewing and gardening). I started making soap about three years ago after being told by a soap-making co-worker that it's easy enough, and to just do it. It was a gateway drug.
Some people and their skin love real soap, and some don't. I like it for getting deodorant off my armpits, but I have sensitive, acne-prone skin, and I'm an elitist when it comes to elegant formulas, so as much as I like soap, I find it kind of limiting, and frankly, I want more options. I plan to keep making soap, since a lot of people I know just can't get enough of it, and probably talk about it from time to time on this blog, but I'm branching out into other, more specialized, skin care products because that is what I'm interested in and what I want to use. Hopefully this will serve as a chronicle of my becoming a really great cosmetic formulator, a companion for others on the same journey, and maybe a guide for others who want to do the same some day. So join me!
Also a note: I'm a scientist (though not a chemist), and I subscribe to science-based decision-making. Please don't refer me to SkinDeep or Mother Jones and tell me some ingredient I'm using is bad. If they are not supported by peer-reviewed academic publications, I reserve the right to tell you your ideas are bunk and shoo you off my blog. :)
Here there be adventures.
Here begins the quest of the Latter-day Alchemist's search for the Elixir of Life in cosmetic chemistry. It's a lofty goal, but maybe she'll make a nice lotion along the way. Come along for the ride!
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