Techniques

Q&A quickie: You don’t need to add a solubilizer with surfactants or emulsions

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I’m about to say something pretty controversial, which you already know after reading the title: You don’t need to add solubilizer to your foamy, bubbly, lathery surfactants as they’re by definition surfactants, and they can do the job themselves. The very nature of a surfactant is that it has a hydrophilic or water loving head...

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Tips & techniques: How to use a foamer bottle with diluted soap or surfactants

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Someone shared this video from Aromatics International with me of someone showing you how to use a foamer bottle with liquid soap, and I thought maybe I could share some of my thoughts and a formula for diluting castille soap in one of these containers. Foam pump or foamer bottles were designed to create more foam...

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Pro tip: Allantoin goes into the heated water phase – not the cool down phase – of emulsions

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On January 28 on this blog’s Facebook page, I shared the links to the post on allantoin from January 17th here on the blog, and an interesting discussion sprung up, which I thought I’d share here and add more of my thoughts and links because all of a sudden, people are using allantoin in the...

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Formulating tips & techniques: Substituting oils, butters, and esters for other oils, butters, and esters

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In this post, Let’s formulate: Chamomile & aloe botanical summer time body butter (formula), Andrea asked: Can I leave isopropyl myristate (IPM) out (don’t have any) and add a different oil? Or just leave it out? The short answer is yes, you can substitute it. The longer answer is that unless I indicate otherwise in...

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Discussion: How do you handle your large (and growing) inventory of formulating ingredients?

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In the July Q&A, Marta asked, I was wondering how you handle your large (and growing) inventory of formulating ingredients. Do you truly discard them when they are beyond the stated shelf life? Perhaps you just know which ingredients you can store for longer than recommended. Or, perhaps everything is refrigerated (seems impossible). In knitting we...

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