Iron Chemist: Lanolin

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the sixth Iron Chemist ingredient - Lanolin!

Here are the rules. (Click here for the long version.) Raymond rolled a seven, which means he chose from the assorted butters and things that haven't been put away properly box. I have until next Saturday, February 5th to make two or three recipes using this ingredient. 

Let's take a quick look at lanolin (click here for a longer post on this ingredient). 

Lanolin is extracted from sheep's wool grease (the sebaceous secretions of sheep), and is composed of 138 saturated and 32 unsaturated fatty acids with wonderful sterols like cholesterol, lanesterol, and agnesterol, which we know offer great moisturizing and anti-inflammatory properties, and cetyl and stearyl alcohols, which are great emollients and thickeners. (The cholesterol is of particular interest for moisturizing as our stratum corneum lipids are made up 20% to 25% cholesterol and our skin particularly likes this type of sterol.)

We see lanolin in a lot of nail products, especially nail polish removers, because it is such an amazing emollient that offers serious moisturizing and water repellancy. It helps create a barrier to keep water in to help moisturize our skin, and it will help keep lotions and balms on our hands even after washing. This barrier helps reduce trans-epidermal water loss and may help with superficial wound healing. Lanolin can increase absorption of active ingredients in our creations, and it is great for creating a uniform consistency for a balm or ointment.

So I'm working with lanolin this week! Yay! 

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Iron Chemist results: Floraesters IPJ

As I've mentioned repeatedly (and probably annoyingly) this week, work has been incredibly busy and I've had little time to play in the workshop. As a result, I failed in making the two Iron Chemist products this week. I did make one, but I didn't make a second - but I plan to do that during my holiday time this week (I do have loads of ideas for coloured lip balms and an eye cream!)

The one product I did make is an oil based manicure scrub as you can see to the left. I really like the manicure scrub I made with lanolin, but I thought the inclusion of some drier oils and esters might make it less greasy and more suitable for day time use (I use the linked one at night before bed, so I really don't care how greasy it feels!). So let's take a look at the recipe...

OIL BASED MANICURE SCRUB WITH FLORAESTERS IPJ
10% Floraesters IPJ
10% kukui nut oil
10% cetearyl ethylhexanoate
5% lecithin
5% lanolin
1% fragrance or essential oil (I used green tea fragrance oil - very fresh!)
39% sugar
10% jojoba beads

I heated up the lanolin to melt it and heated up the Floraester IPJ to remove the cloudiness - it's very cold in my workshop - then added all the oils. I mixed them, then added the fragrance oil (you might need more than 1% as some types of lanolin can be quite strong smelling). I added the jojoba beads first and mixed, then the sugar.

I really like the feeling of this scrub - it leaves behind a light film of oil that's not too greasy. One problem though, I couldn't get those little beads off and I actually had to wash my hands to remove them! Having said that, the oils stayed on after washing, so I'd say that was a success! (This is why I encourage you to try things and make mistakes - I learned this is a pretty tenacious oil combination!)

Since you're very unlikely to have Floraesters IPJ at home - I only have them as a sample - you can substitute a light, dry feeling oil - for instance, increase the kukui oil or use a little hazelnut, macadamia nut, or camellia seed oil - or add another ester. You could increase the cetearyl ethylhexanoate to 20% as well or something like C12-15 alkyl benzoate or ethylhexyl palmitate. If you don't mind a little more greasiness, you could substitute 8% jojoba oil and 2% Isopropyl myristate or IPP in place of the Floraesters IPJ.

I definitely recommend leaving out the jojoba beads and use all sugar. You can also use salt, and I have done in the past. I used sugar this time as I have a bunch of little cuts on my hands from paper and crafting and sewing, and salt can sting. But use either as you wish.

So sorry for the let down in not making the second product, but tune in tomorrow to see what our new Iron Chemist ingredient might be and tune in through the week to see how I'm enjoying my week off work!

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Iron Chemist: Floraesters IPJ

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the fifth Iron Chemist ingredient - Floraesters IPJ!

Here are the rules. (Click here for the long version.) Raymond rolled an eight, which means he chose an ingredient from the sample box in my workshop. I have until next Saturday, January 29th, to make two to three recipes using this ingredient.

So what the heck are Floraesters IPJ and where can you get them? I'll answer the latter first - I have no idea. I received them as a sample, so I don't have a lot with which to play, maybe 100 ml or so. (If you have an idea of where to find these, please comment!) What are they? That I can answer!

IPJ is an ester derived from jojoba oil with an INCI isopropyl jojobate (35%), jojoba alcohol (35%), jojoba esters, (30%), and 0.1% tocopherols. Because it's an ester, this means it will be a better spreading and less greasy ingredient than a typical oil. It's a low viscosity ester with a light yellow appearance and no odour (although having said that, low viscosity is a relative term because it seems lighter than rice bran oil to me!). It's considered a silicone alternative because of its high spreadability and light, dry feeling, so you could use it in a conditioner or anywhere you might be using silicones. (I found some information indicating it could be used in a shampoo, but another data sheet said you couldn't and it isn't soluble in SLS or decyl glucoside, so I'm going with the you can't use it in shampoo without some kind of emulsifier camp). I would like to include a picture of it here, but I can't find one online and my bottle is covered in oils, so it looks just awful. I'll have to re-bottle it and put a picture up shortly.

Floraester IPJ is soluble in all our usual oils - vegetable and mineral - as well as other esters like IPM or IPP, as well as cyclomethicone and it isn't soluble in dimethicone, the glycols (butylene or propylene), glycerin, polysorbate 20, water, or surfactants, so you'll have to mix it with polysorbate 80 or another solubilize to use it in a water only product (it's definitely an oil soluble ingredient). I'd add it to the heated oil phase when making a lotion of some kind or melt it with the oils in an anhydrous product. It's recommended for lip sticks and balms at up to 30% because it forms an interesting matrix with the waxes (much like castor oil would) and for oil free type products (because it's not an oil!). The suggested usage is up to 20% in a cream or lotion in the heated oil phase or use it at up to 5% in a deodorant to increase glide and decrease white streaking or up to 5% in a bath or massage oil to increase glide.

It's supposed to be awesome for colour cosmetic products like foundations because it has a matte finish, so it's a great inclusion in cream or liquid products like blushes, concealers, lip sticks, and anything else you want to make that shouldn't be shiny. I'm thinking that it would be great for an oil free moisturizer or eye cream.

The melting point of Floraester IPJ is 6˚C to 12˚C, so you'll treat it like a normal oil at room temperature, although you can heat it before using to remove any crystals if you've had it in a cold workshop and find it's solidified a bit (this would be when the ester has reached its titer point.)

I'm going to start off by substituting it for cyclomethicone in one of my usual products so I can get an idea of the skin feel, then I'll have some fun playing. This is going to be a fun week indeed! 

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Iron Chemist results: Rice bran oil

Another week, another Iron Chemist challenge!. I love rice bran oil and use it by the bucketload in so many products I make, so it was hard to create two products in which I could use it in a different way. I chose to add to the challenge this week and attempt to duplicate two products from the Body Shop that people have asked me about - the Body Shop's Hemp Hand Protector and the Body Shop's new spa wisdom™ japan yuzu & rice body milk.

DUPLICATING THE HAND PROTECTOR
I've had a few people ask about duplicating Body Shop's Hemp Hand Protector and thought I'd try tit out this week. I'll admit it was a little ambitious considering I've never tried the product myself, but I've read what it's supposed to feel like, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Ingredient list: Water, Glycerin, Cetearyl Alcohol, Myristyl Myristate, Hemp Seed Oil, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Glyceryl Stearate, Dimethicone, PEG-100 Stearate, Beeswax, Lanolin, Panthenol, Phenoxyethanol, Fragrance, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Allantoin, Xanthan Gum, Disodium EDTA, Evernia Furfuracea (Treemoss) Extract, Limonene, Citronellol, Talc, Geraniol, Linalool, Citral, Chromium Oxide Greens, Iron Oxides.

There's a ton of stuff left out if you compare this ingredient list from the Canadian site to the American site. Huh? The American one lists far more ingredients including castor and camellia seed oil, carnauba wax, tocopherol, citric acid, potassium sorbate, and many many more. I wonder which is really different, the ingredient list or the actual ingredients? And the British site appears to have a little from each! What's going on here?

In my humble opinion, the key ingredients in here are the water, glycerin, cetearyl alcohol, emollients, beeswax, emulsifier, allantoin, and preservative. The xanthan gum is a thickener, which I'm leaving out; the disodium EDTA is a chelating ingredient, and the rest are all fragrance or colours and I don't care about those at the moment. 

I know this product is supposed to stay on after washing, so I think leaving the cetearyl alcohol and beeswax will help that because they tend to be waxy feeling. I don't have any myristyl myristate, so I went with cetearyl ethylhexanoate (another ester) and kept in the C12-15 alkyl benzoate because I wanted it to have that not so greasy feeling. I went with Polawax as my emulsifier, although BTMS would have been a good choice as well. (Oh shoot, I didn't see the lanolin in this recipe until just now! I'll have to tweak it to include it next time.) I used glycerin, propylene glycol, and panthenol as my humectants to offer more moisturizing without greasiness. 

I wanted to use rice bran oil instead of hemp seed oil because it has a longer shelf life and that's the challenge this week, and I included the dimethicone and allantoin as occlusive ingredients. 

You'll notice I added some IPM to this recipe - I really felt it needed to be less greasy - and I have my fragrance oil at 0.5%. This is for two reasons. One, because I'm giving this to my husband and his manly friends and they won't want something overly fragranced. And two, because I'm using C12-15 alkyl benzoate, which is a fragrance fixative, and I have found when using this I need to reduce my fragrance amount because it'll stick around for a long long time! (And it does! I could smell the cedar & saffron on my hands hours later!) 

As this is meant to be a very thick and rich cream that doesn't feel greasy, I figured I'd use about a 50% to 60% water phase and a 40% or more oil phase. So here's the result! 

RICE BRAN OIL BASED HAND PROTECTOR CREAM

HEATED WATER PHASE

47% water

3% glycerin

2% propylene glycol

0.5% allantoin

HEATED OIL PHASE

7% Polawax

3% cetearyl alcohol

8% cetearyl ethylhexanoate

10% rice bran oil

10% C12-15 alkyl benzoate

2% beeswax 

2% IPM

COOL DOWN PHASE

2% dimethicone

2% panthenol

0.5% fragrance

0.5% - 1% preservative (I use liquid Germall Plus)

Follow the normal lotion making instructions for this recipe. This recipe makes about 250 ml if you multiply it by 3 (8 ounce bottle), so if you make the recipe at this amount you'll get about 80 ml (or 1/3 cup). 

So what do we think? I think it's a very thick lotion that feels slightly greasy going on your hands but soon dries to a more powdery feeling. I don't think it stayed on after washing my hands, but it did feel like it was still on my hands two hours after application when I didn't wash my hands. I'm not the biggest fan of cetearyl alcohol in this recipe - I know I was going for a waxier feeling lotion that would stay on my hands, but I think it could be slightly too waxy for my personal preferences, although my husband liked it and reported that he felt it stayed on his hands after washing. 

When I make this again, I think I'll add some cyclomethicone to increase the feeling of silky powderiness a little (2% in the cool down phase) and remove 2% of some oil to make up for that change. I think I'll add some aloe vera because I always like more soothing goodness for trashed hands. If you want to make this recipe and leave things out, feel free to substitute the various emollients for other oils, but bear in mind that it will change the skin feel. And feel free to substitute the cetearyl alcohol for either stearic or cetyl alcohol. If you keep all the ingredients relatively the same - that is to say, you keep the silicones and esters - then I'd go with stearic to make a tenacious cream.

DUPLICATING THE YUZU & RICE BODY MILK

Another product I've been asked about a lot lately is the new spa wisdom™ japan yuzu & rice body milk from the Body Shop, so I thought I'd try making my own version of a sprayable lotion. 

Here's the ingredient list: Water (Solvent/Diluent), Ethylhexyl Palmitate (Skin Conditioning Agent), Glycerin (Humectant), Cyclomethicone (Emollient), Orbignya Oleifera Seed Oil (Emollient), Glyceryl Stearate (Emulsifier), PEG-100 Stearate (Surfactant), Sesamum Indicum (Sesame) Seed Oil (Skin-Conditioning Agent), Fragrance (Fragrance), Dimethicone (Skin Conditioning Agent), PEG-40 Stearate (Emulsifier), Phenethyl Alcohol (Fragrance Ingredient), Caprylyl Glycol (Skin Conditioning Agent), Camellia Sinensis Seed Oil (Skin-Conditioning Agent), Propylene Glycol (Humectant), Cetearyl Alcohol (Emulsifier), Butylene Glycol (Humectant), Linalool (Fragrance Ingredient), Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer (Stabiliser/Viscosity Modifier), Xanthan Gum (Viscosity Modifier), Disodium EDTA (Chelating Agent), Sodium Carbomer (Emulsion Stabiliser), Sodium Hydroxide (pH Adjuster), Citronellol (Fragrance Ingredient), Oryza Sativa (Rice) Extract (Hair Conditioning Agent), Sorbitol (Humectant), Citral (Fragrance Ingredient), Citrus Junos Peel Extract (Skin Condtioning Agent), Tocopherol (Antioxidant).

Again, I picked out what I think are the key ingredients - water, emollients, humectants, emulsifier, preservative, anti-oxidant, and fragrance - and tried as best as I could to use the same or similar ingredients, with the exception of adding the rice bran oil. But I couldn't. There were things I wanted to include in a sprayable lotion that aren't in this recipe, so I used this as a template but went on my own merry way! 

I decided I needed some extra stuff, so I included lavender hydrosol for its great properties of soothing wind or weather chapped skin and the anti-irritation properties. (You could use lavender essential oil in this but I really can't stand the smell of it on my skin in leave-in products, so I go with the hydrosol every time). I added allantoin at 0.5% and dimethicone at 2% as barrier ingredients. I wanted a humectant in there, so I tried this new one I've been testing - Zemea - at 3% (which, as a point of interest, is considered all-natural and is Ecocert certified). You could use any humectant you like in place of it. And I included Phytokeratin as a protein because for some reason I thought it contained rice when I was in the workshop, but it doesn't. 

In the oil phase, I went with rice bran oil - because that's the challenge, after all - and included the ethylhexyl palmitate and babassu oil found in the original. I used Polawax as my emulsifier after debating including BTMS-50. (I decided not to as I didn't want it to be too dry feeling.) 

In my cool down phase, I included cyclomethicone to give it a drier but glidy feel and Vitamin E as my anti-oxidant. I included honeyquat as a humectant and skin conditioner as well. 

So what did I create?

SPRAYABLE BODY MILK WITH RICE BRAN OIL

HEATED WATER PHASE

48.5% water

20% lavender hydrosol

0.5% allantoin

3% Zemea (humectant)

HEATED OIL PHASE

5% rice bran oil

5% ethyhexyl palmitate

5% babassu oil

5% Polawax

COOL DOWN PHASE

2% honeyquat

2% dimethicone

2% cyclomethicone

0.5% Vitamin E 

1% fragrance

0.5% liquid Germall Plus

Use the general lotion making instructions for this recipe. I doubled the recipe and got 250 ml (8 ounces) of product. 

What do I think of this product? I really like it. It has a nice consistency - it's sprayable and but it doesn't feel too thin - and it makes my skin feel very moisturized. I don't think I'd alter any part of this recipe as it has both the dry feeling from the babassu oil, ester, and cyclomethicone but a little greasiness from the rice bran and dimethicone. If you want to make this recipe and don't have the ethylhexyl palmitate, feel free to use another ester you like or another oil, but try to make it a light, drier feeling oil like hazelnut, evening primrose, borage, or camellia seed oils, for instance. 

I realize I got the "rice" part of the name in there - the rice bran oil - but I didn't get the Yuzu part. I do have Yuzu fragrance, which is very nice, but I really prefer to smell like cupcakes! 

Join me tomorrow to set off on another Iron Chemist challenge! 

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Iron Chemist: Rice bran oil

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the fourth Iron Chemist ingredient - rice bran oil!

Here are the rules. (Click here for the long version.) Raymond rolled a 3, which means he chose an ingredient from the third box in my workshop, the oil box. He chose rice bran oil. I have until next Saturday, January 22nd, to make two to three recipes using this ingredient.

So what's the deal with rice bran oil? (Click here for the much longer post on this oil!)

Rice bran oil contains an interesting balance of linoleic acid (about 36%) and oleic acid (about 42%), Vitamin E, Vitamin B, and squalene, which are all fantastic for our skin. In addition, it contains a phytosterol called y-orzanol that can behave as an anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and soother of wind chapped and sun burned skin. It can reduce itching, and helps moisturize and soften our skin.

I use rice bran a lot - I swear Raymond can read heat signatures on my bottles, because he keeps picking some of my favourite ingredients! - so it'll be a challenge to use it in in new products or combinations!

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Iron Chemist results: LSB

Well, this was an interesting week and I didn't think I'd meet the challenge*, but I managed to pull it off by Saturday! This week's challenge was all about LSB, a surfactant blend of SLSa and DLS mild from Stepan (click here for more information and the rules of the challenge).

*I've been messing around with the shower jelly challenge I didn't complete last year, and the carageenan is driving me nuts. I spent so much time trying to powder it, sieve it, and so on that I didn't actually get to formulate anything that worked! But these mistakes have taught me that I need powdered carageenan - anyone know where to get that in small quantities? (I don't need a 225 kg drum, for instance! Perhaps 8 ounces max?)

So here's what I made this week - bubble bath bars and face wash!

BUBBLE BATH BARS
I've become slightly obsessed with figuring out to make these hard enough to store but soft enough to melt in the bathtub, and I think I've sussed it! (As I mentioned last week, I tried to make it with SCI as the main ingredient, but they were too hard. They bubbled really well and store very very well, but they don't completely melt without our intervention in the tub!)

A little history...A few years ago, I couldn't get SCI in Canada, so I turned to another powdered surfactant, Bioterge AS-90, a powdered form of C14-16 olefin sulfonate for my shampoo bars. It was a good idea because C14-16 olefin sulfonate is great for my very oily hair, but it made the bars far too soft. Combined with SLSa they foamed and cleaned very well, but they didn't stay hard after usage, so I ended up with shampoo bar goo in my shower!

Although this meltiness didn't work for a shampoo bar, it will work in my favour for a bubble bath because I want it to dissolve well and I don't care about using it for a second time! And I figured the SLSa was in the LSB I used, so I could use the powdered C14-16 olefin sulfonate as the binder for this product. Of course, I needed the SCI for the creaminess and bubbles, and I added some cocamide DEA as a foam booster and bubble stabilizer.

BUBBLE BAR WITH LSB, SCI, AND C14-16 OLEFIN SULFONATE
46% Bioterge AS-90
24% LSB
10% cocamide DEA
20% SCI without stearic acid

Weigh all the ingredients in a heatproof container and heat in a double boiler until all the ingredients have melted. Add fragrance at up 2% (if desired) and colour and mix well. Pop into moulds and put into the freezer. After about 30 minutes, remove from the fridge or freezer and pop out of the mould. Leave to set. Use and rejoice.

As a note, I made mine in 10 gram batches and they bubbled amazingly well in the kitchen sink, holding their bubbles for quite some time. I haven't had time to see how they cure over time as I only made them yesterday and we haven't tried them in the bath yet (haven't had time to soak!), so I'll update the information when we receive it!

I know there are tons of bubble bar recipes out there, but I wanted to try my own version from scratch. I know a lot of bars use glycerin or propylene glycol for the plasticity those ingredients offer, but as humectants, I find they draw water from the atmosphere over time to the bars and make them gooey. So I'm trying different things to get the hardness we want before we bathe and the softness we want during the bath! It's quite interesting.

Note on this: It's a very soft bar...too soft, I think! I'm going to re-work this one with more SCI or bar hardener (sodium lactate, for instance). The way it is now, it's holding its shape, but it's very very soft. I wouldn't consider this a "bar" so much as something that's holding its shape until you poke it!

FACIAL WASH 
LSB is a natural inclusion in a facial wash for my skin type - oily - because the disodium laureth sulfosuccinate is great for removing sebum but not leaving that stripped feeling on your skin. So I thought I'd play around with another type of face wash using Amaze XT as my thickener! (I've been playing around with thickeners for future blog posts, so this is my thing of the week as well!)

I started with LSB as my starting point - that's the challenge after all - and added cocamidopropyl betaine to increase the mildness and thickening. I wanted a humectant in there, so I chose glycerin because it won't wash off, and I added aloe vera for the thickening and soothing properties and rosemary hydrosol because I wanted something good for oily skin. I included Phytokeratin, a blend of proteins, because I just bought it and like it (you can substitute any protein you like) and I added panthenol as a humectant and possible wound healer. Finally, I included polyquat 7 to act as a skin conditioner.

I decided to add a few powdered extracts to this because I was feeling in an extract-y mood, so I chose to add green tea extract for the anti-oxiding properties and chamomile extract for the soothing properties. I also chose to add grapeseed extract because I purchased it again recently and haven't really used it much. Grapeseed extract contains tons of anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories, and it's an astringent ingredient, which is always a bonus for oily skin.

If you want to make this recipe and don't have the Amaze XT, you can use Crothix to thicken it up at the end - I think 2% will work well. If you don't have the extracts or hydrosols or can't use aloe vera, don't stress - just leave them out or substitute ones you like. But please make the recipe in proper order (that's tomorrow's post - why we do what we do!) because the Amaze XT is really picky about when it's added!

As a note, this facial wash has a pH of about 5.16, which is a good range for skin. If you wanted to increase the pH, you could add 10% decyl glucoside in place of 10% of the water and increase it to 5.6 or so. Or you could use decyl glucoside instead of the LSB and make a milder product and have a higher pH.

FACIAL WASH WITH A TON OF EXTRACTS
HEATED WATER PHASE
33% water
3% glycerin
10% aloe vera
20% rosemary hydrosols

2% Phytokeratin

2% polyquat 7 or other cationic polymer

ADD WHEN THE MIXTURE REACHES 60˚C/140˚F

2% Amaze XT

ADD AFTER YOU REMOVE IT FROM THE HEAT

15% LSB

10% cocamidopropyl betaine

COOL DOWN PHASE
0.5% grapeseed extract
0.5% green tea extract
0.5% chamomile extract
2% panthenol
0.5% to 1% preservative

Weigh the heated water phase in a heatproof container and heat and hold at 60˚C for 20 minutes. (Hold back about 10 grams of water to dissolve your extracts.) When the mixture is at 60˚C/140˚F, add the Amaze XT and mix incredibly well with a mixer. Remove from the heat when you see it has become a gel, then add your surfactants and mix by hand until it is well incorporated. Please mix by hand because otherwise the surfactants will get too bubbly and it will take days for said bubbles to die down so you can bottle it!

In a separate container, heat or boil some distilled water and add that to the extracts to dissolve. If you can keep the water below 40˚C/104˚F, this is a good idea as these extracts can be heat sensitive. When the mixture reaches about 50˚C/122˚F, add the cool down phase, including the dissolved extracts.

Allow to cool, then bottle. (I wouldn't normally bottle mine immediately, but I wanted to take a picture of it for this post, and you can see the condensation on the sides of the bottle! I have removed the cap to allow it to cool properly.)

This feels nice and creamy on my skin and rinses off well. It's quite bubbly - a little more lather than I'm accustomed to using for a facial product, but it feels very nice after I've used it and it rinses off well, so it's not a massive issue.

I would have loved to include white willow bark in this at 1%, but I'm out, and I could have included salicylic acid at 1% to 2%, but I didn't want the hassles of dissolving it, and I would have had to include more humectant.

As a note, if you have something like Celquat H-100 in your workshop, it will work as double duty to thicken the mixture and offer conditioning. 0.5% will make a good gel, 1% might be too much.

Finally, as a note - LSB smells very soapy. It's the SLSa in it, so if you wanted to add a titch - say 0.5% essential oil that is skin friendly - to overcome the smell, that's not a bad idea.

Join me tomorrow for the interesting things that can happen when you don't make this recipe in the proper order and the new Iron Chemist challenge!

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Iron Chemist: LSB

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the third Iron Chemist ingredient - LSB (surfactant from Stepan). I'm grateful he chose this one; I accidentally bought two bottles of it, forgetting I had already purchased the first, so I have tons with which I can play!

Here are the rules. Every week I will ask my husband to roll a 10 sided die, each number representing a box of supplies in my workshop. He will choose an item randomly from that box and I must make 2 - possibly 3 - products that include that ingredient. I will post the ingredient on Sunday and the products I've made out of said ingredient Saturday (January 15th) along with the recipes. (If you wish to play along, you aren't limited to the same time frame and you don't need to make 2 or 3 products.) The only exception will be preservatives - I use them in everything anyway, and it won't end up being a very interesting product! Unlike Iron Chef, you don't have to make the featured ingredient the main ingredient because we don't want to use our ingredients at unsafe levels.

So what the heck is LSB? It's a surfactant from Croda containing Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (SLSa) and Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate (DLS mild). It's about 25% active ingredients to 75% water, and it has a pH of 6.0 at 10% active. It can cause mild skin and eye irritation at 10% active (which is about 40% usage), and it's biodegradable. This product will thicken up with salts (DLS mild won't thicken with salts, but the SLSa makes it possible). It works well as a primary or secondary surfactant, and because it's a blend, you can use it with a secondary surfactant like cocamidopropyl betaine or disodium cocoamphodiacetate without adding a third surfactant (it's two great things in one!).

Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (SLSa) is generally found as a powder, but here we find it as a liquid. SLSa is an excellent foamer, latherer, and bubbler, and it offers mild but great cleansing properties.

Disodium laureth sulfosuccinate (DLS mild) is considered a very mild surfactant with good foaming and good cleansing properties. It's a poor solubilizer, which means it won't incorporate a ton of oils without some help from our polysorbates or other solubilizers. It's recommended for oily skin and hair because it removes sebum gently, but all skin and hair types can use it.

When we combine them, we get a mild cleanser with amazingly great foaming, lathering, and bubbling properties that will thicken with salts and will solubilize small amounts of oils. It's very stable in hard water, and it's a great inclusion in just about any surfactant based product.

Here's the data sheet on LSB for those of you who are interested! And as a note, when you buy the product, it won't look this creamy and white. This is because it's in my very very cold workshop. This has to do with the titer point of the surfactant - when it becomes a solid - and I've reached that temperature with this product. In surfactants, they call it the cloud point, which is around 12˚C or 53˚F for LSB. I will have to heat it up to make sure all the solids are well incorporated back into the mix before using it! (I did mention the workshop is very cold, right?) I'll take some pictures after it's heated as a comparison!

Join me next Saturday to see the results!

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Iron Chemist results: SCI

Last Sunday, my lovely husband chose SCI as the ingredient for this week's Iron Chemist! And here are the results!

SYNDET BODY BAR
50% SCI
33% SLSa
10% cocamidopropyl betaine
3% cocamide DEA
2% glycol distearate
2% fragrance oil

Weigh the SCI and cocamidopropyl betaine in a heatproof container and place into the double boiler. Weigh the cocamide DEA and glycol distearate in a heatproof container and place into the double boiler. Heat both until they are melted. Mix together, and add the SLSa slowly, so you aren't kicking up a lot of dust! Heat until they are nicely melted together and mix well. Add the 2% fragrance oil, then glop into moulds and put in the fridge or freezer. When hardened, remove.

As a note, I was going for a bubble bar here, and it works well in that capacity, but some it will end up floating around in the bath and you'll have to crumble up the last of it with your fingers if you want it to disintegrate completely. The bubbles come fast and furious and last quite some time, but I wouldn't want to call it a bath product if it won't completely dissolve. It's a very hard product, but the bubbles are fairly amazing!

I have been enjoying this body bar in the shower all week. It's very creamy feeling and doesn't make my skin feel dry or tight afterwards. When I make it again - and I will - I'll add some cationic polymer to the mix (3% polyquat 7 or honeyquat) and a humectant (glycerin at 3%) and reduce the SLSa by 6% to make it more body friendly. I didn't put those in the original recipe as I was going for a bubble bar, and I didn't want any humectants to draw water to the product while it sat in the workshop or a plastic bag!

If you're thinking that a syndet body bar is weird, that's what Dove is! It's a syndet bar with "1/4 moisturizing" included. I didn't get to the 25% moisturizing part, but I will next time!

POSSIBLY A FOAMING BATH BUTTER
HEATED SURFACTANT PHASE
32% SCI
17.4% cocamidopropyl betaine
4.5% cocamide DEA
8.7% polyglucose/lactylate blend
8.7% glycerin
4.5% Cromollient SCE

HEATED OIL PHASE
2.5% glycol distearate
4.5% cetyl alcohol
8.7% soy bean oil

COOL DOWN PHASE
2.6% myristamine oxide
4.4% polyquat 7
0.5% liquid Germall Plus
1% fragrance oil

Weigh the heated surfactant phase into a heatproof container and put into the double boiler. Melt until it is kinda liquidy but mixes well. Also weigh the heated oil phase into a heatproof container and put into the double boiler. Melt until it is liquid.

Add the two phases together and mix well. You can add the myristamine oxide and polyquat 7 at any point, but wait until you reach 45˚C before adding the fragrance and preservative.

Mix this very well with a hand mixer - beaters, not whisks! - until it is fluffy. Add some exfoliants if you want.

I call this a possibly foaming bath butter because I have no idea what that product feels like, but that's what it seems like to me. It's foamy and fluffy and feels very nice on my skin when I've used it in the shower. If you don't have the Cromollient SCE or myristamine oxide, don't worry - you can use some other water soluble esters, if you want, or increase your liquid surfactant amount.

In case you're curious about the weird amounts in this recipe, it's because I started off making one recipe, then changed it when I realized it was hardening far too fast, so I had to re-calculate the amounts to make them add up to 100%. 

Here are a few of my favourite recipes using SCI (but not created this week!)
Conditioning shampoo for dry hair
Conditioning shampoo for normal to oily hair
Solid shampoo bars for all hair types (visual tutorial)
Shampoo bars for dry hair
Shampoo bars for oily hair
Body wash with polyglucose/lactylate blend & salicylic acid
Body wash with SCI
Creamy, moisturizing body wash with SCI and esters
Creamy facial cleanser for dry skin
Creamy facial cleanser for normal skin

Join me tomorrow as our chairman chooses the third Iron Chemist ingredient!

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Iron Chemist: Sodium cocoyl isethionate (SCI)

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the second Iron Chemist ingredient - sodium cocoyl isethionate. 

Here are the rules. Every week I will ask my husband to choose a number between 1 and 10. These represent boxes of supplies in my workshop. Once he has chosen a number, he will choose an item randomly from the box and I must make 2 - possibly 3 - products that include that ingredient. I will post the ingredient on Sunday and the products I've made out of said ingredient on Saturday along with the recipes. (If you wish to play along, you aren't limited to the same time frame and you don't need to make 2 or 3 products.) The only exception will be preservatives - I use them in everything anyway, and it won't end up being a very interesting product!

Unlike Iron Chef, you don't have to make the featured ingredient the main ingredient because we don't want to use our ingredients at unsafe levels.

As a note, we've changed the way Raymond chooses boxes. Since I've added a new box, there are a total of 10. So he will roll a 10 sided die and then choose from that box. Since he has very little concept of what each box holds, he'll choose something randomly. We switched to this method because most people aren't likely to choose 1 or 10 when asked to choose a number between 1 and 10, and we thought every box deserved a fighting chance! 

So what is SCI? Only my favourite surfactant ever! Here's a quick summary about this surfactant (for the entire post, click here).

Isethionates are considered exceptionally mild for skin, hair, and eyes, and are particularly tolerant to hard water. They leave behind a great skin feel - usually described as "silky" - and create really lovely foam, bubbles, and lather. SCI is great for every skin or hair type. The dry type will enjoy the gentle cleansing and the creamy after feel. The oily type will enjoy these features as well. SCI is great for a cream cleanser - the oils won't mess with the lather too much - and body washes. The down side is that SCI will make it difficult to make a clear shampoo, body wash, shampoo, or facial cleanser if you use the one with stearic acid.

The one Raymond has chosen is Jordapon prilled, which does not contain stearic acid.

So join me next Saturday to see the two or three products I make with this ingredient! As with last week, this is an ingredient I love and use in tons of different products - body washes, liquid shampoos, solid shampoos, hand cleansers - so it's going to be an interesting week as I try to figure out what to make!

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Iron Chemist results: Sodium lactate

So this week's Iron Chemist challenge was to make at least two products with sodium lactate. I admit this was a very hard ingredient to use because I use it in just about everything, so how am I to come up with some new ways of using it? I can't use it in a rinse off product - well, I can, but it's kind of pointless as it will rinse off your skin - and I can't use it in a lotion, because I've done that a hundred times. But I think I finally came up with two recipes with sodium lactate that are new and different!

RECIPE #1 - LIP BALM WITH SODIUM LACTATE
5.4% lecithin
2.1% sodium lactate
20% beeswax
25% aloe butter
21% rice bran oil
26.5% fractionated coconut oil

Mix lecithin and sodium lactate together first until well incorporated. Then weigh out the other ingredients into the same container and heat in a double boiler until melted. Pour into lip balm tubes and rejoice.

For this first recipe, I thought it would be nice to have a humectant in a lip balm. I figured I could use the emulsifying power of lecithin to emulsify the tiny amount of sodium lactate I'd be using in the balm.

So far the sodium lactate has not wept out of the lip balm, so I'm considering this a success. It feels nice on my lips, and I'm finding the extra humectant in the lip balm is making my lips feel nice and smooth. Remember not to go over 3% with the sodium lactate or it will make you sun sensitive.

RECIPE #2 - FOOT GEL WITH XANTHAN GUM
HEATED PHASE
5% sodium lactate
56.5% water
20% peppermint hydrosol
10% aloe vera
0.5% allantoin
2% Phytokeratin

COOL DOWN PHASE
2% panthenol
1% Germaben II
3 to 4% xanthan gum

I heated up the heated phase in a double boiler and dispersed the allantoin into it, stirring really well. When the mixture had heated and held at 70˚C for 20 minutes, I removed it from the double boiler and let it cool. I added the panthenol and Germaben II (used because I have some hard to preserve things like xanthan gum in this recipe) and added 2% xanthan gum. It wasn't thick enough, so I added 1% more. And it gelled!

I chose xanthan gum for this project because I couldn't find my Amaze XT and I really wanted to make a gel. I do have a lot of sodium lactate in this recipe, but I figured since your feet aren't going to be exposed to the sun, it would be okay. At this level, sodium lactate is an exfoliant, and that's always a good thing for a foot product.

You could use this as a facial gel - I did, and quite liked it - but you'd want to reduce the sodium lactate to 2.5% or lower so you don't get sun sensitivity. And you might not want peppermint on your face.

If you wanted to add some essential or fragrance oils to this product, mix 1% polysorbate 20 or another solubilizer with 1% fragrance or essential oil in a separate container, then add it to the gel during the cool down phase. It won't be clear, but this mixture wasn't all that clear either. (I left it in the beaker for the pictures, because you can't really see it in the jar, it's a gel!)

The one down side of this product - when you wet it, it gets a bit slimy. If I were to make it again - and I probably will because it does feel nice on my feet - I might reduce the xanthan gum to 2% or use the Amaze XT as I don't get that feeling from that product.

Join me tomorrow for our newest challenge ingredient, then next Saturday for the results!

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Iron Chemist: Sodium lactate

Welcome to Workshop Stadium. This week the Chairman, Raymond (my lovely husband), has chosen the first Iron Chemist ingredient - sodium lactate.

Here are the rules. Every week I will ask my husband to choose a number between 1 and 9. These represent boxes of supplies in my workshop. Once he has chosen a number, he will choose an item randomly from the box and I must make 2 - possibly 3 - products that include that ingredient. I will post the ingredient on Sunday and the products I've made out of said ingredient on Saturday along with the recipes. (If you wish to play along, you aren't limited to the same time frame and you don't need to make 2 or 3 products.) The only exception will be preservatives - I use them in everything anyway, and it won't end up being a very interesting product!

Unlike Iron Chef, you don't have to make the featured ingredient the main ingredient because we don't want to use our ingredients at unsafe levels.

As a note, I will change the order of the boxes every week, choosing another number 1 and counting from there because there's a chance he won't choose boxes number 1 or 9 because they're at the beginning and end. 

SODIUM LACTATE

I do love sodium lactate! It's inexpensive, easy to use, and doesn't leave any sticky residue in your products. It's a metal-organic humectant (the Na - sodium - is the metal part), as opposed to a poly-alcohol, like glycerin. It is found in our skin's natural moisturizing factor, and it's a very effective humectant. How effective? Very effective.

It has been found to improve the barrier properties of our skin (in studies, there is a decrease in the trans epidermal water loss, which is a good thing), it is believed to stimulate ceramide synthesis in the skin, and it increases the plasticity of our skin. It also acts as a mild AHA, which can help reduce "the look of fine lines and wrinkles".

It has a really high water holding capacity (meaning it's a very effective humectant), and it is about 1.5 times more effective in this department than glycerin.

So why not use it in everything? It can help treat acne and "signs of aging", and it's a very effective humectant. On the down side, it can make your skin sun sensitive, it can increase the rate of cell exfoliation (which is both good and bad), and it loses its efficacy when you've washed the area in question. So for something like a hand lotion, you're going to lose your humectant after the first hand washing! So great for body butters, foot lotions, moisturizers, toners, and other leave on products - not so great for products like body washes, hand lotions, or surfactant systems where you are going to be washing it away.

I use sodium lactate at 2.5% or lower in my products because at 3% it can make you sun sensitive, so I'd recommend it at 0.5% to 2.5%. If you're using it in a product where the sun doesn't matter - for instance, for a night time foot cream - you can go as high as 5%.

This one's going to be hard as I use it in just about everything already! 

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