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....
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