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How to Make an Emulsified Scrub

So while I'm over here, I'm just looking at these scrubs and I just wanted to point out that this scrub right here uses jojoba beads and that's where it's getting its beautiful color. So, remember, we talked about jojoba beads and how they can be colored so that you can get some really fun and funky colors. So, this is jojoba beads and they come in a wide range of colors, so if you're thinking, I mean, I want my products to be all natural but I want them to have fun colors, you don't have to sacrifice fun colors for all natural, either. This is our final recipe that we're going to make and this is an emulsified scrub and the emulsified scrub is really a soap, it's a lotion, it's a salt all in one. Let's talk a little bit about the ingredients and then, let's talk about the importance of sanitizing our equipment to make sure we are starting at a really good, a really good starting point. So, this recipe uses sweet almond oil and one of the reasons that I chose sweet almond oil for this ...

recipe is because it has a very, very long shelf life. That's really important to me when I'm making scrubs because there is nothing acting upon my oils to make them last longer. In cold, processed soap, remember they've been changed. They're no longer just oils that are sitting there. When you're making a lotion, or a bomb, or in this case, an emulsified scrub, there's nothing in this to make the oil have a longer shelf life, so I chose sweet almond oil because it's got some really great linoleic and oleic fatty acids, meaning it provides a good moisture barrier to the skin, it's a conditioning agent, and because it has a really nice, long shelf life. This recipe also uses emulsifying wax and emulsifying wax is a synthetic ingredient that helps oils and water mix together, and so in this case, we're using emulsifying wax MF, it comes as little odorless pastels. They melt down in the microwave or, if you don't have a microwave, on a stove in a double boiler. Stearic acid. So stearic acid is usually derived from palm oil and, in this case, it helps the entire scrub bind together. And then beeswax. Where is my cute beeswax? (snapping) There it is. It's an adorable, little guy. (audience laughing) It smells delicious. So, in this case, we're using the beeswax as a hardening agent but we're also using the beeswax to help this entire mixture stay together because all of these ingredients here need to keep all of this salt here suspended and joined together, and so that's one of the reasons that beeswax is so important in this recipe. It's got such a nice, really warm smell, too, so I feel like that adds to the whole, overall smell of the final product. We're using mango butter in this recipe and mango butter is high in essential fatty acids, and it also is good with vitamin A and vitamin E, and those are two pretty common antioxidants that are supposedly good for antiaging. And mango butter, interestingly enough, is extracted from dried mango kernels, or the mango seeds. We're also using distilled water. We don't ever use tap water when making DIY bath and body products because tap water can have microbes, tap water can have different, little things that break off in the piping system, and natural castile soap. So, this is made with 100% olive oil and it's just a castile soap base, and the reason we're using some of this is for the cleansing ability. Remember I said this was gonna be a soap, and a lotion, and a salt all in one? This is the soap part. It's this castile soap. Our preservative of choice for this one, we're going to use optiphen. So, nice oil-soluble preservative. It's paraben free, it's thalate free, and it's a great, broad-spectrum preservative that works at a very high and low PH range, and is going to be able to overcome pretty much anything that the end user does to this product. And then, finally, we're using just a regular, fine grained, sea salt that's high in magnesium and bromides. Magnesium and bromides are considered soothing, they're considered relaxing, and it's also got potassium in it, which is considered moisturizing. Like, this particular salt will help to draw moisture to the skin, which is fantastic. One of the things that I did before making this because we are introducing water into this product was I sanitized everything in a 5% bleach water solution. It is so important because there is water in this recipe, so we need to start out right. We need to start out with a clean canvas, so we make sure there's no microbes or bacteria being introduced. So, this is just a 5% bleach water solution. So, one ounce of bleach and one gallon of water. This is what they do at restaurants. You clean your sink, sanitize your sink, and then you literally just take your big bowl. You can either spray with sanitizer like your bleach water solution or I like to do a full dunking and then just put it out on clean paper towels and just let it dry. Yeah. Quick question, for somebody who asked if you are allergic to bleach, how else can you sanitize your equipment or containers? So, if you are allergic to bleach, you can sanitize with rubbing alcohol, so 91% and 99% rubbing alcohol will kill and bleach anything. You can also use, there are commercial grade sanitizing products that are used for cosmetic facilities and you can find that at a cleaning store or you can find it online. Restaurants tend to use the bleach water but there are definitely other options out there. Whatever the option is, though, you need to really be certain that it's evaporating off or that it's going to be okay in your product, right? Like what if a little bit of bleach water didn't dry on here? What would that do? It wouldn't do anything to my lotion. What if a little bit of alcohol didn't dry? That's fine, it's gonna evaporate out, right? Whatever you buy, if you're buying another product, just make sure that it's not something that could irritate skin or will potentially hurt anybody if a little bit was left over in the container. It's so important to start with a clean canvas first, though, that it's definitely worth doing the research to find another solution if you are allergic to bleach. Thank you. Absolutely. So, this is our emulsified scrub recipe and we have talked about the ingredients that are going into them and why I chose them. So, the first thing that we're going to be doing is combining the... Here we go, here is my glass container. We are going to be combining our 1.9 ounces of sweet almond oil and our 1.2 ounces of emulsifying wax. 0.6 ounces of stearic acid. Our 0.7 ounces of beeswax. And I see a little bit left in there, so I'm just gonna dip that out and then, melting this for two minutes in the microwave. And the reason I did two minutes is because I know that will melt the whole, entire thing. Depending on the strength of your microwave, you may need to do more or less. The key is just that you want it to be fully melted and fully mixed together. Another key when you are melting in the microwave is when you're melting oils and butters in the microwave is you wanna make sure that you're choosing an appropriate container that has the, A, microwave safe, and B, it has an adequate amount of head space to A, not boil over but B, not explode, so if I was going to be melting all of that small amount in here, that would leave so much head space here that all this air would get supercharged and superheated, and my glass container could possibly break, so it's really important that you choose an appropriately sized container when you are melting your oils and your waxes. I also like to make sure that my oils are in with my waxes because it helps my waxes melt down more smoothly and evenly. Some people, at this point, like to give their waxes and their oils a stir just to make sure they're melting evenly because, remember, the microwave heats from a core. It heats from the inside, out. So the inside is warmer than the outside but I know that two minutes is gonna be great, so while that's melting, let me also remind you that I'm not a hair net, I'm not wearing gloves. So, if you were thinking about making this for sale, you wanna make sure that you are following good manufacturing practices. Wearing your hair net, wearing your gloves, wipes down the counter with bleach water, and are following good manufacturing practices because the FDA and you want to make sure you're making the safest products that are available on the marketplace. Are there any questions while that's melting, Kenna? Absolutely. So, Sandy Spence asks, is there any specific type of coconut oil needed? This question came in a little bit earlier but I know that there's tons of coconut oils out there. So, is there any specific types? So, there's actually three different kinds of melt points that coconut oils have. There is a 96, a 76, and one that's over a hundred degrees and they all act the same in your recipe, interestingly enough. The only difference is how long it takes to melt them versus not melt them. The most common one you'll find at the stores, though, is a 76 degree melt point, that is the most common one. So, as long as it's solid at room temperature, that's the one that you can definitely use and the 76 degree one is the most common, and honestly, you have to work pretty hard to find any other kind of melt point. The 76 degree one is definitely the most common one. So, right now, what I did is I added all of my castile soap to my water and I'm gonna put this in the microwave for just one minute, so it's just three ounces distilled water and three ounces of castile soap base. I'm just gonna put this in for one minute because if I add cold soap and cold water to my melted oils and waxes, it ends up congealing really quickly and gunky. So, right here, I can see that there is a thin layer of oil and a thin layer of waxes. So, I'm gonna wanna give this a good stir before I mix everything together. I also need to add my mango butter. Mango butter is like any butter in that when you melt it, and you melt it very quickly in a microwave, it has the potential to get really gritty and really grainy, which is not ideal. So, I add it slowly and gently to my heated oils and waxes to make sure it melts in a slow and gentle fashion. If you don't do that, it runs the danger of being gritty. In this particular product, since it's a scrub, we probably wouldn't notice if it got gritty and I still like to do everything kind of perfectly, so we're gonna melt that down gently. (microwave beeping) So, now I see my mango butter is melting in smoothly. Needs just a little bit more and then, I'm going to come over and get my castile soap base and my water, my distilled water. Yes? Somebody had asked about making their own castile, what's it, soap, or your own base. Is that? Can you make your own castile liquid soap base? Yes, you can, I have a small booklet and video at Brambleberry.com but you can learn how to make your own castile base. I will tell you, I have been making liquid soap for about as long as I've been making bar soap. It is... Yep, I'm not lying. It's the most finicky bath and body product that I've ever made and it takes a lot of patience but it's cheap when you make it yourself. So, yes, you totally can make your own liquid soap from scratch. It's like cold processed soap making except, instead of using sodium hydroxide, you use potassium hydroxide, which is another hydroxide, it's another alkali that also has a high PH but it allows for saponification of the oils and doesn't go solid, instead it goes a semisolid or a liquid. So, yes, you absolutely can and the Brambleberry.com lye calculator allows you to switch between liquid soap making and bar soap making, and I don't wanna discourage you by saying it's the most finicky product I've ever made, so I feel bad that I said that but, honestly, it does take a little bit of time and patience to master. You can do it, though. I've done it. And sometimes like, I like buying sourdough bread from the store because I'm not a big fan of going through the whole process, so I kind of feel that way about castile soap. So, but yes, you can totally make your own. Great question. So now... Last steps are that we need to combine our oils and waxes with our castile soap and stick blend it, and make sure the temperature is good because we are going to be adding juniper breeze fragrance oil. It smells very fresh and herbaceous, and then we have our optiphen. This is a stick blender and the reason we have a stick blender here is because we really just want everything to emulsify quickly. Remember, when these chemical reactions take place, part of the way they take place is because all of these molecules need to bind with all of these molecules, so we can hand stir it. It just takes a while to get these to do the link up, so that's why we use a stick blender, and if you don't have a stick blender, you can totally use, you can use a whisk. It just takes a lot longer. If you're using a whisk, a cold water bath is pretty helpful at this point. So, I'm adding my distilled water and my liquid soap to... My... Butters and waxes, giving a quick stick blend, taking the temperature. 149, so good, I can add my optiphen. Do you see how gummy that's looking? The reason it looks so gummy compared to, because this is a really similar recipe to the lotions, right? Really similar recipe, just different proportions. Reason it looks so gummy is two-fold. One. (buzzing) One is the liquid soap, not a fan of turning into lotion. Right? It's a soap. It's like no, no, no, no, no. I'm supposed to break down oils. Why in the world would you possibly be trying to make me into a lotion? I am trying to break down oils and that's why the liquid soap wants to clump but then we take and we force it to stick together by adding the beeswax in there, by adding the emulsifying wax in there, and so that is how this emulsified scrub ends up working so well because all of the ingredients work synergistically to help overcome the fact that the soap's natural tendency is to break down oil and so it's trying really hard to break down the oils in there but the emulsifying wax and the beeswax keep it all together and keep it bound up beautifully. So, then, all you do is just mix this in and if I was making this for big, large scale production, this is when I'd be using a Hobart mixer or something that had a really nice mixing chop because, I mean, this texture and this consistency is gorgeous. Like it is so, so, so pretty and then, all you do is you just cap it. And I'm gonna check and see what this temperature is because I might not cap it quite yet. It's 105, it's probably not gonna be evaporating much more. So, take your cosmetic grade containers, take your spoon, and just fill it up. And then, once it is cool enough, then you put the, you put the... You put the cap on it and you label it.