My version of "facial wash with a ton of extracts"

Hot on the heels of my conditioner success, I thought I'd go for a more-or-less guaranteed success: a surfactant product. I modified a version of Susan Barclay-Nichols' Facial Wash with a Ton of Extracts, from her Formulating Facial Products ebook, to suit me and to include some extracts I got in my most recent ingredients shipment (it arrived before the postal strike, woo!).

Frankly, Susan's version of this looks like a mix of blood and mud, but that is due to the extracts she chose to include, not due to the basic ingredients. My version contains the green tea and cucumber peel extracts, so it is yellow-y green. I also put in 2% salicylic acid, which seems to have precipitated after the mixture cooled, but is staying mostly dispersed, so I just shake it up before using.

I don't know if it is the undissolved SA (don't think so as I've made a 2% SA cleanser that had the same problem before), the cucumber peel extract (Susan says some people can be sensitive to it), or the surfactants I chose, but I find it a touch burn-y along the edges of my eyelids when I wash my face with it. I didn't make that much of it, so I'll just use it up. I'd like to come up with a SA recipe I really like, as I've been noticing more blackheads on my nose lately. Maybe because it's summer.

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.

One sucess down, so let's try something HARD!

Let's be real for a minute here. I have crappy skin. I have since I was 11. I use two prescription acne meds, which have been awesome, but I've been starting to get pimples again lately. My own skin has definitely been one of my motivations to get into this experimenting, in addition to the fact that I love doing it. However, salicylic acid, one of the main ingredients that helps with acne, is really hard to work with. It's more-or-less insoluble in water, and though it is oil soluble, oil is exactly what you don't want to add to acne prone skin. It's also soluble in ethanol, but my skin is sensitive and doesn't love alcohol. So yeah, it's a tough ingredient. But I'm a smarty pants, so I can do this, right?

My super respectable string of one successes has made me cocky.

I planned to make a really simple salicylic acid toner kind of thing. (On a side note, I have never seen a satisfactory definition of "toner," it's such a weird product.) Only four ingredients: distilled water, salicylic acid, propylene glycol to dissolve the SA and act as a humectant, and preservative. Expecting this might be a failure, I only attempted 10 g. Yay for scales that measure down to 0.01 g!

So I got a wee beaker and mixed my SA, propylene glycol, and preservative in it. All looked good. The SA dissolved and I had a clear solution. Now to add the water... added slowly while stirring... and here I witnessed the magic that is precipitation! Tiny, hairy-looking crystals of salicylic acid forming in my beaker! Very cool science, but undesirable results in a skin care product. Boo.

Fail number one.