Separated lotion! is it Garbage?

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lolaM

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Just tried out a new lotion recipe which was all going along swimmingly till the last minute when i split the finished (lovely looking, i might add) recipe into two batches to try 2 new fragrances and clearly this is where i buggered things up!
The first batched separated BIG time! Ugh... big fat ugly mess.
second batch i used half the amount of fragrance and while it was far better its still not fully emulsified.
Do i have to bin the lot? Can i mess about with it and potentially salvage it? It's a smallish trial recipe but still i would rather not waste any more of my precious ingredients if im wasting my time
Help me oh experienced lotion makers!

-RECIPE
184g water
7g stearic acid
45g E-Wax

- microwaved till melted and fully incorporated-
then added;

77g refined shea butter
42g mango butter

- when fully melted i got the handblender out and whipped
once cooled i added;

50g sunflower oil
20gGlyserin
7g Vit E
7g Liquid Germal plus

-whipped again till nice n thick.All fine n Dandy. Seperated batch into two bowls

BOWL 1-
10g strawberry milkshake fragrance(saffire blue)

- **** hit the fan

BOWL 2-
5g pommegranite mango fragrance(NDA)

-Oh.....looks ok....ahh....nope......**** it all to hell, No it's a great big bag of shite!
 
Curious where this recipe and procedure came from.

First off microwaving is not a good way to make lotion. Even if you are not from the heat and hold group, I would have put all my oils and butter together (oil phase) and heated them to at least 70º C and the same for the water phase, in which I include the glycerin when I make lotion. Your preservative and vit e would go in the cool down.

I am guessing your cool sunflower did not emulsify. Why was the Sunflower added at cool down? If you have another preservative you could reheat your lotion your lotion and stick blend it. You will most likely kill your Germall Plus since it has to be added at or below 122ºF, which is why I would recommend adding a different preservative so you do not double up.

I admit I did not figure out the percentages to see if it is actually enough emulsifier but it appears to be. If this is a tiny batch I would at least try to get it emulsified for knowledge of finding out if it was a heat issue. If you do not have another preservative I would then trash it or keep it around without using it, just to see what it does.

Still guessing it was your cool or room temp oil that caused the separation.
 
Yeh, i don't have another preservative but i went back to the website to re-check the recipe and compare it to what i'd written down and i see that i totally messed up the quantities when converting it into grams and scaling it down. Doh!
* note to self- Red wine, lotion making & math do not mix!*
So im abandoning the mess i made last night and starting again. I am attaching the link to the video i got the recipe & method for and im interested in if you think i should still follow how they do it?
I haven't made a lot of lotion before but when i have i used the method and recipes suggested in the "swift crafty monkey" website. which have always been nice. However last time i tried a thicker "body butter" type lotion and although it feels nice on the consistency looked a tad "grainy" and i wasn't pleased with the results.
What i'd like to achieve is something between a body butter and a lotion that is super light and fluffy.
So reading the description from the recipe on this site it sounded like what i might be looking for.
Do you think it's worth another go? Or Maybe you can suggest a different recipe/method to try?

 
I see you tweaked the recipe considerably so it is hard to tell if the original recipe would have worked. I still think the Sunflower oil added at cool down fouled you up, the emulsified lotion at that point could not hold the added oil.

Did you use the Soft and Silky E Wax or original E wax. I just ask because Soft & Silky does give a different feel to lotions than regular E Wax, but not the powder feel of BTSM inci for Soft & Silky is
Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Ceteareth-20

In my opinion making lotion from a recipe is kinda like cooking, you just cannot tweak the recipe and compare :D
 
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