Gersh-wash 2.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.