Sweet Little Crumb

https://www.patreon.com/ThisFormulatingLife/events/161117835

Why I Won't Help You Make Magnesium Lotion

I swear this question comes through groups I moderate almost weekly now, usually some version of

"how much Emulsifying Wax NF do I need for my magnesium lotion?"

I thought it would be a good idea to answer this on Patreon, so I can point people back to it because I feel like the answer keeps getting buried under the next twelve identical posts.

The short honest answer is none. Don't make the lotion.

That's not me waving anyone off the bench or to say you cannot formulate. Home formulators make genuinely good products all the time (you absolutely can, and I'd never tell you otherwise).

It's just magnesium lotion stacks every hard formulation problem on top of every other hard formulation problem, and then hands you the single riskiest format to solve them all in. So, before you attack me for this post and before you even measure out a gram of anything, let’s talk about what magnesium chloride actually is, why a lotion fights you on three fronts, and why I'm not even convinced it does what the label says it does.

What Magnesium Chloride Actually Is

Magnesium chloride (INCI: Magnesium Chloride) is an inorganic salt, MgCl₂. In water it splits into one magnesium ion (Mg²⁺) and two chloride ions, and that little superscript 2 is the whole story for us as formulators. Mg²⁺ is a divalent cation (it carries two positive charges rather than one), and divalent ions are the bit that wrecks emulsions. Hold that thought because we'll come back to it in a moment.

The salt is also very hygroscopic (it grabs water out of the air with enthusiasm, which is why it's usually sold as the hexahydrate, MgCl₂·6H₂O, or as "flakes"). Most of it is pulled from sea water or ancient brine deposits, and it dissolves in water at frankly silly concentrations.

Full Article: https://www.patreon.com/posts/159433163

I love forums, chatrooms, groups, all of it, and I always have. In Australia in 1994 not many people had the internet, but my boyfriend did, so most nights I was at his house chatting to people across the world. When we moved in together in 1995 both sets of parents complained that every time they rang our place the line was busy. You know you are over 45 when you can remember dial-up and an image loading on screen in real time, slowly, line by line, slowly.

In 1996 I was in a chatroom when the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics happened. As it happened. The people actually in Atlanta were losing it ("did you hear that?", "sirens everywhere", "a dude just bombed the Olympics") and the rest of us sat watching the words appear, trying to work out what on earth was going on. It was the first real-time event I ever lived through online, and it was also the first night I ever spent alone in my own place as an adult, so it stuck with me for a lot of reasons. But that is the night my obsession with groups and forums properly started.

I tell you this because I come from that time. I come from a time when the internet was not about monetisation or extracting as much as possible from people (for free). They called it the information highway, and I genuinely believed it was about connecting with others (maybe because that is exactly what I was doing). From 1996 until 2011 I moderated and administered some big forums (60,000 active members on one, 10,000 active teenagers on another, which is a different kind of large). I was called "mum" for years on one of them, because I was in my twenties and most of the others were teens.

So I understand that people do not share the same opinions, and that this is precisely what makes the world turn. I also know that groups, forums, blogs, comment sections and creator platforms connect like-minded people brilliantly and spread misinformation faster than the speed of light. And I know they can be nasty places, where some people decide that because they are not saying it to your face, they can be as rude as they like.

But...
When you admin or moderate a group, or write a public blog, or run a Patreon, or post a reel that thousands of people see, you take on another job. Not the fun job of swapping ideas. The other one. Keeping the place safe. Your social responsibility.

In a formulation space that means a social responsibility to deter unsafe practice and to stop misinformation before it sets (and it does set, like a badly chosen gum, into something you cannot stir back out). On a blog or a social platform or a subscription channel, that responsibility extends to not being one of the people doing the spreading.

The one we meet most often is preservation. Or rather, the formulators who appear to believe that microbes do not exist, do not multiply faster than gremlins, and could not possibly be in their lotion because they washed their hands first.

Think about it in another setting. If I moderated a fireworks group, or a wild mushroom identification group, and someone posted "I made these in my kitchen and the kids are lighting them tonight" or "fairly sure these are edible so I'm serving them for dinner", I would be failing at the job if I left it sitting there in the name of being nice. Not because I enjoy being the fun police, but because safety matters more than letting dangerous advice stand unchallenged.

It is the same responsibility I feel every time I share a formulation. I do not share formulae often, and people wonder why. The reason is simple. When I share a formula, I share one I have actually made, and that I have at the very least done some basic stability testing on, because I do not think I should be handing out unsafe products with my name attached. A product without a proper preservative system is not a harmless personal preference. It is a preventable safety problem. And the moment that advice goes public, the problem stops belonging only to the person who made it.

It becomes frustrating, and it is where my two least favourite problems (fear mongering and chemophobia) hold hands and make a third, bigger one. This is because a lot of the unsafe practice we see is not just ignorance about microbes. It is fear. Specifically, fear of the very ingredients that would keep the product safe.

The "chemical-free" and "toxin-free" marketing of the last decade has done a remarkable thing. It has convinced a generation of formulators and DIY Makers that the synthetic preservative is the villain and the unpreserved kitchen lotion is the pure, virtuous alternative. So people do not skip preservatives because they forgot. They skip them on purpose, because someone with a platform told them synthetics are scary and "natural" is safe.

This is chemophobia doing real damage, and it is the bit that public voices keep feeding instead of starving.

So let me say the unglamorous thing plainly. Water is a chemical. Your skin is made of chemicals. "Chemical-free" is not a meaningful claim, it is a marketing tactic. There is no such thing as a toxin-free product, only a dose, and the dose is the entire point. Which is the whole dose makes the poison concept!

A well-chosen synthetic preservative at a validated use level is one of the safest, most studied things in your formula.

A "preservative-free natural" cream sitting at room temperature, full of water and botanical extracts (which are, by the way, microbe food) is one of the riskiest. Natural is not a safety category. It is a sourcing story. Botulinum toxin is natural. Hydrofluoric acid is not. Neither fact tells you a single useful thing about whether something belongs on your face.

When a public voice repeats "I avoid nasty chemicals" or "I keep it all-natural so I don't need a preservative", they are not sharing a harmless aesthetic preference. They are training their audience to fear the safe thing and trust the dangerous one. And audiences listen to confident people far more than they listen to correct ones.

Three people holding the world with a microphone in the middle
The problem is that the original poster is not the whole audience. There are fifty silent readers for every comment, and some of them will copy exactly what they see.

They will skip the preservative because a creator they admire said synthetics are toxic... They will whip up a sunscreen in the kitchen because a reel made it look easy... They will sell it at a market because someone in a group said it was fine...

Unsafe advice in a formulation space does not stay theoretical. Someone puts that product on their face, their child, their eyelids, or hands it to a friend who trusts them. The fear-mongering and the missing preservative arrive at the same skin, on the same day, from the same advice.

So when it happens, the person holding the platform has to slow the conversation down and say, clearly, "no, this is not safe advice." We don't need to humiliate or be unkind to set the record straight, but we do have to make it plain that some things are not a matter of taste.

I will be honest about my own contribution to the misunderstanding here. I lack brevity (I know), and I do not use a lot of emojis, and I think people read that as strict, or cold, or rude. I do not believe I am a rude person (I hope), and I do not believe the admins I work alongside humiliate anyone either. But I have noticed that people get genuinely offended when they dislike the advice they are given, and I am mostly okay with that, right up until it becomes a safety issue. At that point my feelings about how I come across stop being the priority.

Being a moderator, an admin, a blogger, or a creator is not just tidying comments and approving posts and making nice graphics. Anyone who speaks from a platform, on any pulpit at all, helps set the culture of that space, and that includes the safety culture.

Microbial growth under microscope
Microbial Growth is Naked to the Human Eye (usually)
We are the ones who decide whether unsafe practice gets challenged and put in context, or whether it becomes normal because everyone was too worried about sounding mean. We decide whether chemophobia gets corrected, or amplified for engagement.

Personally, I would rather be annoying and truthful (too blunt, possibly) than help run a space, or speak in one, where beginners absorb unsafe habits by osmosis and learn to fear the wrong things.

So yes. I love groups. I love community. I love the messy, loud, generous swapping of ideas that happens when people with the same obsession find each other. But our community needs guardrails, and if you have a platform, you are one, whether you signed up for the job or not.

You can prefer a different emulsifier, a different oil phase, a different skin feel, a different way of formulating. All of that is fair, and none of it is my business. But safety does not care about your opinion, your intentions, your aesthetic, your "all-natural" ethos, or whether you washed your hands, wore PPE and followed GMP.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/webinar-q-follow-158734573

Webinar Q & A followup 2

Webinar Q & A Follow Up Part 2: Paddy Asked "What Equipment Did You Use to Mix The Serum" | Dan Asked: “At what point would you move from a dispersion blade to a homogeniser or rotor-stator?” | This Formulating Life Webinar Q & A Follow Up Part 2: Paddy Asked "What Equipment Did You Use to Mix The Serum" | Dan Asked: “At what point would you move from a dispersion blade to a homogeniser or rotor-stator?” by This Formulating Life on Patreon. Join This Formulating Life's community for exclusive content and up...

https://www.patreon.com/posts/webinar-q-follow-158729738

Webinar Questions Follow Up

Webinar Q & A Follow-Up Part 1 | This Formulating Life Webinar Q & A Follow-Up Part 1 by This Formulating Life on Patreon. Join This Formulating Life's community for exclusive content and updates.

I had a great time joining Swiftcraftymonkey early on Monday morning for a workshop on hydrolyzed proteins & peptides.
As Susan said, "we made three formulas - Face the Peptides facial serum and mask essence, Peptide Pout Potion for a peptide lip gloss, and a silky, lightweight, cold process facial moisturizer with proteins & actives that you can make in less than 10 minutes. " All of these formulations were 10 minute formulations (although with the serum, it does need some hydration time).

You can find the replay on Susan's site: https://www.swiftcraftymonkey.blog/zoom-workshop-on-hydrolyzed-proteins-peptides-video-replay-modified-formulas-and-all-the-other-good-stuff/ttps://www.swiftcraftymonkey.blog/zoom-workshop-on.../
If you’re a Formulation or Innovation level subscriber to the site, you can attend these Zoom workshops live or get the replay. These subscriptions also include access to more than 5,200 awesome, safe, stable formulas and posts on the site. All of that for $8 to $15 US with no ads, affiliate links, sponsored posts, pop ups, or AI? Which is the best value. Seriously.

I've posted a follow-up with substitutions, a couple more videos, the two formulations I shared, as well as the workbook from the webinar, on Patreon for $15 and for those who attended the webinar, you can get the pack for $5 by answering the question I posed during the webinar, "what ingredient did I say should be limited in all formulations?" - the answer is the code :D

You can purchase it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/hydrolyzed-up-158553500

Woo hoo! What an awesome Zoom workshop on hydrolyzed proteins & peptides with Natalie Skiller of This Formulating Life and Sweet Little Crumb!

We made three formulas - Face the Peptides facial serum and mask essence, Peptide Pout Potion for a peptide lip gloss, and a silky, lightweight, cold process facial moisturizer with proteins & actives that you can make in less than 10 minutes.

Check out today’s post in which we shared the replay video, modified formulas and workbooks, and questions from the chat with resources for learning more!

https://www.swiftcraftymonkey.blog/zoom-workshop-on-hydrolyzed-proteins-peptides-video-replay-modified-formulas-and-all-the-other-good-stuff/

Don’t forget, if you’re a Formulation or Innovation level subscriber to the site, you can attend these Zoom workshops live or get the replay. So far we have workshops with formulas for shampoo bars, cold process emulsifiers, pH meters, and this new one that you can watch any time.

These subscriptions also include access to more than 5,200 awesome, safe, stable formulas and posts on the site. All of that for $8 to $15 US with no ads, affiliate links, sponsored posts, pop ups, or AI? What? That’s incredible!

Come and Join Swiftcraftymonkey and Sweet Little Crumb in an interactive workshop on Hydrolyzed Proteins, Amino Acids and Peptides. So, on Sunday 17th May, at Noon PDT (Canadian time) I am going to be a guest on SwiftCraftyMonkey's Webinar. For those us downunder, that's 6am Monday morning - what an awesome way to start a Monday. I'm a wee bit excited.

You can find out information about the Webinar here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/zoom-workshop-158355457?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share

In preparation for the webinar, I am sharing a workbook with my patreons, so you can follow along.

If you are a member from SwiftCraftyMonkey, this will be available on Susan's blog as well.

Zoom workshop alert - Hydrolysed and unhinged! | Susan Barclay Nichols Zoom workshop alert - Hydrolysed and unhinged! by Susan Barclay Nichols on Patreon. Join Susan Barclay Nichols's community for exclusive content and updates.