skin types

Is water important or just a filler? Is it just used to make products cheaper? What does it do for our skin? (Updated for 2024)

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Lotion on a green spatula with a beaker with more lotion in the background

I was wandering around a beginning formulators’ Facebook group and saw someone stating that water wasn’t necessary – it’s just filler to make products cheaper. What? Water is an essential component of our awesome products and isn’t just there as filler! I thought I’d update this post as it’s such an important topic! Having said...

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Question: Why would you leave out preservatives for sensitive skin? What do I mean by “water”?

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Sarah asks in this post, Lotions: Making a cream: I made an unscented cream yesterday for my friend with very sensitive skin. I left the cream in the bowl over night with a stainless steel spoon in it. Today I noticed on one side of the spoon the cream has been discoloured (purple in colour). From...

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Formulating for dry skin: Impaired skin barrier ingredients

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As the goal of this blog is to set you on fire rather than handing you matches, I thought we’d take some time to look at the ingredients that might benefit dry to really dry skin.  What do we know about dry to really dry skin? We know that really dry skin probably has an...

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Blast from the past: Photoaging

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PHOTOAGED SKIN (original post found here!) How do we define aging skin? It is skin that has… dermal and epidermal atrophy (sagging, wrinkling, coarseness) reduction in amount of collagen hyperkeratosis (thickening of the stratum corneum) reduced number of melanocytes, Langerhans cells, and fibroblasts shortening of the telomeres on our chromosomes reduction in sebum production What...

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Formulating facial moisturizers – silicone based

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A lot of the commercial moisturizers you see are pretty silicone heavy, and we know silicones are a great way to offer barrier protection (dimethicone) and behave as surface smoothing agents for aging skin. I can guarantee if my mom likes a moisturizer, it’s likely to be quite silicone heavy. They offer quite a lovely...

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