This product is a hybrid between a cream gel and a hydrogel. It has an extremely light and moist skin feel and despite the almost 10% oil phase content feels like a hydrogel rather than a cream gel. It is very pleasant for hot summer days or for tropical warm and humid climate where nobody is inclined to apply a heavy cream over her skin.
This is a product you want to use dropwise. A few drops go a long way so fill it in a dropper or serum bottle and apply it very sparingly.
The folrmulation is not quite KISS when you look at the number of the phases but the procedure is rather straightforward. We are using ecogel here both as the gum and the emulsifier.
As all other formulations with the ecogel you need to disperse and hydrate the gum/emulsifier. We disperse the ecogel @60 C and hydrate it for 30 minutes. Then we let this phase cool down to around 30 before adding the other phases. The preservative system we are using is independent of the pH and since we are working with a hydrosol with a pH lower than 6 we add some arginine at the begining to increase the pH. Miraculously (this happens after you repeat a formulation type several hundred times) the pH at the end of the process is exactly in the range we need and we didn't use any further base or acid to adjust the pH.
Procedure:
1- Blend phase A in a heat proof beaker (weight the empty beaker before you add your ingredients. You'll need the weight of the beaker). Heat phase A @60 C and disperse the ecogel.
2- Let the ecogel hydrate at this temperature for 30 min.
3- After 30 minutes you need to weight the beaker and compensate for the evaporated water or hydrosol
4- Stir the beaker while cooling down the content
5- At a temperature <40 C add phase C
6- Emulsify the oil phase and homogenize for a few minutes
7- Go back to stirring and add phase E
8- Make a 10% dilution and measure the pH. In our case it was 5,20 and that was perfectly in range. The preservative system works independent of the pH but we aim for a pH between 4,8-5,5.
9- Take the stability and microkit samples and fill the rest in a suitable container.
