Using oil soluble green tea extract in your products

I've recently discovered - and love - the oil soluble green tea extract at Brambleberry. I've tried it in quite a few things, and I think it makes for a lovely addition to my products. Because it's oil soluble, we can add it to things when we can't add water soluble extracts or powders, like lotion bars, lip balms, or any other anhydrous products at up to 6% in the cool down phase (when you add your fragrance or essential oil).

WHIPPED BUTTER WITH OIL SOLUBLE GREEN TEA EXTRACT
80% shea butter (I use ultra refined)
13% oil of choice
6% oil soluble green tea extract
1% fragrance or essential oil

Click here for more information on creating whipped butters.

LOTION BAR WITH OIL SOLUBLE GREEN TEA EXTRACT

28% beeswax
30% mango butter
20% rice bran oil
14% sunflower oil
6% oil soluble green tea extract
1% Vitamin E
1% fragrance or essential oil


This is my favourite lotion bar modified to include 6% oil soluble green tea extract (I've removed 6% of the sunflower oil to make way for it!).

As a note, I like to include 2% cyclomethicone, 2% dimethicone in this product for the winter - dimethicone is an approved barrier ingredient - and switch up to 20% of the mango butter for cocoa butter  - another approved barrier ingredient - to protect my trashed elbows!

Consider using it at up to 6% in an anhydrous facial serum or up to 6% in your favourite oil based body spray to get all the awesome goodness of green tea. Because it's a fractionated coconut oil (but not the fractionated coconut oil we all know), you can substitute it for any percentage of the oil in your product. Remember not to expose it to the temperatures of heating and holding - add it during the cool down phase.

Join me tomorrow for more fun with extracts when we make a foamy facial cleanser!

Disclaimer: Remember, I'm not affiliated with any company, and any post I write is because I like the product, not because I've been paid to say something nice. I buy all my ingredients myself, unless otherwise noted. I don't think Brambleberry even knows I'm writing about this ingredient - I hope they aren't mad about it! 

Read More

Questions I missed: Whipped butters - how to add preservatives?

From the whipped butter post I wrote about yesterday, Roxine asked in August 2011: If I wanted to add preservatives to this, do I add the recommended usage amount based on the total product weight. So say, .05% of the butter made with the oils and FO? Or is the percentage of preservative I use a part of the total 100% of the final product, so i would take .5% off somewhere else, like in my oils. I hope I don't sound too stupid here...

No, you don't sound stupid! The only stupid question is the one never asked! And when it comes to preservatives, you can never be too careful!

My short answer is this - you don't need to use preservatives in an anhydrous product unless you fear water might come in contact with it. For something like a sugar scrub, you want a preservative. For a whipped butter that won't be coming into contact with water, you don't really need it. Having said that, if you want to add one, then add one!

If you do want to use a preservative, you need to choose one that is oil soluble. Phenonip would work - you'd use it in the heated oil phase of your product - as would Liquipar Oil. If you want to use Phenonip, you'd use it at 0.5% to 1% as you heat your butters and oils. If you want to use Liquipar Oil, use it at 0.4% to 0.8% when the product is at less than 80˚C (which means pretty much any point with a whipped butter).

So let's say you want to use Phenonip in your whipped butter...here's a sample recipe...

WHIPPED SHEA BUTTER WITH PRESERVATIVES
78.5% shea butter (I use ultra refined)
19% fractionated coconut oil (or any other oil)
1% Phenonip
0.5% Vitamin E (to retard rancidity, optional)
1% fragrance or essential oil

Weigh your shea butter, oil, and Phenonip in a heat proof container and put into your double boiler to heat until melted. Remove and leave to cool (I put it in the freezer, but that's just my preference). When cooled, add your Vitamin E and fragrance/essential oil and whip until it reaches the whippiness level you like.

Having said all of this, you don't really need to preserve your anhydrous products due to something called water activity. And considering how freakazoid people get about parabens and considering that parabens are the only preservatives suitable for anhydrous products, you might find it easier not to preserve them!

As an addendum to this question: If you're using preservatives, use them at the suggested levels for the total amount of this recipe. So if you have a lotion recipe that totals 100%, you would use 0.5% liquid Germall Plus and remove 0.5% from the water phase, so your recipe always totals 100%. (We always remove additional ingredients from the water phase - click here for the reasoning behind that!) Your recipe should always total 100%. If you're making a lotion, shampoo, conditioner, or any other product we could make, use the preservative at the suggested usage rate in the suggested phase and make sure your product totals 100%.

HOWEVER this can change with something like a sugar or salt scrub. For instance, when I make a sugar scrub, I make the base, then add the scrubby bits. I base my preservative amount on the amount in the base and I don't tend to take into account the salt or sugar. So I'd make up my base of oils, butters, and so on and use 1% Phenonip in the heated stage. I would add my salt or sugar at the rate I like - generally 140% for sugar, although I will go higher - and not add extra preservative to compensate for the scrubbies.

Read More

How do some people manage to get water soluble things - like honey - into anhydrous products?

In this post, Nedeia asks: This topic makes me ask another question: honey in anhydrous products. Yeah, I know, I know, we need an emulsifier, we need a preservative, but there are people out there selling products like honey lip balm. and they swear that the product will not separate. they sell cuticle salves that are quite hard, and no trace of honey on the bottom. And the ingredients are "Natural Beeswax and Honey from our own hives, Shea Butter, Almond Oil and Vitamin E Oil.". now how do they do that? I never managed to incorporate honey with success in such a product. I know it will draw moisture from the air and some day it could ferment. I know the theory.... Are they just lying, or do they have a secret way of mixing? Especially when I know that you should not heat the honey at more than 40 degrees centigrade, if you want to keep any of its properties and not obtain a simple sweetener...

Take a look at this post - Iron Chemist: Sodium lactate - I managed to use sodium lactate in a lip balm and it didn't weep out! Here's the recipe...

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.

First, an aside about solubility...We can divide our ingredients into two categories when it comes to solubility. A rule of thumb is "like dissolves like". Water dissolves water soluble things; oil dissolves oil soluble things. Water is polar; oil is non-polar. Adding something like oil to a water based product will lead to the oil pooling on the top. Adding a water soluble ingredient to an oil soluble mixture generally leads to the water based thing weeping out of the product.

There are some ingredients that require alcohol or other solvents, but we aren't going into that in this post! 

To get something to emulsify, we need three things - an emulsifier (the chemical), heat, and good mixing. In this situation, I'm using all three. I've heated my ingredients up to the melting point; I'm using lecithin as my chemical emulsifier; and I'm mixing the product. I think the key to the success of my product is the fact that my water soluble ingredient makes up a small portion of the recipe - sodium lactate at 2% - so I'm able to keep it from separating.

Take for example something like an oil based sugar scrub. If I add sodium lactate (or another water soluble ingredient) to an oil based scrub - like this one here - I will find the water won't mix in and I'll get a little gooey mess on the top of the product. Sure, it will incorporate at first, but eventually we'll see some separation.

But if I use this recipe - this one has lecithin and lanolin in it - I'll be able to incorporate some watery ingredient, like a protein or a humectant, into the mix.

Ingredients like lanolin (click here for a post) can handle some water, and ingredients like lecithin can behave as emulsifiers. When you see an anhydrous product that contains water, look for those ingredients to see if they're using them as emulsifiers. If you don't see those ingredients, then it might be that the company is using a lot of heating and mixing to keep the ingredients in the anhydrous mixture. It could be that they aren't telling the truth and they are using an emulsifier, or it could be that their products will eventually weep out and look awful. (Believe me, this happens more than you would imagine!)

I don't know about not heating honey - do you have some information you can send me? This is intriguing! I use honey in one of my products as a humectant, and I put it into the water phase to heat with the other ingredients for the 20 minutes heating and holding phase. I hate to think I'm wasting those lovely qualities!

Read More

Question: Mixing oils and water

In the most recent what do you want to see? post, Ben writes: Hi Susan! I thought I'd ask you a simple "I want to know" request. I was wondering about the mixability of jojoba oil. Does it mix well with water, or does it need an emulsifier? What about mixing with oils? Also, beeswax for the same above question. 

Jojoba oil and beeswax are composed of lipids or fats (click here for more information on triglycerides) and neither of them will mix with water without an emulsifier. They will mix well with oils because jojoba oil and beeswax can be considered oils for our purposes. Jojoba oil is a wax ester and beeswax is a wax.

So what exactly is a wax? There are two main groups of waxes - natural and synthetic waxes. Natural waxes include hydrocarbon, mineral, vegetable, and animal waxes. Synthetic waxes include polymer waxes, usually called synthetic wax (wow, that was helpful, eh?) To quote Wikipedia: "Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic (malleable) near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C (113 °F) to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents."

And what is a wax ester? Esters are chemical compounds derived by reacting an oxoacid (one containing an oxo group, X=O) with a hydroxyl compound such as an alcohol or phenol. Esters are usually derived from an inorganic acid or organic acid in which at least one -OH (hydroxyl) group is replaced by an -O-alkyl (alkoxy) group, and most commonly from carboxylic acids and alcohols. They can be found naturally - for instance, in jojoba oil - or can be synthesized from fatty acids. A wax ester would be plastic near ambient temperatures and insoluble in water.

And what exactly is the deal with beeswax? (From this post on waxes): Beeswax is composed of 70% fatty esters and 10 to 13% hydrocarbons, and offers hardening properties as well as plasticity to products. Its melting point is 50˚C to 55˚C. As with other waxes, it is insoluble in water but soluble in oil.

As both of these ingredients are oil soluble, you can only have them mix with water if you use an emulsifier!

Read More

Question: Adding preservatives to anhydrous products

In this post about making whipped avocado butter, Katie writes: I am just wondering why you did not use a preservative in this product? I just made a whipped shea butter for the first time using sweet almond butter, shea, vitamin e, and essential oils. It sounds like its consistency is similar to yours and it too is a little greasy at first but soaks in nicely. Loving your blog! I was considering doing lotions but am honestly afraid now of all of the bacteria and such that can grow on it. 

I also read that you do not consider there to be any natural preservative. Your post was from a little while ago, so maybe you have changed your thoughts on this? 

Love that you're from the lower mainland. I am a Langley girl living in Vancouver right now. 

Hi Katie! If you're looking for supplies local to us, look to the right and down for the supply list. We're so fortunate to have so many great suppliers within driving distance! I'm familiar with them all and they are simply awesome suppliers and people! (I'm off to Langley this morning and had hoped to do a little shopping, but Voyageur is closed for the long weekend. I'm glad they give their employees that time, but I need some cocamidopropyl betaine!)

Here's the recipe for that whipped avocado butter above...
WHIPPED AVOCADO BUTTER
77% green avocado butter
22% rice bran oil
1% fragrance oil (Clementine Cupcake, what else?)

We don't need to use preservatives in anhydrous products, that is to say products that don't contain water, because water is the big bad worry when making bath and body products. (Click here for more information on water and contamination.) We can use an anti-oxidant like Vitamin E (0.25% to 1%) to retard the rancidity of the oils and butters, if we wish, but we don't need to use a preservative if we're making an oil soluble product. (I didn't use an anti-oxidant because this should have a 1 year life span, and I only made a bit of it!)

Why, then, do I need to add preservatives to scrubs? Because a scrub will be exposed to water - you'll dip your hand in during a bath or shower and oops, there's some water - and when we add water to any product, we run the risk of contamination! I know, I know, you'll be very careful and dry your hands carefully before using, but there's always that little bead of water that can run down your arm into the container that might be enough to sit on top of the scrub and cause problems! (Click here for a discussion about water activity and sugar scrubs!)

I'm so glad that you're worried about preserving your lotions - that awareness will ensure you will make wonderful products! If you heat and hold, use good manufacturing processes, and choose a broad spectrum preservative that you use at the suggested usage rates, you should be able to make an awesome lotion that is well preserved and safe. In all my years of lotion making, I have never had a lotion show any visible contamination, even in my early days when I was a lot more impatient and didn't follow the rules as well as I should have! (The words "visible contamination" are vital in that sentence because I don't have access to testing for non-visible contamination!)

I had a container of foot lotion I kept by the side of my bed for a few years. I put it in a wide mouth Mason jar and abused it like silly for science! I stuck my fingers into it when I hadn't washed my hands, I put a spoon into it after I'd licked it, I left the top off for days, and so on and it never ever showed any signs of microbial growth. I threw it away when it started to smell rancid, and I was surprised that it made it so long with olive oil, soy bean oil, and mango butter (normally about a year). The power of anti-oxidants compels you...to make an awesome lotion that doesn't go rancid immediately! 

As for the question about natural preservatives...can I answer that one tomorrow? There's so much to write about preservatives and I really want to post this today, so join me tomorrow for that topic!

Read More

Duplicating products: Neutrogena's Body Oil

Someone suggested Neutrogena's Body Oil for a duplication, so let's take a look at it!

Ingredients: Isopropyl Myristate, Sesame (Sesamum Indicum) Oil, PEG 40 Sorbitan Peroleate, Propylparaben, BHT, Fragrance

Isopropyl myristate - An ester that makes our products feel less greasy. It can be used as an oil to make products feel less greasy.

Sesame oil - An oil that contains a lot of linoleic acid, which will help repair skin's barrier repair mechanisms, and oleic acid, which will increase moisturization. It isn't staining to sheets or fabric.

PEG 40 sorbitan peroleate - An emulsifier and surfactant. Not really sure why this is here because this is an anhydrous product and we really don't need to include an emulsifier in something that contains all oils.

Propylparaben - The preservative.

BHT - Anti-oxidant to keeps the oils from going rancid. (You can use any oil soluble anti-oxidant, like Vitamin E, in its place.)

Fragrance - Makes it smell pretty!

This is a pretty basic recipe that I'd make with IPM, sesame oil, Vitamin E (1%), and fragrance (1%). The hard part is figuring out the IPM to sesame oil ratio that you like. I made a body oil like a while ago and I love it, (find it in this post) so this is what I would suggest as a starting recipe. I like the combination of fractionated coconut oil and sesame oil because the sesame oil can feel a bit heavy on my skin after a shower, and I thought the combination of the two esters (FCO and IPM) and the oil was nice. You can use any ratios you like for the oils, and I realize the FCO isn't in the original, so to truly duplicate it, you'll want to leave it out.

POSSIBLE DUPLICATION OF NEUTROGENA'S BODY OIL
33% sesame oil
33% fractionated coconut oil
32% IPM
1% Vitamin E
1% fragrance oil

Get a bottle (I like a spray bottle, but you can use a disc cap bottle here) and add the ingredients in any order to the bottle. Shake well. Use and rejoice! 

Join me tomorrow to duplicate Carol's Daughter Hair Milk. 

Read More

Kukui nut: Anhydrous recipes

Kukui nut oil is kinda pricey - 30 ml was the same price as 1 litre of soy bean oil - so using at really high levels can be a very expensive proposition. I've been trying it at 20% in these products, which I think is a really nice level of usage. Add to the heated oil phase with the rest of your lovely oils in any product!

BODY OIL SPRAY WITH KUKUI NUT AND OTHER OILS
20% kukui nut
40% fractionated coconut oil
38% sesame seed oil
1% Vitamin E
1% fragrance oil

I've chosen fractionated coconut oil and sesame seed oil as both are considered non-staining to fabrics, while kukui nut oil is not. You could use all fractionated coconut oil for a very light feeling body spray or use all sesame seed oil for a slightly heavier body spray with more linoleic acid and phytosterols. I feel this combination offers the best of all worlds! I get the linoleic and oleic acids (the latter offers moisturizing and regenerating properties) as well as a silky dry feeling from the kukui nut. I get the additional dryness and silkiness from the fractionated coconut oil. And I get all the phytosterols (which behave as anti-inflammatories and can reduce itchiness), linoleic acid, and oleic acid from the sesame seed oil.

You know I love my esters, so I had tweak to my favourite body mister recipe with esters to include some kukui nut oil!

BODY OIL MISTER RECIPE WITH ESTERS & KUKUI NUT OIL
30% cetearyl ethylhexanoate
23% kukui nut oil
45% capric/caprylic triglycerides or fractionated coconut oil
1% to 2% fragrance oil

Get a spray bottle. Add all the ingredients. Use. Rejoice.

I substituted kukui nut oil for the C12-15 alkyl benzoate in this recipe as it will offer a lighter feeling with the same level of spreading. It feels absolutely lovely, and it adds so much needed linoleic oils to this recipe! This is a great choice for those winter months when you need the linoleic acid in the kukui nut oil to help with skin's barrier repair needs and preventing transepidermal water loss. (As a note, if you remove the C12-15 alkyl benzoate from the original recipe, you won't get the fragrance fixative part of the recipe, but that's not a bad thing! Your fragrance will stick around long enough as it is!)

As I need to get to Voyageur to buy more kukui oil, you'll have to wait until next week for more recipe ideas with this oil! Sorry! It's been a really busy week! 

Read More

Experimenting in the workshop: Avocado butter

Randi from Creations by Eden sent me out some green avocado butter, which is "...made from solid fraction of raw-green avocado oil, then fortified with sal butter-stearic fraction and virgin oil de coco-crème® solid fraction." It's light green in colour and has a very earthy smell to it. It's quite hard and would need to be melted to include it in anything - you can't just whip this butter from room temperature!

I decided to do something basic with it and make a whipped butter. I used rice bran oil, because that was the challenge for the Iron Chemist and it was sitting right on top of my work table, and fragrance so I could get a better idea of the consistency and feel of the butter on my skin.

WHIPPED AVOCADO BUTTER
77% green avocado butter
22% rice bran oil
1% fragrance oil (Clementine Cupcake, what else?)

I melted the avocado butter and rice bran oil in my double boiler and heated until it melted. I put it in the freezer to harden. After 40 minutes, the middle was still liquidy, so I left it in for another 10 minutes. (I would normally leave shea, mango, or cocoa butter for about half an hour.) It was still liquidy, but I wanted to play with it so I removed it from the freezer, added my fragrance oil, then started whipping it with my whisks. It whipped up very nicely...but I can't get over that earthy smell. I added another 1% Clementine Cupcake fragrance oil and whipped a little more. Nope, still smelling it. So another 1% - I wouldn't go higher than 3% in a leave on product - and more whipping.

What do I think of it? I really like the feeling of this butter. It feels a lot like babassu oil in that it melts on contact with your skin. It's greasy-ish at first, but starts to feel drier after about 10 minutes or so (I think the greasiness comes from the rice bran oil, not the butter). I really like it...but I can't get over the earthy smell.

I don't tend to use unrefined butters because that earthy smell really gets to me, and this is one of the strongest I've smelled in a while. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it's something I don't tend to like in my products. If you like earthy smells - for instance, I can't stand having patchouli in the house or even catching a whiff of it at the farmers' market - then this is a great butter for you. If you don't, then use the butter at lower levels in your products.

Why use avocado butter? Avocado oil is filled with phytosterols and polyphenols that are fantastic for reducing inflammation and itchiness. It's great in a hair care product as it's easily absorbed, and it might help with dandruff prone hair. (Click on the link for more information on this oil.)

As an aside, my husband woke up yesterday morning and said to me, "You're lucky you don't have a stupid husband." I agree with him, but why? "Because you leave out these containers with things that look like icing and smell like cupcakes, and a stupid husband would eat them and die." One wouldn't die from eating whipped avocado butter, but it wouldn't taste like cupcakes. "But how do I know it doesn't taste like it smells? It looks like icing! You're so lucky I'm not stupid." He went on to suggest I should bake some cupcakes so we had something in the house that smelled and tasted like cupcakes. I think he's right - we need some real cupcakes! (I think you've figured out by now that I'm obsessed with cupcakes! And I haven't even shown you my cupcake fabric pillowcases!) And I am a lucky woman to have him (not just because he avoids eating my products)!

Read More