Why Mix Powdered Ingredients With Glycerin?

If you see any of our recipes in soaplab you would notice that most of our recipes are pre-diluted with glycerin (most of the powdered ingredients)

Why?

Because if you add the powder into your skincare as is; it would clump up and give you a clumpy rice like texture and will be very difficult to mix. Hence we usually premix a little at the side first before we add it into the other ingredients

Why Glycerin?

The reason we use glycerin is because its a water based ingredients. Most powder are water soluble and not oil soluble. Hence we use glycerin for easier mixing. If you are not sure if your ingredients are water oil oil soluble, and easy test will be to try micing it with water of oil base and see if it mixes. whatever the ingredients mix with; thats what its soluble in (or you can read the MSDS).

Cant we use water?

Yes you can use distilled water. Unfortunately though since adding distilled water without preservative in your product can affect the shelf life of your product; we usually don use water. 

Unless you are willing to top up with preservative. You dont have to add preservative for glycerin as its self preserve hence we prefer glycerin than water.

What other things i can use? 

You can use any water based ingredient that doesnt require any addition of preservative (or already have preservative inside) such as sorbitol, glycerin, aloe extract, witch hazel, etc

Can i use base to premix the powder?

Yes you can. If you dont have any glycerin in hand; you can mix a little of whatever you are doing with the powder first than add it to the remaining mixture. 

Example if you are making soap; you can melt the soap; put it 2-4 spoon of the soap to 1 spoon of color / whatever measurement you are adding; mix it and add into your remaining soap. Just remember to do it fast as the soap will harden fast:)

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions and thank you for reading❤️

Nisha