Using allantoin in balms and butters: Avocado/hemp butter for cracked and ...

Today's post is written by our Jilly who is not only a talented skincare formulator, she has her own unique way of explaining what she does and why she does it. Her blog posts are detailed, explaining each single step with fabulous photos so that everybody (even those of you with not a long experience in a cosmetic lab) can follow her.

Besides being a skincare formulator and a tutor by Formula Botanica, she is a runner and she knows how to take care of her feet and pamper her. This is a butter she prepared in winter/early spring but as we all know, our feet need pampering all year around and specially during summer when we wear flip-flops or fanciful sandals.

Depending on your climate and ambient temperature, or depending on the market you are going to sell this product, you may need to slightly modify this formulation. If you are in a hot area, you may need to add more hard butter and wax to increase the melting point and void melting the butter, if you are in a colder area you can decrease the wax content and add more oils. As always, we receommend that you make your first batches in small volumes (30-50 gr) and to completely study the stability and behaviour of the product under various conditions before you launch the product or make a 1kg batch as a gift or a prototype product.

Have fun. I give the word to Jilly.

Elham

Avocado/hemp butter for cracked and chapped feet

This time we are going to make a lovely balm/butter perfect for dry, cracked, chapped, … feet!

Why do dry feet occur so regularly?

We have sebaceous glands (providing us with sebum) all over the body, except on the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet! As we all know, sebum is our own natural moisturizer, which keeps our skin (and hair) healthy, shiny and supple; in short: it prevents our skin and hair from drying. Since our feet lack this sebum, we need to take special care of them.

So, we are going to make a delicious balm/butter to pamper our feet! I have chosen this kind of product because it is thicker than a lotion and it is extra effective at moisturizing the skin; and I have experienced myself it works better than any cream .

For this balm, we have a bonus in store for you: we are going to include an extraordinary ingredient, which might surprise you!! (Just wait a moment)

Personally, I like to know what benefits and purposes my ingredients have. Therefor I spend quite a lot of time researching them. I need to know what they DO (or don’t), why they do this, and if they are able to synergistically work together. Every ingredient has its purpose and needs to be thought trough why I put it in my product. So, here is sample of my research for this one, to see what we are going to use and why:

• Myrica fruit wax: my favourite vegan wax to improve on the texture and to create an occlusive layer on top of the skin, locking in moisture + forming a physical barrier to epidermal water loss in doing so.

• Cupuaçu butter, raw, unrefined: belongs to the same family as cocoa and it is one of the superfruits of the Amazonian rainforest. Cold pressed from the fruit seeds. It has a balanced combination of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid, hence its low melting point and very nice skin feel. Key words: moisturizer, barrier repair, reduces inflammation and transepidermal water loss.

• Cocoa butter, unrefined: one of the most stable fats known. Adds not only richness to the texture, it also imparts an excellent skin feel (and it smells of yummie chocolate .

• Avocado oil, organic, virgin: the unrefined, cold pressed version of this outstanding oil has a captivating deep green colour and is favoured in cosmetics since it has more therapeutical value than the refined pale yellow one. A lot of podologists recommend products made with this oil for dry feet, especially in winter. It is a superb emollient and it has a reputation for having a higher degree of penetration into the dermis than most carrier oils. It is said to have skin healing properties too. High oleic acid content (55%).

CAUTION when you have a sensitivity/allergy for latex

• Hemp seed oil, virgin, organic: has high contents of omega-6 acids, omega-3 acids and phytosterols which are responsible for barrier repair and remarkable anti-inflammatory properties; for this reason it is applied with neurodermitis and dry skin. Since the oleic acid content is relatively low it's recommendable to combine it with oleic acid containing oils.

• Babassu oil, organic: obtained from the nuts of the babassu, a coconut like fruit, very similar to coconut oil. It melts with skin contact and leaves a very pleasant and soft skin feel. An excellent emollient oil with wound healing properties and beneficial to both greasy and dry skin.

• Tamanu oil, organic, cold pressed: is obtained from the seeds of the fruit. Like our avocado oil, it has a distinct dark green colour. Virgin tamanu oil has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, astringent and wound healing properties. And you don’t need much in order to benefit from all these amazing effects.

• Lexfeel natural: I have already chosen to work with mostly dry oils, but this fab ingredient is an amazing addition when you are really looking for a “dry” feeling in your finished oils/butters/balms/… It imparts shine, dry feel, and lubricity without greasiness. This is thé ingredient that has made my gran a big fan of body oils and butters .

• Calendula CO2 extract: here in Belgium it seems that every skin healing cream contains calendula, making everyone taking this wonderful flower for granted. I never stopped being amazed by this wonderful flower and its effectiveness. Normally calendula flowers are dried and macerated into a vegetable oil. Using the Calendula CO2 makes it much more potent and you only need a teeny tiny amount. It provides effective treatment for most minor skin problems and is good to use in all cases where cell regeneration is required. Due to its carotene content, it is excellent for healing chapped skin on hands and feet. The carotene is a powerful antioxidant and works well to fight free radicals, the cause of the chapped skin. Other key words: astringent heals wounds, antiseptic, antifungal, anti-bacterial, antiviral and it contracts the capillaries (an action that explains its effectiveness for healing cuts, wounds, varicose veins, and various inflammatory conditions).
  The CO2 extract is a very high viscosity paste, so it is recommend to NOT add it directly to the formulating but to pre-disperse it in one of your carrier oils before adding it to the rest.

• Chamomile CO2 extract: another exceptional extract! We all know the beautiful mostly blue, slightly greenish colour of the German chamomile essential oil, BUT the colour of this extract is totally green! This is because the blue colour is obtained after steam distillation and the conversion of matricin to chamazulene, which is not the case in cold obtained CO2 extracts.

An extract that can be used to nourish many skin ailments because of its high contents of bisabolol and chamazulene; both are anti- inflammatory.

The same procedure as with calendula CO2.

• D-tocopherol: Vitamin E is an effective anti-oxidant; it both protects the product (lipids) and the skin and hair against oxidation. This is the natural vitamin E which is a blend of tocopherols.

• Rosemary CO2 extract: a wonderful extract that has anti-oxidative, antimicrobial and anti- inflammatory properties. You can add it to all of your carrier oils, oil blends, serums, lotions and balms to prolong the oxidative shelf life of the ingredients and the final product, and to avoid rancidity.

• EO lavender high altitude: for me, this is the finest aroma of all lavender oils. Used for its soothing, relaxing (and anti-microbial) properties.

Oh, and get this!!:

• Allantoin: this is a very mild additive gained from urea. It has a superior thermal stability over urea and has moisturizing, anti-inflammatory, skin conditioning and protecting functions. It also works as an antioxidant, encourages the generation of new cells and speeds up the shedding of dead skin cells.

Allantoin is a white powder, which is slightly water soluble (0,4% @ 20 ^oC) and is added to the water phase in the formulation. So, this is shocking, right?! We are making an anhydrous balm! And we are adding this! Yes yes yes, we are doing this! We can add it when our balm is cooling down and has made a trace, stir continuously as the butter cools till it solidifies. But we will come to that later when we are talking about the procedure and I’ll show this step by step with photos. Exciting, isn’t it?!  It is an excellent ingredient for chappy foot soles so we need this in our product!

Okay, we are now ready for our formula:

Formulation:

10% Myrica fruit wax

34% Cupuaçu butter

5% Cocoa butter

18% Avocado oil

10% Hemp seed oil

6,7% Babassu oil

5% Tamanu oil

5% Lexfeel natural

0,1% Calendula CO2 extract

0,1% Chamomile CO2 extract

0,5% D-tocopherol

0,1% Rosemary CO2 extract

0,5% EO lavender high altitude

5% Allantoin

Let’s make this beauty, shall we ?

Procedure:

1- Our calendula and chamomile CO2 extracts are more like a paste, so we are going to pre-dissolve them first in our oils

• measure avocado oil, hemp seed oil and tamanu oil in a beaker and add calendula and chamomile CO2 extracts

• as you can see they are quite thick and don’t dissolve that easily in our carrier oils

• even after stirring it won’t dissolve

• so we are going to warm our beaker slightly (below 40°C)

• perfect!

2- Now we are going to prepare our wax and butters/solid oils: weigh myrica wax, cocoa butter, cupuaçu butter and babassu oil

3- Okay, let’s melt this phase! As you can see I don’t have a handy hot plate with temperature set up (I am saving for this!! ) so I put a food thermometer in my water bath to keep an eye (and a bit of control) on my temperature.

• Our myrica wax is the ingredient with the highest melting point (between 45°C-55°C); you can see that when we reach 45,5°C it is not yet enough

• But when we reach 49°C everything has nicely molten!

• Put this beaker in a cold water bath (I put in ice packet in it ) and stir so it can start to cool down a bit.

4- Before I add our oils with CO2 extract I put this beaker for a short while in another warm bath (38°C) so we don’t create a cold shock when we add this content to our other beaker.

5- Pour the carrier oils + CO2 extracts and wax/butter/solid oil in one beaker. What a wicked colour!!

6- Put this in a cold water bath and when the temperature of the beaker is below 40°C, we can add our heat sensitive ingredients: lexfeel, tocopherol, rosemary CO2 and lavender EO.

• you can see the allantoin in a beaker next to it, lurking already BUT this is NOT YET the time to add! A bit of patience

7- We can now put our beaker back in our ice water bath. As the mixture is cooling down, you will notice an immediate change in colour, it deepens and darkens. (I have put everything back in my larger beaker so I can stir more comfortably )

8-Now, when you are making balms and butters it is important to never forget that the cooling down phase is at least AS IMPORTANT as your heating phase! When we stir in our mixture, we ensure that our blend cools down uniformly and this will result in a lovely non-greasy and non-grainy finished product! And that’s what we are aiming at, right?!

• So, we are going to cool down and stir until we have a trace!

• To speed up this process we can either put our beaker in our ice water bath (and wait for a long looooong time until we have grown a beard ); or we can put it in the fridge. Now, the fridge is a perfect option but you CANNOT forget about your beaker, you have to take really good care of it

• Here is my time table, I have made a 100g batch: in total 18 minutes in the fridge and every 1,5-2 minutes I give it a good stir. After these 18 minutes I could feel that alongside the rims of the beaker it started to softly solidify, time for a really good stir and scrape along those rims! Closed the fridge again and after another 1,5 minute, this is our result:

9- Time for our exciting part! The allantoin!! Look, it looks like an awful lot, huh?! The first time I did this, I didn’t think this could ever work

• Okay, how do we do this?: I have noticed that it helps if you hold the beaker in the palm of your hand to give it a bit of body heat. And then you stir and stir and stir. Also, scrape a bit around the rims of your beaker so you have every bit of powder in your mixture (I cannot really show this is the photo/video because I have only two hands )

• You can see that after good stirring it is nicely incorporated in our balm without any lumps and bumps

• Because you added some body heat, the mixture is bit warmed up again and you have to get that trace back! No worries, hakuna matata, because now it doesn’t take such a long time as the first. So, we put our beaker back in our ice water bath and don’t forget to stir 

• Et voilà, after 6 minutes we have what we want! A trace!!!

10- And now you can choose: either you pour your balm into (a) jar(s) or you can whip it. Because I like to compare, I have poured an amount in a cute little jar. Our non-whipped version is between yellow and green.

11- Most of the time (depending on the purpose) I love my balms and butters whipped, it gives such a splendid texture! So I dig up my beloved Blendia . Remember: it is important that you only start your whipping after the trace to ensure a good finish!

• here we go for our first round! this is after 1 full minute whipping at full speed

• beaker back in the fridge for 1 minute

• start a second 1 minute of whipping at full speed

• back in the fridge for 30 seconds

• I am still not yet satisfied with texture so I give another round (third) of 1 full minute at full speed, almost there!

• in the fridge for 20 seconds

• last whipping round (4), this time 30 seconds is sufficient and this is our fluffy end result! Doesn’t it look yummie? According to Elham it resembles saffron ice cream

12- Time to scoop everything in jars! Look what a difference in colour for the non-whipped and whipped version!

• Do you wonder why there is such a colour difference? When you whip, you add air into your product. The distance between the neighbouring molecules becomes larger and the density of the particles in a given volume becomes smaller. Because the colour depends on the number/density of particles, the colour becomes less intense (because of the air you incorporate).

• Put everything (without a lid on top of it so it can breathe) in the fridge for 24 hours.

13- Here you can see our finished balms after 24hrs in the fridge.

And here they are after 24hrs at room temperature.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial as much as I did making/writing it . Let me know what you think and I hope it can inspire you to make something extraordinary .

Be magical and happy formulating,

Jilly

Disclaimer: SkinChakra is responsible for the content of this blog post. Please send your comments and questions directly to SkinChakra and don't try to contact Jilly in private or via any other online forum/platform. Jilly or one of our team will happily come back to you.