How to make a lecithin shower cream

Shower creams are among the mildest body wash products for dry and sensitive skin. Apart from mild cleansing, the refat and moisturize the skin and usually a normal to dry skin doesn't need applying any emulsion afterwards. A very dry skin or at very dry climate condition, you may still need to apply a moisturizing lotion.

A shower cream usually contains low concentrations of oils and low concentrations of surfactants. It doesn't foam like a conventional shower gel or soap because the focus is to clean the skin without defatting it. During all my years of formulating activity, I have hardly seen any shower cream with lecithin and since I'm obsessed with lecithin at the moment, I'm making a bunch of lecithing containing products such as facial cleanser, shower cream, shampoo and conditioner.

I'm using very mild natural and ninionic surfactants in this formulation and I'm sure you will love this product even if you have a greasy skin (or specially if you have a greasy skin and take s shower every day)

I'm using two of my favourite emulsifiers: Plantasens HE20 and sucrose stearate for this formulation and I'm using a hot-cold emulsification meaning that I'm only heating the water phase with the emulsifiers and add the oil phase at room temperature.

I usually do not use high concentrations of extracts and hydrosols in rinse-off products and in this case since the water phase is being heated I don't add any hydrosol at all.

As always 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.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1- Weight all ingredients of phase A in a beaker and let it stand ffor about 2 hours at RT.

2- Weight ingredients of phase B, C, D in individual beakers. We usually stir our surfactant phase (phase D with a magnetic stirrer before blending it with other phases)

3- After two hours, heat phase A in a water bath @ 70-75 ^oC^.

Blend this phase during heating. When all of the emulsifier is melted in water it shall look like the above photo.

3- Stop heating and remove the beaker from water bath.

4- Blend the water phase with a few pulses of Blendia (or another suitable mixere)

5- Slowly add the oil phase (Phase B) to phase A and blend with blendia.

6- Now add the gum-glycerin blend while stirring the emulsion. This is the emulsion base before adding the surfactant phase.

7- If your surfactant base is completely homogenous, slowly (to avoid foaming) add it to the emulsion. Do not use Blendia, a spatula is enough for this stage. The viscosity of the emulsion is reduced as you add the surfactant but this is all right.

8- After the surfactant phase is completely blended measure the pH of the product by preparing a 10% dilution of the shower cream in distilled water. In our case, the pH was 6.7 and we added the preservative and the essential oils. Euxyl K903 reduces the pH but not yet to our desired range.

The pH after adding the preservative and essential oils was 5.75 in our case and we added 2 drops of 80% lactic acid (for 100 gr shower cream) to reduce the pH to 5.4.

Fill your lovely shower cream in a suitable bottle. We filled it in this beautiful glass to make our photos but obviously this is not the suitable and applicable container for a shower cream.

It's your turn. Feel free to send us your photos and comment either per mail or to our Facebook page. If you post any photos on Instagram, don't forget to tag @SkinChakra.

BeHappy and have fun