Practice your process

The formula is only the start: The process is everything! (Updated June 2022)

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How did this beautiful, fluffy, gorgeous conditioner with Varisoft EQ 65 become that epic fail? This is what happens when the process required to make a product isn’t followed properly. If it needs high shear and you’ve used a hand mixer, the product will fail. If you’re supposed to alter the pH at a certain...

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A tale of two body washes…

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A tale of two body washes. Same formula, different fragrance oils. On the left, pistachio cream: On the right, sweet Meyer lemon. This isn’t a testament to the quality of the ingredients or fragrance/essential oils – this can happen with any mix you create. Working with surfactants isn’t as easy as just changing the fragrance...

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Q&A: Should we be concerned about not heating and holding cold process emulsifiers? More about this and some stuff about phase inversion temperature, too

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In the September Q&A, Charlette asked, Sorry, but have another question. With our recent use of so many different cold process emulsifiers–although I know we all use good production practices–are we giving up some preservation and ‘kill the beasties’ benefits which the heat-and hold process gives us? Don’t get me wrong! I’m loving the ease...

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#alltheingredients: Sodium phytate (chelating ingredient)

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Jen from Lotioncrafter was kind enough to send me some sodium phytate to play with over the summer.  Sodium phytate is a water soluble chelating ingredient we can add to our products at 0.05% to 0.5% to bind with metal ions to keep the ingredients from reacting with them. These metal ions can precipitate in...

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Experiments with rheology modifiers: Gelmaker CC aka Cosmedia Gel CC

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Another beaker broken during the grand oil thickening experiments! I don’t know what it is about high shear + clay based thickeners, but if this keeps up, I’ll have to order the 100 and 150 ml by the caseload! Oh well, it’s all in the name of figuring out how we can use these ingredients...

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