Duplicating products: Jurlique's Rose Hand Cream - answers!

Thanks to everyone who entered their recipes for consideration for this contest! (The previous post can be found here.) The winner is...well, no one. No one tried to duplicate this. I'm hoping the reason I didn't get any submissions was due to all that formulating you're doing in the workshop or because this product wasn't all that interesting to you.

An aside: The whole point of the duplicating series is to learn more about formulating own our products, figuring out what goes into a product, how to switch ingredients and alter amounts, and generally not having to rely on finding a recipe for that perfect lotion. It's about learning to fight the fear of failure or wasting products and jumping in to make something that might work well or might be just awful, accepting that we're learning something. I know I sound like your mom right now, guilt tripping you and telling you I'm disappointed and generally making you feel bad, but if you want to learn how to formulate, the only way to do it is to formulate! There's nothing wrong with finding a recipe and trying it it, but if you want to make it your very own special recipe, analyzing each ingredient for function and skin feel, trying it and thinking about how you would change it, and trying new things are the only way to make it more about you and less about the recipe writer's preferences. Anyway...


Here's my thought process for duplicating this recipe.

Looking at the list, the first thing that stands out is the second ingredient - it's the emulsifier, which means all the other ingredients must be in here at less than 10% or so. Considering that the sodium cetearyl sulfate makes up 10% of the total weight of Lanette N, this means that at 10% emulsifier, we only get 1% sodium cetearyl sulfate. So everything below that ingredient must be in the 1% or lower range. This means only the water, emulsifier, glycerin, sunflower seed oil, sweet almond oil, and honey are over 1%. I'm not sure how much Lanette N to use - I can't find suggestions anywhere - and since I don't have it, I'm going with good old Polawax for this recipe (which we'll use at 25% of the oil phase).

Since I don't have the proper emulsifier that contains cetearyl alcohol, I'm going to add a little of that into the mix (or cetyl alcohol, if you don't have cetearyl alcohol) at about 2% to 3% to make this a thicker product because right now it's looking like it'll be on par with a moisturizer for viscosity!

The second thing I notice is that the glycerin comes before the safflower seed oil. We aren't using huge amounts of glycerin - generally no more than 3% to 5% as it can get sticky - so how much oil is in this product? We can't have more than 5% safflower seed oil and 5% sweet almond oil in this product! So our oil phase will be quite small.

So we know we don't have a huge oil phase and we have a large water phase so far.

As for the extracts, I'll try to get as many in there as I can, but there are so many and I don't have all of them. I'll use calendula extract (water soluble) but you can use calendula oil if you want (I just figure I have such a small oil phase, I should try to maximize it!). I have oil soluble mallow extract from Brambleberry (really loving this right now!), so I'll include that in the oil phase. I have chamomile in powdered form or hydrosol form, so I'm not sure what to do with this yet. I don't have rose, daisy, echinacea, or Heartsease extracts, so let's take a look at what I could use a substitute.

The main properties we like in these extracts are anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants. The main ingredients we want to get are the quercetin and the kaempferol. We can find both of these in witch hazel and chamomile extract. Since we already have chamomile extract in this, we could add a little witch hazel into the water phase at 10% or we could use 10% chamomile hydrosol or 0.5% powdered extract in the cool down phase or both. I think I'll go with the 10% chamomile hydrosol and 0.5% powdered extract in the cool down phase to get maximum benefits of this great flower.

Okay, back to the oil phase for a moment. I think I'm going to be using about 5% safflower oil, 5% sweet almond oil, 5% mallow extract (yep, this is oil soluble), 3% cetyl alcohol or 2% cetearyl alcohol, 1% macadamia nut oil, 1% lecithin (which is technically an emulsifier, but it's going into my oil phase), 0.5% Vitamin E, and 0.5% carrot seed oil. I have a 20% oil phase, which means I need 5% Polawax for this product (20% x 0.25 = 5). I would figure out the HLB for these ingredients, but considering I can't find any information for the mallow extract - although it is made with fractionated coconut oil, so we could consider it to have an HLB of 5 - I'm just going with my all-in-one emulsifier.

Yes, I know that the glycerin is about 3% and I have 5% of each oil, but I worry that this will be a really thin, not so moisturizing lotion without 10% oils or so. So it's really not a direct duplicate. 

Now to the water phase. Our oil phase totals 25%, which means we have 75% left to go. If I go with 5% calendula extract (water soluble), 10% chamomile hydrosol, 3% glycerin, 2% honey, 2% soy protein (I know this is too high, but there's no point in including it if it's below 1%, in my humble opinion), 2% honey, and 1% aloe vera (kinda pointless, but it's in the original recipe), I know I need at least 52% water.

But wait, there's one last consideration - the cool down phase. I know I'm going to use 0.5% Vitamin E, but I need my preservative (liquid Germall Plus at 0.5%), fragrance or essential oils (1%), and powdered chamomile extract (0.5%), which is 2% of the product (I've already accounted for the Vitamin E in the oil phase). So I need 50% water.

Let's take a look at a possible recipe!

POSSIBLE DUPLICATION FOR JURLIQUE'S ROSE HAND CREAM
HEATED WATER PHASE
50% water
10% chamomile hydrosol
5% calendula extract (water soluble)
2% soy protein
1% aloe vera liquid
3% glycerin
2% honey

HEATED OIL PHASE
5% safflower oil
5% sweet almond oil
2% cetearyl alcohol
5% mallow extract (oil soluble)
1% macadamia nut oil
1% lecithin
0.5% carrot seed oil
5% Polawax

COOL DOWN PHASE
0.5% preservative
0.5% Vitamin E
0.5% powdered chamomile extract
1% fragrance or essential oil

Use the basic lotion making instructions for this recipe.

Join me shortly for a look at duplicating Lush's Dream Cream!