[BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT MAKING THIS RECIPE, PLEASE READ THE UPDATE ON THIS POST HERE]
Hello there!
I am back with a new extra fast recipe for a silky silky body cream!!! 😀
The key ingredient of this recipe is Sodium Polyacrilate! (Wikipedia says: “also known as waterlock, is a sodium salt of polyacrylic acid with the chemical formula [-CH2-CH(COONa)-]n and broad application in consumer products. It has the ability to absorb as much as 200 to 300 times its mass in water.”)
IT IS ALMOST LIKE MAGIC!!! 😀
If you have ever made creams before, using thickening agents and emulsifiers which needed to be heated up to 70°C… you can forget about all the mess made by double boilers and having to check the temperature because nothing of this is needed!!! YAY 😀
This wonderful powder, at just 1%, is an amazing thickening agent and it emulsifies between 10% to 20% fats just by using a SPOON! It doesn’t need heating, it doesn’t need tricky mixing with an immersion mixer… just a spoon! It creates a cream with a light and silky feel…
I couldn’t believe it but… when I finally tried it, eventually I had to! 😀
The bad side about Sodium Polyacrilate is that it does not work fine with certain ingredients – mostly salts – like, for example, urea and sodium hyaluronate. So… bear this in mind if you want to make a recipe of your own and not follow mine! 😉
Also, I think (but this is my opinion and nothing stops you to use it otherwise) it is best for body creams rather than face creams: first of all for the fact that it needs a minimum of 10% fats and secondly because the silky feel on the skin of the face is a bit “too much” IMO. 😀
Now… ENOUGH: to the recipe!!!
RECIPE: (for 100gr of product. In the pictures I made much more than 100gr).
Phase A
Water to 100 (HERE the explanation)
Sodium Polyacrilate 1.5
Glicerin 5
Hydrolized Silk Proteins 2
Phase B
Safflower oil 5
Jojoba oil 5
Sweet almond oil 5
Dry flo 1 (this is a powder of a modified starch which will help the cream to not feel greasy even though it contains 15% of fats 😉 )
D-Panthenol 2
Fragrance oil (few drops of your favorite fragrance oil – cosmetic grade)
Preservative (the quantity depends on the specific cosmetic preservative you own. For this recipe you can use either water soluble or oil soluble with no problems. In my case it needed to be used at 0.6%)
Now to the EXTRA SIMPLE HOW TO:
1) Add glycerin, silk proteins and water; eventually pour Sodium Polyacrilate on top of Phase A:
2) Start mixing with a spatula.
Don’t freak out immediately because it is initially going to look like this:
TRULY TRULY DON’T DESPAIR!!! 😀 It is fine…
3) Keep stirring for approx one minute and TADAAA 😀
It will start to look more like an homogeneous gel.
Here it is still not good enough… but it gives the idea of how silky it becomes in just a little stirring 😉 )
4) Add the Phase B
5) And now stir!!!
6) Eventually add the few left ingredients (preservative, fragrance oil and D-Panthenol) and keep stirring again! 😀
As you can see from the picture above it will already be a nice cream with a bit of translucent feel…
But here is the result after I very briefly decided to use the immersion mixer:
And this all in a matter of 10 minutes 😀
I couldn’t believe it!!! 😀
Hope you liked this recipe!!! 😉
Let me know in the comments!
And let me know if you have any question in case you want to build a recipe of your own! Would be glad to help 😉
[Find the UPDATE to this post HERE]
For more recipes click HERE
To learn how to formulate cosmetics click HERE
For a list of online cosmetic ingredients suppliers click HERE
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
It's all in my hands 
I had the opportunity to test it.
I really liked it. it is compact and gives a fresh effect on the skin. it’s white, with opalescent shades and no bubble at all!
tonight I am going to reproduce this system, changing fats and maybe adding some cosmetic actives for my older skin.
I will let you know…
brava and thanks again.
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Grazie del feedback! :*
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what is dry flo? Where do you get it?
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Hello Dee! 🙂
You are right, I forgot to write the INCI name of the ingredient.
Dry Flo PC is “Aluminum Starch Octenylsuccinate”
You can buy it online on many websites. You find some links of online websites that sell cosmetic ingredients in this post: https://itsallinmyhands.com/2013/04/08/buying_online_cosmetic_ingredients/
I don’t know where you are from but I believe there is a cosmetic ingredient reseller also close to you (there are more and more websites of this kind every single day! 🙂 so you can try your luck on google as well 🙂 ).
However, if you have to purchase Sodium Polyacrilate, probably that same website will have Aluminum Starch Octenylsuccinate 😉 (or you could even do without dry flo!) 🙂
Let me know 🙂
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Hi, its difficult to find dry flo in my country, as they only sells in big bulk, not for home DIY. Is there any alternate ingredient ?
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Probably there is but I don’t know about it.
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Hi, I just came across your blog looking for a cream that contains at least 5% panthenol. I was wondering if, with this recipe a higher percentage of panthenol could be used? And do you sell your creams? I’ve never done anything like this. But …😬 I might consider trying.
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Hello Julie,
no I don’t sell my creams because it is illegal: I don’t have a real laboratory, you see. I only make for myself and to share with people like you 🙂
5% panthenol sounds too much to me. You have to check the data sheet of the substance and, I might be wrong, but I don’t think it is ever suggested to use this high amount of it. I believe a 2% will suffice 🙂
However do not add it in this recipe: sodium polyacrilate doesn’t work well with any salt-like substance so eventually the cream wouldn’t hold together. You would end up with a separated liquid.
If you want to add panthenol you should add it to another kind of cream (I would emulsify with methylglucose sesquistearate 3% + cetyl alcohol 1.5%-2% and gel the water with xanthan gum 0.5%. This to play it safe 🙂 then there are actually many many many other options that could work as well, depends also what you have on hand 🙂 )
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ok, what is the difference between panthenol and D-panthenol?
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“Panthenol comes in two enantiomers, D and L. Only D-panthenol (dexpanthenol) is biologically active, however both forms have moisturizing properties.” (wikipedia)
On cosmetic ingredients shop you only find D-panthenol and when it is not specified, it is still D-panthenol (but if you want to be really sure, just e-mail the online shop to ask).
🙂
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Thank you!! <
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hi, thank you for the post. really really really informative. I spent the last five hours reading.
i would love to buy this magic powder, but couldnt find it anywhere. i looked all the web link you provided, and i only found dry flo in dermolife, but they dont sell sodium Polyacrilate. or maybe i have missed it. I had to use google translate for everything, and sometimes it just crushes.
i would really appreciate it if you can kindly tell me where you bough it from.
thank you soooo much.
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I bought sodium polyacrilate a few times from glamourcosmetics.it (? Or was it .com) and farmaciavernile.it
🙂
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thank you so much.
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lovely recipe! I’m going to try this. I have methyl paraben sodium and propyl paraben for preservative. How can I use this in the place of preservative and at what percentage? I have ordered germall plus but I’d like to add what I have in hand in the mean time ( bought them off a lab supply store and have no idea how to use it). What percentage of methyl n propyl paraben have to go into this cream? Thank you!
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I think parabens shouldn’t go over 1% all together but I don’t know about the maximum quantity of each.
You should contact the lab supply store, request the MSDS and you will know how much you should use! 🙂
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