"Summer delight" sprayable emulsion with an Aladdin tweak (Guest post)

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.

This is a sprayable, cold process emulsion with a very light skin feel and quite suitable for summer time. Sprayable emulsions are quite unique in their skin feel and consistency. You can not create these emulsions with any emulsifier and there are only a few emulsifiers on the market that allow you to create a stable emulsion with such a low viscosity that you can spray it from a spray pump. The oil phase of sprayable emulsions are not necessarily lower than in conventional emulsions and may vary, depending on the emulsifier between 10-25%.

I'll give the word to Jilly to explain you in her outstanding "Jillian" way what she've used for this emulsion, why they've used these ingredients and how she's made the emulsion.

Have fun

Elham

Satin-like sprayable emulsion with an Aladdin twist

Recently I discovered the joys of creating emulsions with sucrose stearate, and I am super excited and overly enthusiastic about this one! It opens up tons of possibilities because it is so versatile: you can use it as a stand-alone emulsifier (cold process, hot process, cold-hot process) resulting in a sprayable emulsion; or blend it with another emulsifier (like Plantasens HE20 for example) with more of a lotion texture as finished result.

Call me a geek, but this makes me grinning like a Cheshire cat purely out of sheer joy .

For this blog post, I would like to share my love for making cold process emulsions. The absolute beauty is that there is no heating involved, NONE! So grab hold of your precious oils, hydrosols, extracts and heat sensitive ingredients and add them to your pots and beakers!

Like most of you know by now, I prefer to work within a theme and do research on my ingredients so I know exactly what is in my product.

About the ingredients:

I wanted to emphasize on a light satin-like skin feel, which will spread easily without soapiness and stickiness. It’s the summer after all, and at this moment we don’t need those thick and heavy creams. Nice and easy will be sufficient. So we are aiming for fresh, breezy, nourishing, soft moisturizing, satin/silk feel with an intoxicating scent.

About the theme:

If you are living in Europe, you probably have suffered (enjoyed?) from the heat wave too. By the looks of it, it is going to be a long and hot summer! When I venture outside in these humid and hot temperatures, it always pulls images of Arabian Nights Stories in my mind: strolling through market stalls, smelling spices, seeing exotic fruits, a mystical feeling, and a spark of magic. Ha, yes, I am a dreamer at heart!  I tried to grab these senses together and poured them into a sprayable bottle. It’s no Genie in the Lamp, but I hope you get the gist . Are you ready for a magic carpet ride with Aladdin?

Formula

Phase A

40% freshly boiled distilled water

3% sucrose stearate

Phase B

6,5% avocado oil, organic, virgin

5% poppy seed oil, organic, cold pressed

3% LexFeel natural

2% organic vanilla maceration in organic rapeseed oil

2% cinnamon oil macerated in organic rapeseed oil

2% raspberry CO2 extract, organic

0,1% EO organic clove bud

0,5% tocopherol

0,1% rosemary CO2 extract, organic

Phase C

Up to 100% rose hydrosol (preserved)

2% sodium lactate

2,5% Vegeluron

0,5% panthenol

0,1% allantoin

0,1% Dermofeel PA-3

Phase D

4% glycerine, natural, organic, 99,8%

0,4% Solagum AX

0,1% sclerotium

Phase E

0,9% Euxyl K903

Procedure:

1- You need to take your time when you work with sucrose stearate. It does NOT dissolve in water, nor in oil. So, we are going to prepare our phase A, which means (part of our) water phase with our emulsifier. Blend it together with a glass spatula. You will notice that it will create a gel like texture almost immediately, and that there might be some clumping. Don’t worry about this; it will have a happy ending, I promise . We are going to let this rest, and let the sucrose stearate swell in the water for 1-2 hours at room temperature. Don’t rush this stage, I have noticed the hard way that my emulsions are better if I leave it for 2-2,5 hours.

2- After its rest, it looks like this: swelled gel like texture and some clumps (no worry).

3- We can now prepare our phases B + C + D, each in a separate beaker

• Blend all ingredients of phase B, your oil phase. The vivid green colour of the avocado oil faded quite a lot to a mossy green because of the other oils and raspberry CO2 extract.

4- Add all the ingredients of phase C in a beaker.

• You can make the stirring a bit easier on yourself by putting this beaker on a magnificent magnetic stirrer for a short amount of time. Vegeluron is fantastic, but I have to admit, it has a snot-like texture (pardon me French); and some of you have mentioned having difficulties blending their allantoin. Before twirling on the magnetic stirrer it looks like this

here we have an action shot

5- In the mean time, you can prepare your gum/glycerine blend, phase D

6- Et voilà, look how nice and homogenous our phase C is now!

7- Okay, all our phase are now ready! Time to get this emulsification process started!

8- Add phase B (the oil phase) slowly to phase A (water/emulsifier); you can do this by adding a small aliquot, blend well together, another small aliquot, blend well, etc. until your oil beaker is empty. You will notice that the small clumps are starting to disappear during this process, yay!

It’s time to homogenize, this will help creating a more stable and lovelier emulsion. For a 60g batch, I do 10 cycles of 10 seconds. Haha, crazy, I know, but it works for me

9- Now we can add phase C, the rest of our water phase in exactly the same way.

10- Now we need to disperse the gum/glycerine blend. I’ll use the Blendia again for this.

11- Homogenize the blend once again. For my batch 2 cycles of 1 minute is sufficient. After that, our emulsion looks gorgeous!

12- Make a 10% dilution to measure the pH. In my case the pH was 6,04. Our aim is a pH between 5 and 5,5. But we know that when we add Euxyl K903 the pH will drop, so I do nothing and cross my fingers that the pH will end up somewhere between this range after adding the Euxyl k903 .

13- Add Euxyl k903.

14- Make another 10% dilution to measure the pH. In my case it was 4,93 so I added 1 drop of sodium hydroxide and then the pH was 5,10.

15- Pour the product in a suitable bottle with a spray pump!

I hope you enjoy your carpet ride to a mystical place from your choice .

Be magical and happy formulating,

Jilly

If you're inspired by this tutorial 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

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.