Graillotion
Forum Replies Created
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Regarding humectants…you are using them at too high a rate, when you have no emollients to remove the stickiness.
When you add the esters….all of a sudden…the sticky ingredients are no longer sticky. ????
I never use Glycerin about 3% when it is part of a blend.
There is a concept called cascading emollience…. you might even be able to find it…using the search bar here. You can create something greater than the sum of the parts…. using a cascade of different spreadabilities…. going from the super lite…to the heavy veggie oils. Each little break you put in the formula….generally will enhance it. The CCC you mentioned is lighter than veggie oil, but heavier than a number of the emollient esters. In cosmetics…we ask so much of the emollients….(double duty… as they have lots of side jobs they do…solvents…polarity linkers…etc…etc…) it is hard to just say….buy this one or that one. There is also a lot of personal opinion involved as well….since they drive the haptics. Maybe buy something simple…like the IPM…and use that 50/50 with the CCC you already have…for a total of 6% of your formula +/- 1%….and I think the difference will blow your mind. Should feel better….and absorb WAY better. ????
Regarding tocopherol: Really all you need is 100 parts per million….but that is too hard to measure. Use .1% and call it a day. BTW….unless you have oils that really want to go rancid…. you can probably get by with one or the other. I tend to lean more towards ROE more than E. If you look at the industry greats… like ICSC….they choose ROE over E.
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1) Cannot answer Vit E question…as you did not specify either form….or intent. As you know…one purportedly does something for skin…and another one protects lipids. You would need to clarify.
1b) I don’t like ANY butter in face products. At least for me….face products should me magically light. Butters….not so much. ???? Now if you specified night cream….then maybe so. Butters will increase occlusiveness…as mentioned. As you know…many face products are completely plant oil free….and these are often the ones….that take your breath away when applied. Note: You seem to be missing the whole category of esters….you know….the stuff that makes it feel good…..and the stuff that makes people buy it again!
2) Next question is purely haptic based. No right or wrong answers….only opinion. To me… OM 1000 is a close tie for grossest feeling emulsifier on the market….It feels like a ton of bricks (heavy…in comparison). If you make the same formula with OM 1000 and Mont 202…. you should find that the M202 will make a far lighter feeling result. Granted the M 202 will need some added viscosity builders (fatty alcohols, cetyl esters Myristyl Myristate etc) to give the same viscosity. Sometimes brands will use OM 1000….to balance a formula, but use as the entire structure of an emulsion is rare amongst commercial brands.
2b) The first three you mentioned are all somewhat weak emulsifiers (will get the job done, but will do it better with some help). Montanov’s….which I work with some of the time….benefit greatly with a small kiss of an anionic. Something like SSG, SSL, PCP, GSC, etc. I mostly use SSG (Sodium stearoyl glutamate)…since it can handle a wider window of pH, and a small inclusion rate goes a long way….like .25% (point two five percent) does a lot of good. Marketing BS will always say….they are fine by themselves…but that is the job of the marketing department. (They don’t live with your results.)
Good luck.
For bonus points…. All humectants work a little differently….even at what humidity they work best at. To cover more bases…. consider dividing the humectant duties amongst two different players. Hard to imagine leaving glycerin out of the party. ???? Maybe for a fun rabbit hole to dive down….study which humectants are the best at stimulating aquaporins in your skin?
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Make sure you realize, T Acetate….does not protect your oils….if that was your goal? Acetate form is used for purported skin benefit. MT-E is for oil protection. They are very different in what they do.
.1% of MT-E …. should be plenty!
For the question you will ask in a few months….. Swap the shea for murumuru…and it will assure your product never becomes grainy. ???? (Check stearic acid levels in Muru…. vs Shea.)
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If you can get Murumuru that was sourced out of ICSC of Denmark …. you’ll even be further miles ahead. For that matter….all their oils are world class! (I almost don’t use any oil…that is not sourced from them! They are not even playing the same game…as other oil suppliers. I have an odd-ball pain cream that has some oils they don’t carry.)
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If you can tolerate honesty…. keep reading….otherwise stop now!
I would suggest you take some course work on the topic. It almost appears as though you do not understand the pH of either skin or ingredients. (Even an anhydrous formula will create a pH once it is applied to skin…where it meets up with water.)
If you are bound and determined to sell/produce a product you do not understand….then hire a chemist. You can focus on branding and marketing.
Real chemists do not work for free….they will be an investment. If you are interested….this site has a link to chemists for hire. The free formulas you find on the net….are charging you their correct value. Hint…hint.
Good Luck
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Leave out the middle two ingredients.
I doubt we can help much. Last time we tackled an internet ‘recipe’ like this….we got called: “guffawing henrys”. You know…the internet knows way more about science, than say….. a scientist.
Read the second of the comments by ‘Pharma’ very carefully…and make sure you understand it!
We’ll see yah next time around…with your new formula. 🙂
You can read the thread here: mixing magnesium Hydroxide and bicarb of soda - Chemists Corner
chemistscorner.com
mixing magnesium Hydroxide and bicarb of soda - Chemists Corner
HelloI am trying to mix the above products but the mag keeps chrystallising, anyone any ideas to stop this happening please?thanks
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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! 🙂
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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. ???? )
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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
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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.
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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.” -
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
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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Yes….a 6% combined total….as you work through them…start with 3% and 3%…then try 4 and 2…then 2 and 4. 🙂
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Shea is always one melt cycle away from grainy. You can’t change what it is made of. (You can control how it assembles…when you make it….but out of your hands….next time it melts. Just unbelievable better options…without the stank…and greasiness.
Refined vs unrefined…should make no difference as that process should not change the fatty acid profile. Simply one is gross…and the other is very gross! ????
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Please understand my comment on branch chained ester….I guess could have a twofold meaning. My primary intent was….they help to ’emulsify’ silicones. However…the concept of replacing them…also fits. Albeit…I am one of those, firmly in the camp of….there are no replacements for silicones (yet). Just good marketing stories for the gullible to consume.
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Just for bonus points…. You can do something very similar….with just using SSG (Sodium stearoyl glutamate) as a co-emulsifier for any non-ionic primary emulsifier.
Since I really like to root around in the lower pH’s…. it is the darling of the anionics….as pH drops!
My go to anionic supporting leg.
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Should not be an issue. The ’emulsifiers’ that tend to have issues with moderate electrolytes….are your polymerics……you know… Zen, many carbomers, and Aristoflex AVC.
Aloe is typically only used at trace amounts for claim….as it doesn’t do that much…and is awesome bug food.
Assuming you are adding your HA, post emulsification.
Good Luck.
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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 thingOn 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.