[beautynerd]

@Belassi… not so lucky in Canada. Our guidelines are:

“With respect to ingredient labelling of soap products, our cosmetics group indicated that it would be acceptable to use any of the following formats as long as the ingredients were in INCI format:

(a) the initial ingredients used in the soap making process,

(b) the final/remaining ingredients of the soap after the chemical reaction, or

(c) a combination of the two formats (ingredients before and after).”

Am considering going with (b) for my superfatted formula as:

sodium camelinate, glycerin, camelina sativa (camelina) seed oil, aqua, …

Even if sodium camelinate is not in INCI yet. 

As an aside…. interested to hear your thoughts on CP vs syndet soap performance.

Is it possible to formulate semi-syndets in small batches without specialized machinery?

Thinking about something like the following where the soap (sodium camelinate, glycerin, camelina sativa (camelina) seed oil) component is rebatched from an earlier preparation. 

%

Sodium camelinate 32

Sodium cocoyl isethionate 32

Clay 7

Lauric acid 4

Stearic acid 4

Camelina sativa seed oil 4

Glycerin 4

Sucrose cocoate 4

Tetrasodium glutamate diacetate 4

Fragrance 2.5

Sodium stearoyl glutamate 2

Activated charcoal 0.5

[beautynerd]

@MarkBroussard

Thanks Mark. In Canada. Will email your cosmetics lab address. Also, have some questions about contracting your services re: help finalizing prototypes. 

Cheers,

Elise

[beautynerd]

@Barsik - No doubt. Hadn’t seen that thread. Thanks.

[beautynerd]

@MarkBroussard - Thanks for that!

I did a few attempts of a water based clay-gel mask (lactic acid 4% / salicylic 2%). At the time the pH meter hadn’t arrived yet. Everything looked good until I threw the clay in at the end and it erupted like a baking soda volcano. 

If I’m understanding correctly, this time around with the O/W emulsion, the phases should look like this:

WATER

Water

Allantoin 0.5%

Lactic Acid 4%

Sodium Citrate 1% (or more due to presence of lactic acid)

OIL (heat to 80-85 Celsius to ensure complete solubility of SA)

E-Wax NF

Octyldodecanol 6%

Salicylic Acid 2%

COOL DOWN

Optiphen Plus

Tetrasodium EDTA

Silt 

Kaolin

Want to change the chelating agent and the emulsifier up once my next ingredient order arrives but the general principal should be the same.

[beautynerd]

Could you also replace the Leucidal with Polyaminopropyl Biguanide?

[beautynerd]

Just wanted to comment that as uncomfortable/painful as this is for all parties involved, it really has served its purpose as a cautionary tale for aspiring entrepreneurs who could have easily found themselves in the same situation.

Thank you to everyone who put themselves out there so that their experience/opinion could be heard by all of us lurkers. 

[beautynerd]

@Belassi … Eye-watering. You weren’t kidding! A Canadian company just quoted $1,080 USD for 50 g of N-trimethyl chitosan (100%).

[beautynerd]

@bortopa If it’s just for testing purposes and you can stand the markup… The Herbarie has a good selection of waxes in small quantities including Sunflower Wax.

http://www.theherbarie.com/Butters-and-Waxes/

[beautynerd]

@ozgirl…. Very helpful, thanks!  I was on the competition bureau’s page this morning and for the life of me could not find that info. #-o

@ledude… That expensive… sheesh… I had no idea. 8-|

ok, just got a little carried away with the emoticons.

[beautynerd]

@ozgirl

I’m also interested in measuring the biodegradability of our formulas and the possibility of including this on our labelling info. 

Which gov’t dep’t regulates this in Canada? My internet search is coming up empty.

[beautynerd]

@Pharma: Lol…. salacious but I much prefer that visual to the magnets.

Sinerga is sending a sample of their chitoglycan (carboxymethyl chitosan) my way. 

So it’s back to trial and error with my new found knowledge. 

Thanks for the insight. I’ll let you know what happens.

[beautynerd]

Ok… did some reading. 

Looks like CEC of any of these minerals is likely to be of little significance regardless of pH or grain size. 

Note we refer to this as “clay” in the loosest of terms. So chitosan with this thickener should be good right?

BTW… the right motivation? my status as a laywoman? for shame. 

;

[beautynerd]

Vit B3 @ 6%, Phytic Acid 1%

The clay/silt is from a sediment rich glacial stream, harvested from the shore by the hands of yours truly; we’re in the far far far Northwest corner of Canada. We heat and hold it for several hours then sift to less than 150 microns although most of it is smaller than 63.

I get the mineral content is not so helpful but for the sake of full disclosure, the XRD analysis came back as:

Quartz 32.4%, Muscovite 11.4%, Albite 14.0%, Calcite 14.1%, Dolomite 13.0%, Clinochlore 9.1%, Ankerite 2.5%, Orthoclase 3.5%

Zeta potential? Hmmm. Will have to google that one. Okay, so out of curiosity, how would one attempt to measure the CEC? 

[beautynerd]

@Belassi… price is always the clincher. dangit. 

@Pharma… let’s suppose chitosan oligosaccharide were in my budget (remains to be seen); does that mean using phytic acid as the formula’s chelator will likely destabilize things? 

Prior to looking down the chitin rabbit hole, the facial mask was a simple o/w emulsion with clay as the thickener (to be consistent with our product line/everything needs to be clay based) and niacinamide as the “active” with a final pH of 5.8.

[beautynerd]

@Pharma - Nice to meet you… I’m a layman, so this may be obvious to everyone else but what are NADES?

(layman… layperson… somehow laywoman sounds like it involves activities of an indecent nature)

[beautynerd]

Hello all,

Took me a while but eventually I clued in to forum etiquette. So here goes my introduction: 

I am nowhere near a chemist. I live in Northern Yukon and have a glacially fed river that runs past our property; yes we have flood insurance. The silt this river carries forms the most sensory rich mud imaginable which sparked an interest in turning it into skin care which led to difficulty stabilizing emulsions which led to some troubled musing and eventually to Perry and the rest of you.

What a wonderful resource. It’s been so much fun grasping at all this information that is floating around just beyond my understanding. I foresee a class or two with Perry in my near future and a string of hopefully not too juvenile comments on this forum. 

Cheers,

Elise

 

[beautynerd]

“On the other hand, konjac glucomannan also gel when mixed with xanthan. Dea et al. 38 ) have indicated that xanthan-konjac glucomannan gels are stronger than those of the equivalent galactomannan systems. Brownsey et al. 20 ) have studied the interaction using X-ray fiber diffraction and suggested that gelation occurred only if the solutions were mixed at a temperature above the xanthan orderdisorder transition temperature. Williams et al. 21 ) have also suggested that the konjac glucomannan interacted with disordered xanthan chains.”

(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.56.1188)

“At low NaCl concentration, and low polymer concentration, the xanthan helix order-disorder transition occurs at temperatures T(m) below 90 degrees C. At temperatures above T(m) the rheological observables reveal the onset of network formation involving xanthan chains released from the ordered helical structure. When these systems are cooled back below T(m), extensive network formation develops with large increases in viscosity and in the storage and loss moduli.”

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12099818)

From what my non-chemistry trained mind can gather - a 1% mixture (0.8% konjac, 0.2% xanthan) mixed at a temperature above 90 degrees C should form a stable gel once cooled. Has anyone tried processing it this way?

[beautynerd]

Still waiting on my first Konjac delivery to experiment with but have done some food science reading in the meantime:

“An extreme synergy between Xanthan and Konjac Mannan takes place at an optimal ratio of 80:20 konjac to xanthan, respectively with viscosity build-up as high as 161,000 cP at a 1% total gum concentration.” 

(page 87, http://www.amazon.ca/Edible-Films-Coatings-Food-Applications/dp/0387928235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426287927&sr=8-1&keywords=edible+films+and+coatings)

“A
combination of xanthan gum with konjac can form a gel at any pH
although xanthan alone does not form a gel. At a pH of 5, the two
gums show the greatest synergistic effect with a ratio of 2:3, konjac
has a gelling ability very similar to carob gum but much more
pronounced. Konjac is synergistic with Kappa-carrageenan to form
strong water gels at very low dosages.”

(http://www.cybercolloids.net/information/technical-articles/introduction-konjac-properties)

[beautynerd]

Meant to include if Into the Mist sounds too corny perhaps “hacia la neblina”.

[beautynerd]

Spoiler alert: 

I was going to suggest Into the Wild except that would reference a movie where the hero dies in isolation. 

Perhaps Into the Mist… lends itself to fresh, natural imagery. For example, this Versace campaign. 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/428545720765198820/

[beautynerd]

Here is the link to the article in question:

http://www.dermascope.com/exfoliation/choosing-the-right-exfoliant#.VPLXNvnF8no

Thanks again Mark and OzGirl for the very helpful suggestions.