Video:How to Make Homemade Lotion

Transcript:How to Make Homemade Lotion

Hi, I’m David Fisher from About.com. Today we’re going to learn how to make a basic lotion. Many soap makers often also make lotions and creams, because it's one more way to take care of your skin.

Lotions are Emulsions

Like other bath and body products, many of the ingredients are the same. Now a lotion is what we call an emulsion. An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that normally wouldn’t stay mixed together, in our case two of the most common, oil and water.

If we take a jar of oil and water. I’ve added a little coloring to the water here so you can see it better. Shake it up. It will mix together and stay mixed together for a little while. But pretty much as soon as we set it down, the oil and water start to separate. You don’t want your lotion doing that, so to the basic ingredients of oil and water we add an emulsifier.

Emulsifying Ingredients are Needed for Lotion

One of the earliest ever used was actually a combination of borax and beeswax. If you get them in just the right balance, they will emulsify oil and water. There are lots of lotion emulsifiers out there. The one we’re going to use today is one of the most versatile and popular. It’s called emulsifying or E wax and it’s a great all purpose emulsifier for both lotions and creams.

So a lotion is made up of a water part, which we’ll call the "water phase" and the oil part, which we’ll call the "oil phase." Then we have our emulsifier, the E-wax.

Lotions Require Preservatives

The last part you add are any additive. This is where you would add your fragrance. There is one more very important additive you need to add to your lotions and that is a preservative. You don’t want any bacteria, mold or other icky stuff growing in your lotion, so you must add a preservative if you’re going to keep your lotion more than a few days.

Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of with preservatives, but they must be used correctly to be effective in your products. We don’t have time in this presentation to go into all the details of how to properly use preservatives so I’ll refer you back the candle and soapmaking site at About.com for more information on the proper use of preservatives.

Sanitize Before Making Lotion

While we still have preservatives in the back of our mind, we’re going to get our workspace, our equipment and ourselves as sanitary as possible. That way, we’ll greatly reduce the risk of accidentally introducing any contaminants to our lotions.The best way to do this is to spray everything, your counter, bowls, pitchers, spoons, bottles, funnels and your hands, every thing with rubbing alcohol. Now that we’re all sanitized...we can get started.

We’ll start with our water phase. For this we’ll use:

• 336g of distilled water
• 2.3g of citric acid (this helps the preservative work better)
• 20g of glycerin

Heat these ingredients to 160 degrees and set them aside.

Then, we’ll assemble our oil phase and our emulsifier. To another bowl, add:

• 36g of almond oil
• 18g of jojoba oil
• 14g of shea butter
• 18g of emulsifying wax

Heat the oil phase until all of the ingredients are melted.

Mix the Heated Lotion Ingredients

Then it’s time to mix and you’ll be amazed at how well this all emulsifies. Pour the oil phase into the water phase, look at how it’s already starting to emulsify. Give it a few blasts with your stick blender and you’re done mixing.

Now it’s time to add your fragrance and preservative. Depending on the preservative you’re using will determine when you can add it. Many preservatives are heat sensitive, so you may need to let your lotion cool down a bit before you add it.I’m using a preservative called Germaben II, and it is heat sensitive so I have to let the lotion cool down to 140 degrees.

Once it’s cooled down, I’ll add 2.3g of preservative, and 7g of fragrance. Mix it together well, and you’re ready to pour into your bottles. Pour the lotion into the bottles and set it aside to finish cooling. It will thicken as it cools, but it’s otherwise ready to use.

Thanks for watching for more information on lotion making, including the proper use of preservatives, visit us online at About.com.