Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t think I said what I meant all that well. @MarkBroussard, I agree with you - they absolutely chose to use ingredients that were inappropriate for lip products. My statement was supposed to speak towards why they chose to use them. I strongly suspect that the formulators assumed, because the ingredients were natural, certified organic, and GRAS for food, that they would automatically be safe for use on skin. They’re not.
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Just handing out formulas is not what we do here. If you want something very specific, you will need to pay a consultant to make it for you.
However, a quick google search found these: -
And right here, we have the two major problems with “Certified Organic” cosmetic products.
Leaving aside the very questionable value of “Certified Organic” in general and in non-food items specifically, we have the problems of 1) No effective “certified organic” broad-spectrum preservative exists, and 2) Just because an ingredient is a safe ingredient for food, and it’s “Certified Organic” does NOT mean that it’s safe on skin for long periods of time.And yes, @ZenTheDog, any anhydrous product, using natural oils or not, if exposed to even the slightest bit of moisture has the likelihood of mold growth if it’s not preserved.Also, “higher quality ingredients”? Unless that means synthetics, the people calling for that have clearly lost all ability to think rationally. This problem has absolutely nothing, in any possible way, to do with inferior ingredients. -
Also, this is on the Dewolf website:
“Cremophor A 25 is a cosmetic grade oil-in-water emulsifier, which is used for the production of ointments, creams, liquid emulsions, gels and other cosmetic formulations. Supplied in the form of free-flowing, non-dusting micro-granules that dissolve in water and alcohol to form either a colloid or a clear solution. Cremophor A 25 is soluble in vegetable and mineral fats and oils. The warm emulsifiers can be mixed with mineral, vegetable, and synthetic fats and oils, as well as with fatty alcohols, fatty acids, mono- and di-stearates, and with polyethylene glycols. Creams and lotions can be formulated easily. If Cremophor A 25 is used together with cetyl or stearyl alcohol or both, homogeneous ointment and cream bases are obtained that can absorb as much as 90% water. Cremophor A 25 is a very efficient protective colloid and can increase the stability of dispersed systems. In concentrations of 21 – 30%, Cremophor A 25 forms gel-like, brushable hydrates with water. The consistency of these gels can be adjusted from solid to liquid by adding small amounts of Luviskol® K 17.” -
The TDS says that Cremophor A25 (ceteareth 25) dissolves in water and alcohol to make either a clear solution or a colloid. I’d try adding different levels of ethanol to your cremophor/water solution to see if you can get it to clear up.
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Shine on hair comes from a smooth uninterrupted film. The size of the pigment particless you’re using interrupt that film, so you’re not getting shine. Solutions? Make the pigment particles smaller than the film thickness, either by reducing the particle size of the pigments, or increasing the film thickness, or both.
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water and surfactant should be soluble in each other
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I agree with @Perry and @Bill_Toge, but…to take a very extreme case, if you made a lipstick with 50% of powdered citric acid, for example, this eventually would have a negative effect on skin/lips, as the skin’s moisture and/or saliva slowly dissolved the acid.
So, it pays to check on how the lipstick will affect the skin. You can do this by applying a damp pH strip to the surface of the lipstick for a few minutes, or by dissolving the lipstick in a solvent and then adding water and reading the pH, or by melting the lipstick, homogenizing with water, and then checking the pH of the emulsion. pH isn’t really the right term when applied to the stick itself, but I’m not sure what else we’d call it. “Apparent pH”, maybe? -
Try Veegum HV or Veegum Plus
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Try adding waxes
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This is where experimentation comes into play. Make your formula, make a number of batches from it, adding a little more glycerin in each batch. You don’t need a refractometer.
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You need to hire a consultant - or look some formulas up on the web yourself.
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Agree with everything Mark said. Also, don’t discount the idea of starting with a single, somewhat unique product - this will allow you to concentrate your limited resources.
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Nice job.
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If you’re comfortable with graphs, this might help:
This is the full article: -
The saturation point for citric acid and water not quite 50:50, so you’ll have an easier time making a 40% solution.It’s very important to remember that the pH scale is logarithmic, not linear. So, on the pH scale, a difference of 1 number/unit is a power of 10. This means that a pH of 5 is 10 times less acidic than a pH of 4, or you can look at it that a pH of 4 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 5.It goes further - a pH of 3 is 100 times more acidic than a pH of 5, and a pH of 2 is 1,000 times more acidic than a pH of 5, and so on.If it were me, I wouldn’t even bother trying to calculate this, because it’s so quick to do the titration. Make a kilo of your solution, check the pH, add 10 grams of 40% Citric Acid, re-check the ph, increase or decrease your acid additions as needed.Also, be careful of citric acid + stainless steel, it’s a known passivator.
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This is actually an interesting skin care question - which means that there’s not an easy answer for it.
The pH of your lipstick will affect the colors of some of the pigments that you’ll use, so experimenting with different pH options/adjustments might be crucial if color matching is very important.The natural pH of skin, including lips, is 5.5 - 5.6, but neutral pH is 7.0. The primary skincare question is then - do I want a neutral pH value at about 7, (which might actually raise the pH of skin) or do I want a pH that matches the skin’s acid mantle? That’s the question that is difficult to answer.Personally, unless you’re having a problem with color, or you need for some reason to say “neutral pH” on your label, I’d leave your formula alone. -
First, the formula has thixotropy, but it exhibits thixotropic behavior. (I know, English is weird).There are a number of thickeners that will produce shear-thinning behavior. Are you only looking for polymers? Why do you need this and/or what does the thixotropy need to accomplish? Lastly, does it need to be reversible (thixotrophy) or can it be shear-thinning on skin with no reversal?
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Please start a new discussion
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Seriously, one of our (now discontinued) bath products used fragrance at 0.4%, another fragrance was at 2.6%. It all depends on how strong the fragrance blend is.
Also, we have a close relationship with our fragrance supplier, so I’ve been given access to the fragrance formulas we purchase. The simplest fragrance we use has 22 ingredients, the most complex has more than 60. This is why the FDA lets us use the term “fragrance” - the ingredient list would be incredibly long and confusing otherwise.It’s a huge mistake to think that “fragrance” on a label is just a few ingredients, or that one fragrance supplier has the same fragrance formula as another’s, even if they smell the same. -
Really, it depends too much on the fragrance composition to be able to give useful guidelines. Ordinarily, the fragrance supplier will give a recommended use level. I usually make three samples, one with 50%, one at 75%, and one at 100% of the use level. Then, you get other people to use them, and judge based on their responses.
For reducing fragrance levels, I use one of the standard tools, called a triangle test. Cut the fragrance level by 20% or so in one batch, prepare a control batch, then give people three samples to evaluate, changing which person gets 2 of which batch randomly (but keep track). If most people cannot pick out the lowered fragrance level, then you can reduce your fragrance without most customers knowing. -
There’s a very large difference between Ecocert and certified organic materials. There’s a lot of confusion about this, so let me explain.Ecocert and other organizations just want to be able to prove “natural” and possibly minimally/naturally processed. “Certified Organic” has an entirely different meaning and a whole added level or two of complexity.Certified organic surfactants need to be made in a certified facility, and kept free from contamination by non-certified materials. They need to be made from certified organic raw materials that are themselves made in a certified facility, which in turn need to be made from certified organically grown plants grown on a certified farm. Because of this, there tends to be very, very few certified organic surfactants.To my knowledge, there are no certified organic surfactants manufactured anywhere in the world other than the ones I mentioned, including BASF’s glucosides, which very probably cannot ever be made as certified organic materials (we’ve checked).
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Because the folks from PETA and other activist groups get really extremely upset if you do, to the point of organizing boycotts and protests.Animal-derived gelatin used to be a fairly common ingredient that vanished for the same reason, as have other ingredients.
There’s no chemical reason not to use them. -
Try encapsulated oil without silica: http://www.ashland.com/products/captivates-encapsulates
Or, try a different oil absorbing material: like silicone dioxide - Zeofree PLUS 5191 from Huber, or calcium silicate - Hubersorb 600, also from Huber, or Polytrap polymer powder from Amcol.A last option is to think about the fact that dragginess is caused as much by particle morphology as it is by the chemical properties of the material. The solution if this is the problem is to get rid of the drag by adding microspheres, which act like ball bearings on skin.Note that it’s typical of suppliers to use their own materials in a starting/trial formula, even if competing materials from other suppliers will do a better job. Knowing which materials perform best in different types of formulations is a big part of a cosmetic chemist’s professional repertoire.