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.

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!

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!

Oil-based cleansing balm, and a possible revelation

I've been reading skin care stuff online as one does, and have come across oil-based cleansing balms a few times now. The Eve Lom product piqued my interest, because who the hell spends the UK equivalent of $100 on 100 ml of cleanser?! It also interested me because Eve Lom is a facecloth advocate, and I think facecloths are quaint. Another balm and facecloth champion is Caroline Hirons, a UK celebrity esthetician and blogger with about a million loyal minions.

The whole oil cleansing thing seems so bizarre to me, especially as a sensitive, oily, acne-prone skinned person who wholly refused to moisturize until I started using a prescription retinoid 2 years ago. I understand, and agree with, the chemical principle of like dissolving like, but... residue! How are you supposed to get all that residual oil off your skin without following up your oil cleanse with a proper cleanser?! Ain't nobody got time for that! I tried oil cleansing a whole of one time. I believe I mixed up 7 g of grapeseed oil and 3 g of castor oil (supposedly a good mix for oily skin), rubbed it on my face, and then scrubbed the bejesus out of my skin with a facecloth trying to get all the oil off. I'm pretty sure that within 30 minutes I had gone back and re-cleaned my face with a normal surfactant-based cleanser. It just wasn't for me.

So I read the ingredients of the Eve Lom stuff. Colour me skeptical when I saw that the first ingredient is mineral oil. Cheapest. Ingredient. Ever. Anyway, I kept reading and saw that her product contains not just oils, but also emulsifiers (a couple different PEG lanolins). That's where I started to see the light. I still think that the "all natural" oil cleansing is kind of bunk, especially for oily-skinned people, but if you add an emulsifier to your cleansing oil, that will increase its solubility - and therefore rinse-ability - in water. So it might actually come off your skin.

I decided to have another go at this oily nonsense, so I whipped up a super-simple pseudo-dupe of the Eve Lom cleanser, complete with 75% mineral oil. I substituted PEG-40 castor oil for the PEG lanolins, since it's the most similar emulsifier I have, and threw in some cetearyl alcohol and cocoa butter. I added the tiniest amount of clove and eucalyptus essential oils, and that was it.

Per the instructions of both Eve Lom and Caroline Hirons, I applied the stuff (similar consistency to Burt's Bees hand salve, if you are familiar with that) to my dry face and gave it a good rubbing-in. It felt oily. I wet a facecloth in hot water, wrung it out, and held it over my face for a few seconds. I repeated this step a few times, since the heat is supposedly essential for oily skin as it allows the cleanser to penetrate into my greasy pores. Following that I used my hot, wet facecloth to scrub the cleanser off, rinsing it a few times along the way. Lo and behold, my skin felt clean! Not oily! It was pretty remarkable. I felt like the balm rinsed cleanly off my hands too, and my facecloth did not feel like it was saturated in oil after rinsing. All so unexpected.

After drying my face off with a towel and giving it a few minutes to evaporate off the leftover moisture, I touched my skin. It felt really, incredibly soft.

Anyway, I've been at this for a few days now and haven't had any catastrophic results yet. I'll update if my acne explodes or anything, likewise if my skin suddenly becomes my best feature (a girl can dream, right?).

A note on facecloths: I've tried using them in the past, as my skin doesn't seem to react too well to the high levels of alcohol contained in most chemical exfoliants. I've always found that the added stimulation increases my oil production, and since starting prescription acne meds 2 years ago, I have stuck to hands-only cleansing with surfactant-based sensitive skin cleansers (either Cliniderm gentle cleanser or Cerave foaming cleanser). This system has worked quite well for me in combination with the meds, and Cliniderm protective lotion SPF 45 in the day or Spectro blemish-prone moisturizer overnight. I'm still using my meds and moisturizers and will switch back to my cleanser system if I have any problems... and probably when I run out of this balm, at least until I finish up the products that I already have.

UPDATE (Aug 8, 2016): So, after about 3 days of using this, I was developing 2 new pimples on my chin, boo. I went back to a regular cleanser the evening of Aug 5 and haven't had any new ones appear since then. Oh well, I only have one application of this stuff left anyway, maybe I'll use it up as a pre-cleanse and be done with it.

A second try at body butter

Following my last fairly miserable, if deliciously scented, failure, I made another attempt at duplicating the Body Shop's mango body butter recipe. The last one was way too oily and thin (and ended up separating), so this time I reduced the oil by 75% and doubled the proportion of mango butter. I still kept the relative proportions of ingredients in line with the Body Shop's ingredient list, since I am a sucker for punishment.

I also tried adding xanthan gum this time. I mixed it with my water as the first step in my formulation and let it hydrate for 15 minutes or so. Considering that I only made a 50 g sample batch, measuring out the 0.2% (i.e. 0.1 g) of xanthan gum was an inexact thing. My scale measures to 0.01 g, but I'm sure the accuracy is not that good, and it doesn't like sensing much under about 0.5 g, so I got it to measure 0.2 g and then removed about half of the xanthan gum in the dish. Honestly, the "gel" it created was hardly a gel, it was only marginally thicker than water. Anyway, I used it.

Once again, this was a regular heat and hold lotion process, and everything went normally. I added the silicone, fragrance, disodium EDTA, preservative, and colourant after cool-down. This one took its time thickening up, probably 24 hours before it reached its final consistency. This body butter, like the last, is thinner than I want, although this recipe was a marked improvement over the previous one. It is solid enough not to move when the jar it is in is turned upside down, but feels really thin when applying.

As an aside on the fragrance, I used a guava fig fragrance from Candora Soap, which smells freaking amazing, but sadly has that same weird after-smell as my rhubarb fragrance from Saffire Blue, and my pomegranate mango fragrance from New Directions Aromatics. Boo. I expect it will be better off in a wash-off product, as the rhubarb did well in shampoo.

I have decided that my next attempts at body butter will contain thickeners other than the butter and emulsifier. I've read the ingredient lists on some of the other Body Shop body butter flavours I own, and many of the others contain cetearyl alcohol, so I think I'll be adding some of that on the next go. It's a learning process!

Duplication attempt - body butter

I have some grand plans for xmas presents involving body butter, so a while ago I made a first attempt. I thought I'd go for a Body Shop-esque recipe, so I got out my mega-tub of mango body butter and copied down the ingredients.

water - okay, fine
mango butter
sweet almond oil
cocoa butter - oil phase should total about 25% for a body butter
glycerin
glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate - this is the emulsifier, exact same ingredients are available as Lotion Pro 165 from Lotioncrafter or as Simulsol 165 from Windy Point, and probably elsewhere; usage rate is 1-5%
cyclomethicone - for glide!
phenoxyethanol - preservative
parfum - smellies, </= 1%
benzyl alcohol - preservative
methylparaben - preservative
propylparaben - preservative, these are generally at </=1.5% each
xanthan gum - thickener
disodium EDTA - chealator, 0.2%
sodium hydroxide - pH adjuster (if needed)
potassium hydroxide - pH adjuster (if needed)
citric acid - pH adjuster (if needed)
CI 75120 - colourant

I subbed in ingredients I had, using the recommended usage rates to figure out how much of each to put in. I ended up with a 25% oil phase, 15% hard oils and 10% liquid oils. I used Simulsol 165 as the emulsifier at 3.5%, added 3% cyclomethicome because I love 'cones, subbed preservatives for ones I have, left out the xanthan gum (perhaps foolishly), and left out the pH adjusters because I didn't need to adjust the pH. Scented with 1% banana coconut FO from Candora, and omg! I love this fragrance. It is what sunscreen would smell like in my ideal world.

It was a normal heat and hold process with oils and water done separately. Emulsification looked normal, but the lotion didn't thicken virtually at all as it cooled. Maybe leaving out the xanthan gum was a bad idea. It was so runny! It was also very oily when applied to my legs. I feel like the 10% liquid oil was too much by a lot. My legs are dry-ish and the oil didn't sink in for probably 8 or 12 hours.

Anyway, within 2 weeks the lotion had separated. I'm not really sure why, since the glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate is supposed to be able to emulsify 20-30% oil at 2.5% usage, and I used 3.5% for 25% oils. Maybe it didn't like the preservatives or fragrance I used, or maybe it needed a thickener/stabilizer like xanthan gum. Who knows. All I know is I am addicted to that fragrance.

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.

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.