SD conditioner try #7, lucky #7

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

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

So my bare-bones recipe was as follows:

A
81.8 g water
0.6 g citric acid

B
6 g cetearyl alcohol
3 g stearamidopropyl dimethylamine

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

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

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

YAY!

SD conditioner trys #5 and #6

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

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

SD conditioner try #4

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

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

It separated again.

SD conditioner, thrice-attempted

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

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

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

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

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

Overnight it separated.

Try, try again

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

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

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

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

Argh.

New conditioner experiment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Anyway, I'll try this one again soon.

Nag champoo and conditioner

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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