[Margaret]

If you substitute the bees wax with a wax that comes from a tropical country, you can pretty well bet your booties the PEOPLE who are harvesting the plant matter are NOT paid well and that native forests have been replaced with plantations, just for some cosmetic ingredient.
 
If you can get bees wax from Canada or the U.S. you can be quite sure the people collecting the wax are living under way better conditions than any of the people collecting plant matter made from tropically-grown ingredients. 

[Margaret]

Lavender hydrosol also smells hay-like. At least, this is what I experienced when I was using my home-made distiller. The hydrosol from a lavender farm nearby also smelled like hay.  It isn’t even close to the smell of lavender “essential oil”. HOWEVER: I also do NOT like the smell of lavender “essential oil”, but I DO really like dried buds. 

Maybe it’s MY sense of smell.

[Margaret]

Wow! Shredded soap supporting fungal growth. Good thing I keep my shredded soap in the freezer. Thanks for  the comments everyone!

[Margaret]

I did NOT test under variable light conditions, it was just this “mechanic’s light” with a 40 Watt bulb,  under the shelf. The samples were on the shelf above the “mechanic’s light”.  I just used my dehydrator, modified,  as seen in the photo. 

The temp. inside was quite steady at 40 Celsius, as I recall. The lightbulb did a great job of putting out a consistent amount of heat for my needs.

  Could be I’m wrong, but since my cream sample is OVER 6 years old, I think my modified dehydrator did a pretty good job of estimating if the cream would still be emulsified after 1 year at room temp. 

  I only did this accelerated stability test when I was experimenting with a certain ingredient. I wanted to know if it was a good idea. I am no longer experimenting with new ingredients, so my dehydrator merely dehydrates food items now ????.

[Margaret]

To run a 4 week stability test on my creams way back in 2016 I did as is seen in the photo:

 I used a dehydrator as the BOX.

  A 40 Watt bulb provided the heat. The lamp with the 40 Watt bulb was put on a cookie sheet and NOTHING flammable was near the bulb(!).

     I had a digital thermometer that has a probe with which you can read the temperature at a location farther from the thermometer itself. You might be able to see that white cord leading from the thermometer INTO the box(?). I adjusted the height of the shelf inside until the area on the shelf was 40 Celsius.

    There is cardboard on the shelf so my jars of cream & lotion  did not fall through the shelf.

I covered the entire set-up with a bed sheet so that it remained DARK INSIDE the box at all times.

 The temperature inside the make-shift box was monitored. I moved the temperature probe around on the shelf to see if the temp. was the consistent, and it was “close enough for rock & roll” all over the shelf surface. 

 I know this is NOT lab-grade equipment. However, it worked very well AND I did NOT have to buy anything since I already use the dehydrator for fruits and other stuff. 

 I JUST looked at a sample from Jan. 17/16  (same formula that I tested a few months later in the above set-up) and it is STILL nicely emulsified. It is now 6 years old and 8 days old. I can assume my formula is good ????.

[Margaret]

   The way I allow my lotions and creams  to cool off is by using my oven as the place where they cool down. They are safe from air currents carrying around cooties AND there’s no chance of anything falling into the containers while they cool off.

   I figure my oven is probably quite clean since the temp. inside is often at over 350 F. AND I tend to clean up spills soon rather than what my mother-in-law would do (off-topic bringing up my mother-in-law ????, but often her smoke detector would go off when she was using her oven due to spills NOT being cleaned up in her oven. Just thinking of this almost makes my eyes water)

   To be EXTRA careful, you could heat your oven the DAY BEFORE for maybe 1/2 an hour at 300F. That should sterilize its surfaces.

   I place my sanitized jars or bottles into a plastic bin or cookie sheet that I have sanitized beforehand with a clean handkerchief soaked in 70% ethanol. The handkerchief has ONLY ever been used for sanitizing hard surfaces like already clean jars/counter tops, mixing equipment & stuff like that.  I put the jars/bottles  in a bin or on a cookie sheet so they won’t fall through the grill in the oven, and it allows me to move around the jars/bottles all together. 

  After the jars/bottles are filled with the product, I cover the jars/bottles with another clean handkerchief that has ALSO been thoroughly saturated (then squeezed out so it’s not dripping wet) in 70% alcohol. I have a large-mouth glass jar of this alcohol specifically for soaking my handkerchiefs.  I drape the wet handkerchief  over the filled jars/bottles, being careful it does not droop onto the surface of any cream in the jars.  The product can cool off through the pores of the fabric of the sanitized handkerchief.

   I place them in the oven and close its door (obvious, but needed to be typed anyhow).  Then I make a cup of tea to celebrate the successful production of cream or lotion. 

  The lids (cleaned by spritzing with 70% ethanol & allowed to dry, in the oven as well) are placed on the containers THE NEXT DAY. 

   PLEASE GO AHEAD AND CORRECT ME IF THIS IS WRONG. 

[Margaret]

Baking soda is used in some toothpastes as a mild abrasive. And, some people use baking soda to clean their showers due to it being mildly abrasive.  So…a mild abrasive in the armpit DOES bother some people. Not everyone, but some. 

[Margaret]

Yes, Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate is pH 12. Voila from Lotion Crafter:
Suttocide A is the Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate

Suttocide A is sold as 50% aqueous solution with a pH of 10-12.  Unlike many preservatives, Suttocide A is stable and active in alkaline conditions up to pH 12. It can also be used in acidic formulations as low as pH 3.5.  Due to its alkalinity, it can be used to neutralize acidic compounds (carbomers and other ingredients requiring neutralization) without any loss of antimicrobial activity.

THEY WERE PROBABLY SMOKING LOTS OF MATERIAL WHILE WORKING ON THEIR INGREDIENT LIST, FOR SURE

[Margaret]

One more thing, the jar states there’s 400 mg. of THC and 200 mg. of CBD, so that means the other ingredients in their list is 200 mgs or LESS, EACH, right?  Health Canada can’t keep up with the stuff being sold…

[Margaret]

PHARMA: I did NOT BUY this product, and I’m not interested in buying or using it.  I’m just asking about it, because to my eyes, it looks like ????.  But since I’m ignorant on many things ????, I wanted to ask those who know more than I do in topics like this. I was initially wondering what was the skin penetration enhancer, and THEN I noticed the LACK of any sort of marijuana ingredient in the LOI.

PATTSI: If you’re talking about Dr. Joe Schwarz, the only thing he sells are books about day-to-day chemistry questions people might have. The drug stores sells all sorts of homeopathic/naturopathic ????. It’s disgusting.

[Margaret]

A scam??? Whhhhaaaaaa? ???? So much ???? on-line, and in stores, sigh.

[Margaret]

I think I’ll use it as “poo pouri” for the toilet.  

[Margaret]

Thanks for the help people!  I shall sadly have to throw out my stuff…sigh…

[Margaret]

I hope you also received some sort of food reward with this well-deserved merit award? Will all the things I know of, that you do, you also deserve a “great human” award. Rock on!

[Margaret]

Thanks for the help. I don’t personally dye my hair, I was just wondering if these surfactants might be aggressive on hair dyes. 

[Margaret]

REGARDING USING MOUTHWASH IN THIS. NO, this is not being sold. I merely used the mouthwash to dissolve the xantham gum  instead of water (I normally use water) since the mouthwash had fluoride in it. Our water here does NOT have fluoride in it, unfortunately. 

[Margaret]

I re-tested the Crest toothpaste, and it’s pH is now 6, not 5.5, which it was when I first opened the tube, maybe a year or more,  ago. Perhaps pH drift has occurred?

MY toothpaste, as written above, is pH 8, not 7. The pH discrepancy might have been due to the mouthwash that I used instead of straight water, at 21.6%. I assumed using a fluoridated mouthwash instead of water would yield a small amount of  anti-cavity protection.  I think the mouthwash was either Colgate or Crest brand. 

Our tap water is pH 7 according to city reports. It is extremely “soft” regarding mineral content.

The pH testing was done with pH strips. I know they are not nearly as good as a pH meter.

[Margaret]

 I use 0.26% sodium benzoate (mentioned above), but I left it out of the formula. Sorry for the confusion ????. I was thinking that since sodium benzoate is not effective at less than pH 5.5 why is it used by toothpaste manufacturers?

  I only have pH strips, they are from Germany (Macherey Nagel brand) not the cheap ones from China. I canNOT afford a good pH meter made in the U.S. I do not want to buy one made in China. I used these exact same strips to test the pH of Crest toothpaste, and it too was 5.5. 

    I used to use sorbitol AND glycerin, about 50% total of these glycols, but sorbitol is more expensive and I read that glycerin is better at decreasing water activity than sorbitol is. 

  The formula I am using is based on ingredient ranges of toothpastes that I found on Happi or through various pharmaceutical articles on-line. I would not copy a formula posted on a blog or You Tube or something like that. My formula is also similar to those given on a Lubrizol website from several years ago. 

????

[Margaret]

AHA!!! (not alpha hydroxy acid). So milk DOES do something. It makes it more likely to make the soap “go bad”! ????

[Margaret]

Thanks for the response Perry. I figured milk in soap was marketing BUT I wanted to ensure that my assumption of the milk proteins being denatured by the sodium hydroxide was correct, so that I can counter the B.S. story with a FACT. ????

[Margaret]

    I think that any scent (plant or human-made)  can be associated with something that may have happened in your life whether it was pleasant or UNpleasant.
    Though lavender E.O. is supposedly ‘calming’, my hubby HATES it, he says it burns his nose (on the inside). So for HIM, the marketed claim of lavender being calming is false. 
    For ME, the smell of cow poo brings back a pleasant memory of visiting relatives in Hungary, as a child (in a barn. No, the people didn’t live in a barn, they had a couple of cows). So, whichever compounds in the poop give cow caca the characteristic scent, those bring ME pleasant memories. I wonder if that can be marketed as successfully as lavender EO ????? 
   Sometimes we can smell the cow doodoo when we are on the deck (we are about 3 kms from a dairy), and I say, “Ah, cow poo smell!” and I’m happy (and weird).

[Margaret]

EmmaTomic said:

The main problem I see with shampoo bars is most people have no clue how to formulate them properly. Looking at some of the ingredients lists they put insane amounts of oil, butters and even saw one with wax. Lush and other bars I’ve seen don’t even melt the SCI pellets so it looks like it would harshly tear through the hair. Some brands are just regular cold process soap masquerading as ‘shampoo bar’.   

    I think the FLUSH ‘poo bars are SLS (BUT I could be wrong). They just PRESS the surfactant noodles w/the oils & stuff. 
    I almost get hives when I see the vast # of people selling soap as shampoo bars. I have reported a company to Health Canada for selling soap bars as a dog shampoo, because this is horribly wrong to use on a dog. Health Canada canNOT keep up with the shiiiit that’s sold on-line now. 

[Margaret]

PERRY: Do you think the shampoo bars are inferior to liquid because one doesn’t get as much surfactant deposited with the bar vs. the liquid OR because the formulae for ‘poo bars you’ve seen are crappy? 
People want to know ????….

[Margaret]

@PhilGeis.    Your comment above, about my cleaner (for hard surfaces, it’s not for bathing) NOT requiring preservative(s) has made me extremely relieved. Thanks SO much!!!

[Margaret]

Here’s the info. I’ve clumsily copied from the Ashland site itself, the makers of Suttocide A. Maybe you’re thinking of ANOTHER preservative?:

Suttocide A preservative is a fast-acting, broad-spectrum preservative with a long history of use for efficacy.

Features and Benefits

• broad-spectrum preservation
• long history of use for efficacy
• fast-acting
• effective pH 3.5-12.0

Applications

Hair Care Leave-On	++
Hair Care Rinse-Off	++
Skin Care Leave-On	++
Skin Care Rinse-Off	++
Wet Wipes	++

Use Levels: 0.5-1.0%

Max. Temperature During Production: below 60°C

Additional Information:

pH	3.5 - 12
Regulatory Compliance*	Brazil, Canada, China, EU, Mexico