It’s the second part of my soap making post! Last time we looked at the chemistry behind soap making (also called saponification) – today we’re looking at how to actually make a bar of soap, using ingredients from the supermarket. Related Post: Make Your Own Soap! Part 1: The Chemistry Behind Soap Making From the previous chemistry post, we know that …
In the middle of teaching some high school students about the chemistry of soap-making, I realised that I really, really wanted to try making some soap myself and write about it here. My write-up ended up being really long, so I’ve made it a two-parter – Installment 1 is all about the chemistry, and Installment 2 is about the actual …
In one of the nail polish enthusiast groups I’m in, this article was recently brought to my attention. In summary, it says that if you’ve run out of nail polish remover, don’t worry! You can easily remove your polish by first soaking your nails in warm water for 10 minutes, then soaking cotton balls in a mixture of equal parts …
If you’ve been around the beauty scene for the last few years, you’d have run into a few cleansing oils (as opposed to the oil cleansing method). The most famous is probably the Shu Uemura range, which has kick started a whole new category of cleansing oils, which go on and melt make-up like oils, but wash off cleanly with …
I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that you could oil cleanse without using a regular cleanser afterwards, if you repeatedly wiped off the old oil and added more oil to dilute the dirt (not quite what I said in this early post – but that was assuming that you only wipe oil on your face once). So naturally I had to …
I’ve recently started trying out thermal cleansers. These are special cleansers that heat up when you rub them on your skin and add water. What’s the point of them and how do they work? I’m glad you asked, hypothetical reader! Do pores open with heat? Heat makes muscles relax, while cold makes muscles contract (you may know this from treating …
Earlier this week I posted about the different types of base ingredients in moisturisers: occlusives, emollients and humectants. I’ve dug up a few facial moisturisers I have lying around to deconstruct. When looking at most product ingredients lists, the ingredients will be in order from the highest concentration to the lowest. Typically, when deciding if a moisturiser will suit your …
Formaldehyde is listed as an ingredient in a number of beauty products (in particular, nail strengtheners and Brazilian Blowout-style hair treatments), and there’s been some controversy about whether or not it’s really in these products. In particular, cosmetic chemist Doug Schoon has stated that formaldehyde in water readily reacts to form another chemical, methylene glycol. Most of the top search …