by Marie | Sep 21, 2020
Stickiness and/or tackiness in formulations can happen for a variety of reasons, but the broad one is that there’s a high enough concentration of a sticky ingredient in a formulation that the stickiness comes through in the end product, without anything to sufficiently counter that stickiness.
Perceptions of/opinions on tackiness/stickiness are very personal, so it’s important that you understand how sensitive you are to tackiness. If your tolerance for tackiness is significantly lower than mine, there’s a good chance you will find some of the formulations I share sticky/tacky enough that you don’t like them. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, it just means you are more sticky-sensitive than I am.
Think of it a bit like sweetness—one person’s perfectly sweetened cup of coffee will be disgustingly over-sweet to someone else, and too bitter to drink to another. Because stickiness is such a personal thing, I really can’t tell you if you will find something to be sticky or not… I will note in the formulation if I think there’s a potential for it to be tacky to some, or if I think it is best topped with a different sort of product to reduce stickiness, but there is no universal sticky/not sticky line that I can advise you on.
A few common things that can be sticky/tacky:
- Products with high concentrations of glycerin (though definitions of “high” vary! I have made lotions with 30% glycerin that I love. Others can’t stand that.)
- Mostly watery things with small amounts of oils and humectants (like gel creams, mists, and toners)
- Concoctions that contain high amounts of beeswax
Ways to reduce tackiness:
- Reduce the ingredient that makes it tacky, if you know what that is.
- Include 2–3% dimethicone or cyclomethicone. PEG-8 dimethicone can be a good option in otherwise hydrous formulations.
And remember—you can always learn more about the ingredients we use in formulations in the Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia!
by Marie | Aug 24, 2020
It sounds like you live somewhere far hotter than I do, and the body butter is melting to some degree. Please read this.
In order to remedy this, you’ll need to raise the melting point of your body butter. In order to do so, please read this. I also recommend familiarizing yourself with the melting points of the ingredients you’re using in the Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia. If the melting point is lower than your ambient temperature, that ingredient will not offer any solidifying/thickening powers as it will be liquid where you live!
For body butters, you’ll want to start by increasing the butter and decreasing the liquid oil, but if you live somewhere very hot you may also need to replace some of the butter with a fatty thickener like stearic acid or even a wax like beeswax. Unfortunately, I’m really not able to offer much advice beyond this as I do not live somewhere very hot—the body butters I share are perfect for my climate, and adding wax or stearic acid would make them too hard.
by Marie | Jan 28, 2019
Generally speaking, include less of what is making it hard/thick, and more liquid/soft ingredients.
Hardening/thickening ingredients are typically waxes (beeswax, candelilla wax, cera bellina, etc.) or fatty thickeners like stearic acid or cetyl alcohol. In an anhydrous (no water) product these ingredients typically provide the bulk of the thickening power. It is also possible that the thickening comes entirely from the blend of butters—if a product is approximately 40% or more solid or brittle butter (cocoa butter, mango butter, shea butter, etc.), that can be where the firmness of the product comes from without any additional thickeners.
The viscosity of an emulsion is influenced by the size of its inner phase. The lotions we usually create at home tend to be oil-in-water emulsions, so in that case the larger the oil (internal) phase, the thicker the end product. An oil-in-water lotion with a 25–30% oil phase will be significantly thicker than a lotion with a 15% oil phase, even if the 15% oil phase contains other thickeners like cetyl alcohol or gums. While you can reduce the thickness of a lotion by using liquid oils instead of solid butters and/or thickeners, the best way is to reduce the size of the oil phase, which will require re-calculating the recipe so the amount of emulsifier and water remain in balance. I cover how to do this here. Please keep in mind that the stability of emulsions is often influenced by the viscosity; if you drastically thin out an emulsion you may encounter stability issues.
Watery products that aren’t emulsions often get their viscosity from gelling agents and gums like xanthan or hydroxyethylcellulose. To make such products less viscous simply use less of the gum and more water.
Remember: never just decrease or delete an ingredient. You must keep the formula in balance by ensuring it always adds up to 100%. If you are aiming to make a thinner/softer product this will typically mean replacing the thickener you’ve removed with something liquid, like water or liquid oil.
by Marie | Dec 18, 2018
It depends on the recipe, and the amount of colourant used.
If it’s a colour cosmetic, like a lipstick or blush, no. The colour is the entire point of the product, and it will comprise a pretty substantial portion of the formula. The rest of the formula will be designed around the inclusion of the pigment (typically to do things like offset the dry and powdery nature of pigments, or to increase the wear time of the pigments), so leaving them out is not a good idea.
If the product contains very little colourant and is strictly decorative you can replace it with a bit of extra liquid oil or water and carry on. Examples include:
- Body/hand wash (replace with more water)
- Liquid shampoo & conditioner (replace with more water)
- Solid shampoo & conditioner (replace with more butter/fatty thickener)
- A lip balm or body butter with a small amount of mica that is not intended to tint the skin (replace with more oil or butter)
by Marie | Dec 9, 2018
Probably.
The first thing you need to figure out is why the essential oil or fragrance is there. Is is there for a functional reason (a cooling sensation from mint, perhaps)? If so, you should probably leave it it.
Is it there just to make the product smell pretty? You can probably leave it out. However, if the sole purpose of the product is to smell nice (for example, a room diffuser), that might defeat the purpose of the DIY!
To remove a fragrance or essential oil blend from a recipe be sure you’re making up the lost amount of the recipe. If your recipe contains both water and oil you can make up the difference with water or oil. Oil is typically the first choice as essential oils are oil soluble, but depending on the product you may not want to replace volatile, lightweight essential oils with a heavier fixed oil. If your recipe is entirely oils you can replace the missing essential oils with more of a (preferably liquid) oil already present in the formula.
by Marie | Dec 8, 2018
By using more of a thickening or hardening ingredient, and less of a liquid ingredient.
Does your recipe already contain a hard wax (beeswax, candelilla wax, carnauba wax, soy wax, etc.) or a fatty thickener (cetyl alcohol, cetearyl alcohol, stearic acid)? If so, increase the amount of that ingredient, decreasing the amount of a liquid ingredient to make room for it. Keep in mind that using more of a thickening ingredient will also bring more of the characteristics of that ingredient to the end product. For instance, increased concentrations of beeswax tends to make products stickier/skiddier.
For anhydrous products the thickening ingredient can be either a wax or a fatty thickener. You can choose to combine waxes and fatty thickeners; I’ll often do this to get some of the weight and occlusiveness of a wax like beeswax, and then get the rest of the thickening/hardening from something like stearic acid or cetyl alcohol.
For emulsions you’ll typically want to stick to fatty alcohols or pseudo-waxes (waxes where the INCI is a hydrogenated vegetable oil) as I’ve found true waxes can give emulsions a tacky skin finish. For emulsions you can also try increasing the size of the internal phase (this usually this means increasing the size of the oil phase as emulsions made with Emulsifying Wax NF, Polawax, Olivem 1000, Ritamulse SCG, and BTMS-50 are all oil-in-water emulsions).
To learn more about the potency of these ingredients and the characteristics they add to our products, check out these series of guides I’ve done:
If I haven’t done one of these guides for the thickener in your recipe it’s very simple do conduct such an experiment yourself to learn more; each of these posts details how I set the experiment up.
Good luck! Take lots of notes, label your experiments, work in small batches, and have fun!
