White pigeon beauty bar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emulsification experimentation

Long time no post!


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neglect!

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

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

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

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

Soap, soap, soap!

Literally just a fraction of what I've made!

Smells like Chanel No 5.

Trippy, hippy nag champa.

Cute xmas soap.

Interesting goings-on of suppliers

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

Absenteeism

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

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!