Susan Barclay-Nichols

Basic instructions for lotion making (updated September 2025)

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These are what I consider to be the basic instructions for making lotions for most types of emulsifiers, including Polawax, emulsifying wax, Incroquat BTMS-50, Simulsol 165/Lotionpro™ 165, and more. Always check how the emulsifier you’re using needs to be used as this method won’t work for other emulsifiers, like Olivem 1000, Montanov 68 MB, Varisoft...

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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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