Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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If you can allow it, Cera Bellina from Koster Keunen. It’s the most natural thing I know of that will help.
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try posting on the SCS group on linkedIn.
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It might be the cocoa butter, it might be the beeswax, it might be both together. You should probably try a set of knock-out batches.
However, waxes grow crystals over time. There’s really no way to avoid this without adding something to your formula to prevent it. -
It’s all economics.First, knowledgeable powder chemists are few and far between. To get a powder to press hard enough to stay in the pan and not crumble even when dropped, but still be loose enough to apply correctly is hard to do.Then, pressing powder on a small scale is very labor intensive. More labor = more cost.My thoughts at this point are for you to contact a cosmetic chemist consultant who specializes in color cosmetics. I can personally recommend either of these folks:Nick Morante and Jennifer Morante-Di MarcoRichard KonikRAK Cosmetic Consulting ServicesorI hardly ever recommend this, but have you considered making the eyeshadow yourself?A powder press is here:And you’d need a lab balance plus a good blender.
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That is specifically what a challenge test/preservative efficacy test determines. The test lab deliberately introduces microbes, then tests to see how quickly they die.
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Mandy,
Honestly, making a unique and/or different pressed powder that also works well and lasts is tough.If I were going to do this, I’d invest almost all of my time and money in a great primer/basecoat and get standard private label eyeshadow - at least to start with.There’s just so much more that you can do with a primer - even moisturizing/skin treatment claims are possible - and the level of improvement you get even with cheap basic eyeshadow over it is amazing. -
Yes, 91% IPA will dry completely.
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Interesting subject.
http://soapbubble.wikia.com/wiki/Charmy_Dish_Detergent (scroll down for formula)I’d guess that most surfactants would work - try about 12% of SLES and 3% of CAPB in water for the detergent in the formulas above. -
We’re right on the edge between “free advice” and “information I should pay a consultant for if I can’t/don’t want to research it myself”.
There are consultants who do this sort of thing for a living - I try to avoid stepping on their toes. -
I’m pretty sure that doing this in the US would be illegal.
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I want to get back to the original question for a moment.
There are two ingredients on the market that will allow you to market “probiotic” claims in your skin cream. The fact that it’s all puffery and mostly nonsense is irrelevant - the ingredients make any number of claims which can transfer to a product that uses them.To me, the easiest and most cost-effective way to do this is to select a contract manufacturer that is large enough to have its own R&D people, and negotiate a deal that includes your ownership of the formula, and any IP associated with it.If you are insistent on having a cosmetic chemist formulate this for you as a consultant first, we have a list at the top of the discussions, and the national SCC maintains a list at http://www.scconline.org/referrals/cat/consultants/ If I were you, I’d try to talk to as many consultants as possible. Consultants get paid in different ways, and they’re not always completely open about it - some have paid relationships with certain contract manufacturers, and they get a commission if they steer your business to them. Someone who has significantly lower than average prices may have an arrangement like this - or they may be semi-retired, and just consult for the fun of it. It’s wise to check. -
From my point of view (because I’m a chemist, and not a marketer), marketing is the hard part, and when you’re just starting out, I think it’s what you really have to concentrate on. Spending a lot of money on extremely unique packaging and product at the same time may be wasteful - a fairly unique product won’t need a flashy, unique package - it can stand out by itself in standard packaging.
The diy process will work - sort of. You could also get whoever makes your loose powder to add a binder and additive level that will work for pressed powder too.As my last bit of free advice - If you pay someone to make you a white and a black powder, you can then mix your grey yourself from the two of them (it will be mostly white - order at least 2x as much white as black). -
Sound like a great new product, actually. “Try new and improved Bumpkiss, now with more Bump!”
(The word you’re looking for is bupkis, which is Yiddish-derived slang for “nothing at all”) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/bupkis I’m going to leave out the original Yiddish definition of this, because ick. -
Match skin pH.
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1) No. The ingredients are not close enough.
2) Won’t help color saturation at all. To increase color saturation, add Ganex V-660 or something similar to the pigment grind.Liquid to matte lipstick seems to be all the rage - everybody wants this. And everybody seems to think that it’s going to be super easy to do. But, I’m sorry to say that the ingredients you’re going to need are probably not available on a small scale, and even if you can obtain them, it’s going to take months of daily trial and error to get a formula to work. -
A small run of 500 to 1,000 is barely a pilot run for pressed powder. My guess is that you’re going to pay about as much for 1,000 units as you’d pay for 7,000. Being “part of the formulation process” will also cost you extra, since you will slow down all of their other work substantially.
As much as I personally don’t like the company, your best bet will probably be Intercos http://www.intercos.com/en/ That being said - I was a color cosmetic chemist for a long time, and got pretty good at makeup application over the 15 or so years that I did it. There are a few things that I am sure of. First, that there is zero performance difference between pressed and loose powder eyeshadow. Pressed powder as a packaging form only came about because loose powder is too bulky, and it’s messy if you try to apply it quickly. Second, I think that there’s a much better way of getting a great eyeshadow look, and that’s with a pigmented base/primer cream and an absorbent/setting powder coating over it.Good luck with your new venture. -
The Arde-Barinco and/or Gifford-Wood style of homogenizers are industry workhorses, and have been around longer than silverson homogenizers. They should be perfectly fine.
This looks newer than the one you posted: -
I can easily, consistently and repeatably get Oleic Acid to saponify at room temperature with 45% Potassium Hydroxide at roughly a 2:1 ratio, in about 20 minutes.
I don’t know the size of the batches you’re making, but my best advice at this point, given the constraints I think you have, is to ditch the Lauric Acid and substitute Oleic Acid, then try making your paste again. I think you’ll get enough improvement in viscosity that the paste method will work. Try varying levels of water to see how much you can get away with - but it might be zero.If that still takes too long, the only way I can think that will help is to figure out some way to add heat. -
Generally speaking, adding any ingredient with even a little amount of water in it to a pressed or loose powder is a Very Bad Idea ™.
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Belassi’s point about added surfactants helping to speed up the reaction is very good, as is David’s.
One way to speed up your process would be to change your formula. Saponification is a two-step reaction - first the triglyceride molecule is cleaved to yield three fatty acid and one glycerine molecule, then the fatty acids are neutralized by the hydroxides to form soap. Starting with fatty acids instead of plant oils will speed up your reaction, as will using a small amount (1-2%) of surfactant.Another thing to think of is to change your process. One possibility would be to saponify each component separately, then combine them. Another would be to significantly boost your mixing strength - if you can successfully make your product on a small scale, but not on a larger one, you’ve either miscalculated the mixing strength you needed to scale up to, used more mixing power in the lab than can be successfully replicated in production, or a combination of the two.Yet another possibility would be for you to use the full amount of water in your batch, but much more caustic than you need. After your soap is formed, you could then neutralize the caustic with a mild acid, like citric.Lastly, If you are making something in the lab, and you are getting large batch-to-batch variations, you are not controlling a variable that makes a difference - what ever you’re making. Raw material variations, water quality, mixing time, mixing temperature, mixing intensity, ratio of size between beaker and impeller, order of ingredient addition, speed of ingredient addition, sometimes even room humidity can all make a difference in your final product. -
I agree with the minimalist approach.
Also, because this is for your personal use, why not store most of it in the refrigerator to prolong its life? As cosmetic chemists, we formulate for room temperature storage because we have to, not because storing that way is better.The use level for sodium copper chlorophyllin to tint shampoo is about 0.01 - 0.03%. At those low levels, don’t worry about its ionic character. -
EVERY formula sold to the public needs to be preserved, even “bone-dry” ones.
I don’t know of any natural preservatives that have been tested with pressed powders, though. -
Like a great many things in cosmetics, stability in emulsions is a balancing act. The best feeling emulsions are often the least stable. Also, the ingredients that make for high-temp stable emulsions also make it very easy to wash off/sweat off the sunscreen.
So what use would a stable emulsion be if no one liked to put it on their skin? -
I think you’d benefit a great deal from taking Perry’s course.