Duplicating products: An introduction

I know a lot of us get into making products in the hopes of duplicating products we love by making it more moisturizing, more concentrated, or better smelling. Oftentimes we're motivated by saving money (and you know that isn't going to happen until we're out of the playing and experimenting phase). Sometimes it's easy - finding a zinc oxide cream recipe is pretty simple - and sometimes there are so many different ingredients in small amounts that it's hard to figure out what's necessary and what's not.

Here's an older post about my thought processes when I want to duplicate a product if you want to rush ahead a bit....and you can click on the label duplicating to see all the posts about this topic. 

Knowing your ingredients is the first step to learning how to duplicate a product you love. (Click here for a post on how to research your ingredients.) You can't decide what's vital in a product if you don't know that glycol distearate can work as a low HLB emulsifier and a pearlizer in a shampoo or body wash. You don't have to know what it means when you look at the ingredient list - do some research with reputable sources, which I've included in the post above.

Some products will be unduplicatable in your workshop (I don't think that's a real word, but it works!). There might be ingredients you can't get, ingredients you don't want to buy due to cost, or processes you can't do with your stick blender and mixer. That's fine. Modify it. If you can't find glycol distearate, then use another moisturizer or pearlizer in that shampoo. If you can't get your hands on C12-15 alkyl benzoate, then learn about other esters that might work. You might not get the exact skin feel you want, but you can get mighty close, and you might end up making something better!

I hope this series also helps you to modify recipes you find on the 'net. It's always frustrating to find something that sounds awesome only to find out you don't have the ingredients. Learn about your ingredients, and you won't need to order a whole bunch of new oils or humectants to make that amazing sounding product!

As this is the start of a series on learning to duplicate products, please feel free to e-mail me or comment on what products you'd like to duplicate. I'll ask you to give me the full name of the product and a link to a good ingredient list that we can work with in a future post as I really don't have time to hunt those down myself. Any product suggestions sent in without this information will go to the bottom of the research list (and it's a big list!) Please do not send me products from homecrafters as we need to respect the time and effort they put into their products. I can't wait to see what you want to make!

This series will make you want to spend money. I apologize in advance.

Thank you for visiting the blog. I am not taking suggestions for duplicating products any more and do not plan to do so in the future. I hope I have provided you with tons of information in this series and others so you can make your own products!