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O/W stands for oil in water. ????

Silicone…is neither of these. There is a whole slate of emulsifier that specifically target the difficult to emulsify silicones.

Of course, you can find 10,000 formulas with 165 and SOME silicone (including my own), but generally this is something I spend a lot of time massaging.

Consider adding some branched chain esters, some C-12-15 AB and a co-emulsifier of sucrose stearate in the water phase.

Many of these little tweaks can assist in accomplishing a positive final outcome, as long as you use just a small amount of the silicones. Otherwise….look to add a silicone emulsifier.

Good Luck.

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Ahh…the beauty of NEVER defining ‘natural’. As I oft would tell a beginner group…the lack of definition was not a result of omission, but a carefully crafted strategy!

I also use this to my benefit…. I call myself a ‘natural’ formulator…..as I ‘naturally’ select the best ingredients to get the job done! ????????

If I had a dollar….for every time I have seen beginner products with e-wax, advertised as ‘natural’ …. well I might retire a second time! 🙂

[Graillotion]

Are you mistaking the pH at which carbomers are neutralized at, with the final pH of the formula? ????

One does not preclude the other.

Only order has to be paid attention to.

(There is a reason…you often find both an alkali and an acid in the same formula. ???? )

[Graillotion]

If you are particularly lazy (like me)…. you can even purchase it pre-n.

Please note…. if you are trying to dupe the formula you posted before…with electrolytes…. this will not work!

Sodium Carbomer, Preneutralized Carbomer | Lotioncrafter

lotioncrafter.com

Sodium Carbomer, Preneutralized Carbomer

Sodium Carbomer is a pre-neutralized synthetic polymer that can be used to thicken, suspend and stabilize cosmetic formulations. Requiring very low concentrations, Carbomers are often used to adjust the viscosity of cosmetic preparations. They dry quickly and are not film … Continue reading

[Graillotion]

If you want to stay with the gums…. You could take a look at Solagum AX, a crowd favorite. Depending on clarity…and such….may not fit your program.

[Graillotion]

It would be helpful to know…if this was a product from a big company (who should know what they are doing). Or a small pretender brand.

In helping entry level people…I have found time after time…that they have destroyed their polymeric…but have no idea….cus they did not know how to evaluate/test that. It was just an ingredient, and they heard it was good, or saw a benchmark brand using it.

Since there are other gelling aspects in the formula….it could be conceivable that their AVC…is doing nothing…and they just adjust the HA quantity and molecular weight to get the desired viscosity.

I see it all the time in deo formulations…where beginner brands look around at what the big dawgs are doing….and see an ingredient that is used frequently, and they’ll add it to their product, even though the ingredient requires a low pH platform, and their platform is high pH. They simply are INCI cherry picking without having the knowledge to apply it.

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Based on the “who’s who” list of fake claim ingredients…I can speculate on the skill set of the formulator. ????

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Just for bonus points….my mentor wrote such an elaborate expose on elderberry…. I thought it was a shame…for me to be the only person in the world to read it. Enjoy for extra-credit points. We were discussing the use of elderberry amongst the beginner crowd….

“The toxin is related to the toxin in bitter almonds, is also found in
apple seeds (which I often eat… don’t waste food, save the planet
LoL), and the content in ripe berries is low (highest but still low
within the seeds which are often not crushed when eating berries). Once
eaten or crushed, those foods liberate prussic acid. Well dried or
cooked, the toxin (= prussic acid precursors and activating enzymes)
partially degrade and any free prussic acid easily evaporates upon
cooking. The human metabolism is quite effective at detoxifying cyanides
(the salts of prussic acid) and hence, as a non-sensitive adult, you may
eat hundreds of ripe berries without getting in serious trouble. Why
some people still get nausea and diarrhea is not known. The whole rest
of the plant contains way higher amounts of those cyanogenic glycosides
(and possibly other not so harmless stuff as well) and you may get a
serious intoxication from consuming leaves or bark.
As the name ‘cyanogenic glycosides’ implies, these are sugar derivatives
which are water soluble but don’t dissolve in oil. Judging from
structure, I would assume that alcohol solubility is also very good.
To activate the magic blend, crushing works best in fresh form, when the
glycosidase, hydrolase, and lyase enzymes (the ones which turn the
harmless stuff into a deadly gas) are fully active and water is present.
How well drying and then crushing works, IDK. However, these enzymes are
very effective and ingesting small quantities suffices to degrade the
precursors and turn even dried plant matter into poisonous food. If you
were to eat purified cyanogenic glycosides, they are totally safe
because they don’t degrade to cyanide in our body, they aren’t even
metabolized and pissed out as is. You might have come across the
(wrongly) hyped vitamin B17 aka amygdalin, the toxin in bitter almonds
and apricot kernels; it’s said to cure cancer amongst other miracles.
Amygdalin is approved as magistral prescription in some EU countries if
highly purified or synthetic (hence, no enzymes are present).
So, using dried ripe elderberries for cosmetic concoctions seems to be safe.
BTW Bitter almond flavor in gastronomy and perfumery is usually derived
from cheaper apricot kernels and cherry laurel kernels, respectively.
These contain many thousand times higher amounts of amygdalin and all
have that typical bitter almond flavor of prussic acid and benzaldehyde
(don’t ask me why both have a similar flavor but are totally different
chemicals… maybe one usually occurs in nature only when the other is
present as well?). Try some dried elderberries, they barely, if ever,
taste of bitter almonds and even if they do, we can sense very faint
amounts far from any toxic level.”

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Maybe I am not understanding your presentation correctly….but I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is…..they were selling a very diluted product to you. Am I missing something? If this is the case….dilution and pH are your answer.

The elephant in the room is of course, the anthocyanes are directly color coordinated with pH. So everything that contributes to pH…also contributes to final color. Let me give you a little direct quote from my brilliant mentor: (his comments were directed to my question on the topic…not yours)

“The anthocyanes in the elderberry extract are not super stable (slightly acidic is best) and will change colour depending on pH 😉 . Somewhere around pH 5 (depends on the type of anthocyane), many of them become colourless, at lower pH they turn red and at slightly higher purple (around neutral pH they turn blue and in alkaline solutions green to finally yellow). There isn’t much you could do to slow down degradation except keeping pH low… from a chemical point of view in the red-coloured range but that’s going to be an acid peel rather than a soothing eye cream… which colour it will have at your target pH IDK… with bad mojo it’s the colourless zone… fingers crossed!”

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Polar vs. Nonpolar Oils | Cosmetics & Toiletries (cosmeticsandtoiletries.com)

cosmeticsandtoiletries.com

Polar vs. Nonpolar Oils

Tony O’Lenick asks industry expert Valerio Vergani of AKOTT Italia to describe the difference between a polar and a nonpolar oil...

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A lot of time….emollients serve multiple roles. As an example, many emollients are also solvents, so they are selected based on the balance of the formula, and what needs to be accomplished. The also vary widely in polarity…and this can also influence your selection….

It took me a long time to become friends with C-12-15 AB….but finally it has secured a spot in my top 5. ????

Multitasking Emollients - Prospector Knowledge Center (ulprospector.com)

ulprospector.com

Multitasking Emollients

Multitasking emollients are ingredients that can both improve skin feel and provide other significant benefits. They can be used in formulations to thicken, pro

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You could not have picked a word….that has a broader meaning in cosmetics. ????

They are so diverse….and really you have to pick them based on what you are trying to accomplish….or as Perry might suggest…which is lowest cost. ????

Some are occlusive…some are not. Some leave a shine, some do not. Some are volatile, most are not. Some feel a little oily, and others are dry as a popcorn fart. You could list these comparisons…on and on.

Probably I would use UL Prospector, and find a big ester seller…and they will often provide wide ranging charts with spreadability ratings. This for me…is a logical place to start. Albeit…. I did it the old fashioned way…and bought or got samples….of hundreds of them. ????

Another concept to grasp is one called ‘cascading emollience’. I like to say….you can create something that is greater than the sum of the parts…if you implement this concept. If you work it just right….things can feel like they are absorbing much faster than they actually are, because they are all absorbing at different rates.

So, your natural oils/butters…are at the far end of the spectrum, and you build to them with the lighter and mid range ingredients….to create that cascade.

If you go into the knowledge center of ULP….and enter in the search bar…variations of ’emollients’, you will get a number of hits. I’ll enclose one, to get you started. Good Luck.

NOTE: The emollient game…is almost entirely subjective….

The Art of Sensoriality: Ingredients that Transform Everyday Routines (ulprospector.com)

ulprospector.com

The Art of Sensoriality in Beauty & Personal Care: Ingredients that Transform Everyday Routines

In the expansive realm of beauty and personal care, the notion of sensoriality stands as a crucial element, transcending the conventional boundaries of utility.

[Graillotion]

Swapped the VariSoft EQ 65 with SPDMA….and cursory observations are looking good. Need to stress it a bit….and see what it looks like.

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It is probably noteworthy….and somewhat my hunch…. that there are NO water gelling ingredients, since all I had on hand were anionic. So, in process of acquiring Polyquaternium-37 (looking at you @chemicalmatt ) and HEC. However, both products are thick creams.

[Graillotion]

And yes…I have removed all anionic antagonist, X-gum etc…and using a low charge count chelate at a very low rate.

[Graillotion]

The reason people are asking for temps…. the behenyl alcohol in your formula will not melt…until just about 85C…hence the mfg recommendation to heat to this mark.

Cut the butters to a combined total of 1%.

You don’t need fatty alcohol and stearic in the same formula. They are both thickeners…and generally the fatty alcohols are more elegant.

With M 202 you should add a water gelling aspect…and a co-emulsifier. Typically an anionic one is used, but cationic will also work…as long as you craft the formula to handle it.

Add dimethicone to the formula…it will reduce the soaping.

You have no esters…consider adding them…so it feels nice.

Good Luck

[Graillotion]

Is my brilliant Swiss mentor… the only one out there…. not hanging ‘love’ on the hydroximates? I once made the mistake of asking him about it. ???? Let me share his view of that class:

“I don’t trust hydroxamates for several reasons:

- Hydroxamates (natural ones and pharmaceutical candidates) are often either toxic or highly biologically active (inhibit a broad set of enzymes). No possible pharmaceutical targets (e.g. enzyme inhibition) for caprylhydroxamic acid have been investigated.
- IMHO caprylhydroxamic acid lacks proper safety testing especially regarding prolonged/repeated dermal exposure
- I worked with different hydroxamates, they’re unpredictable
- Stability can be an issue, some are too stable, others not enough, and the wrong conditions (pH <5 or >8) result in a toxic degradation product hydroxylamine, a highly active mutagenic and possibly carcinogenic substance. The CIR safety report proposes that ‘formulators should consider monitoring products for formation of hydroxylamine…’, something most formulators certainly don’t do.
- Caprylhydroxamic acid can form carcinogenic nitrosamides (mostly as reaction product with amino acids, peptides, and proteins) under physiological conditions. Alas, nobody ever evaluated cosmetic products.
- Caprylhydroxamic acid is a known irritant (especially to the eye) and likely to penetrate skin with unknown outcome. Increasingly more frequent use as preservative in cosmetics will likely result in an increase in sensitization throughout population (well, that’s also true for benzoate and sorbate as two of many examples).
- If there is to be a new fall guy (after parabens, formaldehyde, isothiazolinones etc.) in the near future, my bet is on caprylhydroxamic acid
- It’s only used in cosmetics and as procession aid. Has me wonder why nobody else uses it… And most data come from Inolex who holds the patent and, obviously, has a strong interest in selling it ‘as a safe and green broad-spectrum alternative preservative’.
= I don’t use and won’t touch anything containing that thing

On the bright side:
- It serves as a preservative as much as a chelate
- People think it’s natural ROFLMAO (the caprylic acid part is derived from coconut oil, the rest or what makes it so powerful is hardcore synthetics)
- Allegedly, it’s biodegradable. I haven’t found anything useful online though it’s likely degraded fairly easily… hopefully fast enough because it’s highly toxic for aquatic organisms. As it seems, it’s metabolized quickly though nobody cared monitoring hydroxylamine formation. The rats they’ve killed during the safety trials were labelled as outliers = nothing to be concerned about… it’s probably the vehicle though that one didn’t show in the other samples… we don’t know why or how but those few results are completely arbitrary, and you can really trust us, it’s just a coincidence, the product is, against all pharmacological reasoning, safe.“

Your thoughts on his comment, @PhilGeis . I am sure you know who wrote this.

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@SoapWater may I ask where you purchased this?

I have changed things up in my deo, and it is now cationic…so this looks like a nice fitting deo active to experiment with.

Did you ever run a PET test on an emulsion….using it as a preservative? How did that go?

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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….that sheds a whole new light on things. The NaPCA and lactate…came along for the ride at minuscule amounts with another ingredient. Was not added to the formula on its own! 🙂

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Well…. I am almost as far away…. ????

Just curious on an unrelated note… Did you stop formulating…or did you find your perfect ingredients, and you are now working almost exclusively out of that pool?

I am in the latter category…however I find…every time I give something away…. I find reason to wish I could re-test it in a new format. ????

Aloha ???? and good luck.

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I made the formula yesterday….swapping the VS EQ 65 with SPDMA, and had excellent results…without a gelling agent.

Let me toss a little stress at it…and see where I end up. ????

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I have never worked with a formula with this much fat….so even with the details, I would have to preclude myself from commenting….as this would be way out of the spectrum of what I have worked with. At that point it would be entirely theoretical for me.

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Oh NO!!!!!!! E acetate is NOT an oil antioxidant, only the MT-E version will work in that regard. In chemistry the fine details are important. So good news is…you have not been damaging your oils. Bad news is…. neither have you been protecting them. 🙂 If you can’t find the proper form, ROE is a nice drop-in replacement.

Not sure of what your source of information has been in the past…but consider an upgrade.

Neither I, nor anyone can comment on co-emulsifier inclusion rates, when you have not even selected your primary emulsifier yet.

I’m not sure GO is an ideal choice for an already over-fatted formula. And yes…. GO needs to be paired with something.

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SSG = Sodium stearoyl glutamate

At low rates, MT-E is an antioxidant. As the rate increases, it become the opposite… pro-oxidant.

Never let those with an agenda and a low IQ dictate your formula. Make safe material…or find another hobby.

[Graillotion]

You have more than one concern here!

As far as SS….you are correct…it will build very little viscosity. It is however, not a robust emulsifier. Needs a good co-emulsifier.

For your ethos….you can look at GSC (not the same as GMS). SSG…I think that would fit your ethos. Even glyceryl oleate might work in conjunction with a fatty alcohol…and is quite the refatting agent…albeit you already have too much fat.

You need more builders than just gum. Where are your fatty alcohols?… You need to consider cetyl, cetearyl, or behenyl.

You are also missing very basic beginner aspects like …. a chelate. With your ultra sub par preservative…you need to be helping it…not challenging it. GLDA should fit your ethos.

You have selected a partial preservative that is going to hardly function above a pH of 5.5, and yet you have not listed an acid???

Even with proper pH and chelate…you still gonna miss your gram negatives. Consider dropping the whole GeoGard brand. This looks like a formula botanica / Bumble Bee type mess.

Cut the vit E by 80%….it is likely doing more harm than good to your oils at that level.

For bonus points….consider dropping your oils to 10% overall, especially cutting the shea! Apply your oils to your skin….just by themselves….what ever absorbs well…focus on that. In oils….less is more….is KING. Also consider in the oil reduction…removing all the squalane…. hydrocarbons (in my opinion) bring far more grief than value.

And of course….adding an ester….will help considerably.

Good luck.