Susan Barclay-Nichols

Polyphenols: Hydroxybenzoic acids – benzoic acid, hydroxybenzoic acid, gallic acid (Updated 2025)

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Hydroxybenzoic acids are polyphenols we find in our oils. They have the benzene ring with an acid – COOH – on the end, making them carboxylic acids. They offer all kinds of properties to our formulas – as you’ll see in a minute – and most work as anti-oxidants to slow down rancidity of oils....

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Fun with chemistry: Solubility (updated April 2025)

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Two bottles of beige coloured liquid - toner. The one in the right has precipitate at the bottom

Solubility is a pretty important part of making bath & body products, but we don’t talk about it much. In essence, solubility is the ability of a solid, liquid, or gas (the solute) to dissolve in a liquid solvent to create a homogeneous solution (homogenous meaning a mixture that shows no variation in properties, like...

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Preservatives: Germaben II (updated with reference chart, 2024)

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Germaben II is a liquid broad spectrum preservative that should be used at 0.5% to 1% in the cool down phase of your watery creations (at 60˚C/140˚F). The INCI is Propylene Glycol (56%), Diazolidinyl Urea (30%), Methylparaben (11%), and Propylparaben (3%), which means it is a formaldehyde releaser that contains parabens. Read more about the...

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Chemistry of your hair: The hair strand – the cuticle (updated 2023)

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The cuticle is the part of the hair that probably concerns us the most on a day to day basis. When our hair emerges from our scalp, it has about 6 to 10 layers of cuticle about 50 micrometres on a side and about 0.5 micrometres thick. The cuticle is attached to the cortex and...

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When lotions go wrong! (Updated 2023)

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A collage of diagrams demonstrating different ways a lotion can fail. The top image is of a successful lotion, with micelles containing yellow oil floating in a sea of blue water.

Original post shared 2009. Slowly updating it for 2023 with new information and diagrams. This is definitely a work in progress as there’s so much more to share!  At one time or another, we’ve all experienced epic lotion failure and asked ourselves what we did wrong. We call it separation, but do you know why...

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