[ninjahamlet]

Okay, thank you all for your help and input. I will definitely follow the advice and get better at all of this. Thanks for your patience as well, much appreciated.

[ninjahamlet]

@ngarayeva001 I have done about a third of that already so is it safe to assume that I’m at least on the right track? I have been working with the pH scale using strips but I’ve been eyeing pH meters for a bit now. Are the thin, junky, plastic gloves okay? I have been working with % equalling 100% and generally I convert over to 100g batches when I test formulas. I have been keeping notes on formulas, procedures, changes, and anything else I feel needs noted. I have 2 notebooks, one designated for procedures, observations and formulas, the other designated for a scratch pad, calculations, research, notes, ideas, lists and anything else. I have been studying LOIs and researching ingredients but I’ve sort of been doing it backwards apparently because I’ve been starting out by researching the ingredients and then finding LOIs that list the ingredients and then looking at where they place them on the list and what similarities and differences they have with other similar LOIs. When you say “recommended use” do you mean % or what it can be used in or both? I use the recommended % to help figure out formulas.

[ninjahamlet]

@em88 What I mean is that I’m doing more research than experimenting at this point so I’m not throwing tons of ingredients and money out the window on full scale attempts that would never have a hope of working.

@Perry I’ve spent hours upon hours studying formulas, theories, what ingredients are, what ingredients do, how ingredients work, and how ingredients are created. I did start out following good-intentioned misinformation at the very beginning but that didn’t last long. I am somewhat adept at research which led me away from diy recipes and into formulating luckily. I have read quite a few of the pages you’ve written on this site and that’s actually where I’ve discovered a lot of the mistakes I’ve been making. I plan to take a chemistry course in the spring and at some point I want to get some of the cosmetic specific chemistry books you suggested in one of your posts. I have pretty much given up on the natural aspect of it all. I have been reading up on controversial ingredients like PEGs and SLS and that has sort of changed my mind and I’ve decided that probably everything is going to be declared carcinogenic someday so I don’t really care one way or the other as long I’m not going to get cancer from looking at it funny.

@EVchem  Thank you for your input. I get the whole oil thing but what about ‘oil cleansing’ shampoos? At one point towards the beginning of my cosmetic formulation adventure I added oil to my store bought shampoo and that seemed to do a good job. It got really runny when I added the oil to it but it still got the grease and dandruff out of my hair as far as I could tell. I used it severy times before deciding I wanted to try making my own. I noticed that since I started with my attempts of shampoo and oil together my hair doesn’t get greasy as fast and it is smoother and doesn’t tangle as easily. I haven’t changed anything else about what I do with my hair so that’s the only thing I can think that would have made the difference. I haven’t been using conditioners, rinses or any other hair products of any kind to try and limit possible influencing factors on the results. I also have been using the same pillowcase, comb, and hat the entire time and I don’t apply heat of any kind to my hair so pre sure the shampoo is the only thing that’s changed. Do the ‘oil infused’ shampoos in the store have such an insignificant amount of oil that it doesn’t really make much difference in the shampoo but they can still write it on the label?