Elderberry Bath Jelly

Bath jelly belongs to those products like "ice cream" that nobody really needs but everybody loves and consumes.

It is much more exciting and attractive than bath salt or bath oil, looks quite pretty and tempting,  is easy to make and is like a jewel in your bathroom.

You can add bath jelly (obviously) to bath under running hot water (to accelerate its dispersion), you can make a foot or hand bath for your personal SPA (if you're like me and don't bath frequently) or you can apply it under shower directly to your skin. It's such an amazing skin feel. In the latter case please: Reduce the concentration of the essential oils.

Anyway, the sky is your limit. Add infusions, plant extracts, hydrosols and whatever you want to the jelly and preserve it with a suitable preservative. You can even combine bath salt and jelly in one product or as in my case, combine bath jelly and foam in one product.

The key ingredient is preparing bath jelly is obviously the gel-maker or the gum. There are some commercial versions available that use acrylic copolymers (carbomer) or gelatin. I wanted to make a natural  vegan product and blended two natural gums Xanthan and Konjac. Xanthan gum doesn't build any gel on its own, but in combination with Konjac gum, it builds nice and stable gels.

As my fruity ingredient, I applied elderberry infusion and elderberry extract (the colour comes from Elderberry anthocyanins). This colour turns to blue-greenish under alkaline pH.

I blended warming ginger essential oil with blood orange essential oil. The total concentration is 4.5% in this jelly. Please reduce the concentration if you're going to apply this product as a shower jelly and directly to your skin.

Before we start I want to recommend you to read our older posts: hygienic manufacturing practice in cosmetic lab and introduction to Basic equipments and utensils for a cosmetic lab.

Here is the recipe for 100 gr:

Elderberry infusion   to 100 gr

Elderberry hydroglyceric extract  5.0%

Symbio®solv XC   6.0%

Blood orange essential oil  4.0%

Ginger essential oil   0.5%

Euxyl® K903  1.0%

Xanthan gum   0.6%

Konjac gum   0.9%

Glycerine (99.5%)  5.0%

Coco glucoside (APG)  10.0%

Disodium/Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate  10.0%

Lactic acid to adjust the pH

Instruction:

1- Prepare an elderberry infusion in hot distilled water. The concentration is totally up to you. We prepared a 15% infusion.

2- Wait 10-15 minutes and the filter the infusion.

3- Add elderberry extract to the infusion. At this stage I reduced the pH with lactic acid to about 3.0-3.5. (Since the surfactants have an alkaline pH, they would turn the nice red elderberry colour to an ugly blue-green, if you reduce the pH, this colour change will not happen)

4- Blend the essential oils, the preservative (Euxyl® K903) and (Symbio®solv XC) in a beaker and add this to the blend in step 3.

5- Mix xanthan and konjac with gylcerin into a slurry in a small beaker. Add this blend into the blend in step 4 under agitation.

6- Very slowly (to avoid excessive foam) add the surfactants.

7- Adjust the pH to around 5.0-5.5 eithe rwith lactic acid or with baking soda.

Voila, here is your pretty and yummy bath jelly. Keep it safe from children's reach (or keep the kids safe from the bath jelly).

It takes about 24-48 hours for the viscosity to stabilize. If you prefer a higher viscosity, you can increase the gum concentration.

Hope you'll enjoy making and using this jelly.

BeHappy and have fun