Help with Lotion recipe

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hellogorgeous

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So this is just my second time making lotion. The first time, I used BTMS 50, this time I tried good ol Ewax. Overall, I don't mind the end product. But I found this morning, it's separating a little bit. Plus it's a tad oily on the skin, but I'm assuming that has something to do with using no stearic?

Recipe:

water - 75%
Avocado Oil - 4%
Cocoa Butter - 5%
Sweet Almond Oil - 5%
Castor Oil - 3%
Ewax - 7%
fragrance - 1%
1 tsp arrowroot powder per 8oz finished product

So how's the recipe look? Am I on the right track? Since it's separating, what needs to be tweaked? If anyone has a tried and true basic lotion recipe, I'd love to know what it is. But I do not have any stearic on hand.
 
Thanks! Yes they were the same temp - at least within a couple degrees. So if I don't have any cetyl alcohol or stearic acid, where should that extra 3% go? That's pretty much what I did - added the stearic % to the water value to make up for it.
 
For me, the extra 3% would go into cocoa butter or the oil. However, you might want to try adding 3% beeswax along with the 7% ewax.
 
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Did you heat to 160 deg F and hold at that temp for 20 minutes before blending -- or did you mix at room temp? Did you mix by hand or use a stick blender? Heat-and-hold and high-shear mixing (stick blender) will help with emulsification.

Just some other thoughts -- recipes with 75% to 80% water have worked fine for me. The difference between them and 70% water is that the higher-water versions will be lighter and more flowable. The closer you go to 70% water, the thicker and creamier the product.

I would probably use more like 4% e-wax, but I have also been adding cetyl alcohol or stearic acid to my lotions. I think 7% e-wax w/o cetyl or stearic should work, but I personally haven't tried that. Adding a little more cocoa butter, as lsg suggested, would also add some stearic and some thickening to your recipe if you want to stick with just the 7% e-wax.

The oily skin feel might be coming from your choice of oils -- avocado and castor are fairly heavy oils and sweet almond is kinda medium heavy. Also e-wax has an oilier feel than BTMS-50. But give it a day or three before you pass final judgement on the skin feel -- I've been finding my lotions feel more oily or greasy at first, but seem nicer after a few days.

I would also add preservative to this recipe. Germall Plus would work well in this lotion, but there are others that would be fine too.

I second the recommendation for checking out Susan's blog at swiftycraftymonkey. --DeeAnna

PS I made a nice lotion with 15% sweet almond, 3% cocoa butter, 5% e-wax or BTMS-50 (I tried it both ways), 2% stearic, 1% essential oil, and 0.5% Germall Plus, with water as the balance of the recipe. I like the skin feel of both versions -- light, not overly greasy. It is nice on hands or on mildly dry skin.
 
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Thanks DeeAnna! Yes I did add 1% Optiphen, forgot to mention that. I did heat and hold and blend. But I'm thinking maybe I didn't blend enough, I was in a rush and working on other stuff and poured the lotion in bottles fairly early. I did do another batch with cherry kernel, rice bran, and shea yesterday (just to see the difference and which I prefer). I do like both, so now I'm torn! lol I still prefer the BTMS 50 over e-wax, but I'm short on it right now and have a huge bag of ewax to use up. So I figure I'll use up what I have, and then switch to the BTMS when I get more and call it the "new improved version!". lol

On the plus side, my hands have never been so soft in my life! I have eczema on my knuckles too and after a couple days of testing these lotions, it's pretty much disappeared. :) Even prescription creams couldn't do that!
 
I'd say you are doing everything about as right as you can do it and you have a good handle about what might have happened when your lotion separated. Kudos to you!

Just to give you a point of reference, I mix with a stick blender twice -- once right after combining the oil and water phases at 160 degrees F, and a second time at 120 deg. when I add preservative and essential oils. I don't blend long either time -- 15-20 good pulses with the blender -- but I do think that the second mixing is just as important as the first for proper emulsification.

When I pour into my containers, I do it immediately after the second blending. Ideally the lotion is juuuusssst beginning to thicken at that time, but is still very pourable. (Sometimes it thickens up real fast, though, and I don't get the luxury of just pouring my lotion into its containers.)

The lotions I have made are remaining nicely stable. Before I made my first lotion, I was reading procedures in which people were mixing their lotions for minutes at a time, so I was a little skeptical at first about the brief mixing times. My mentor just asked me to follow her method and prove to myself that it does indeed work. So far so good, anyways! --DeeAnna
 
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