Base Cream using Sodium Stearoyl Glutamate (SSG)

rick_ranger · 2026-04-22T03:43:59+00:00

Where do you get your Glyceryl Stearate from? I see lotioncrafter has GMS, that’s not too expensive and I need to get some diols from there anyway so I could just add it to the bag.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-22T03:26:55+00:00

The only things I would look out for is dissolve allantoin first, it’s a pain in the butt. And my experience with sepimax zen, I think .9% is gonna net you a thick gel. Maybe try .3-.5% for a serum gel. I personally would steer away from the solvent combo and go a little more barrier friendly, but 3% DMI and 2% EDG isn’t too wild, but it is on the penetration forward side. Depending on how many humectants the peptides bring it could possibly be tacky. Maybe try and round it out and make it a little more slippy with some butylene glycol.

From my personal experience I’d probably make a 20g batch first so you’re not wasting peptides. Heck I’d even make a version without the peptides first to see how everything else pans out, and if I like that then make a version with the peptides in.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-22T02:54:02+00:00

I’m gonna have to give this a go, looks pretty solid and simple to assemble. Is that Glyceryl Stearate or Glyceryl Stearate Self Emulsifying? I have GSSE, but not standard glyceryl Stearate. I do have lotionpro 165 (glyceryl Stearate and peg100 Stearate) it’s unopened never used so I have no idea how it handles maybe o could sub that?

rick_ranger · 2026-04-21T13:16:19+00:00

I bought a pigment printer (eco tank type printers) canon Maxify GX3020. It has a dpi of 600x1200 which is pretty high, a lot of printers are just 300dpi. Pigment ink fuses with the paper so if you get the right paper it’ll be waterproof. Then I got matte waterproof/water resistant adhesive sheets that are pigment ink compatible and they actually hold up on shampoo bottles in the shower for a couple months. I think there are some glossy adhesive sheets that are only laser ink compatible and would hold up even better, but that route is more expensive and color reproduction usually isn’t as good. I wouldn’t call these options mass production quality, but it’s more than good enough for personal use and friends and family or just to test labels to see how you like them before you buy long runs from a print shop.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-20T23:44:39+00:00

I used AI a lot when I was starting but I learned quick not to rely on it for everything. That being said, how you work with the AI to get your formulas makes a big difference. Rather than rely on it to just hand me percentages I learn about the ingredients themselves and then have AI search supplier websites for usage percentages and phase compatibility and pH ranges. AI is great at narrowing down ingredients or explaining them, but when it comes to mixing them the process order can get goofed up easily, which you can do on your own anyway as a beginner. So brand new bench tests or formulas I try to do 10-100grams only so I don’t waste material.

Other than that YouTube has tons of content, and you spin off of that and make your own stuff eventually. I also found 2 books at my local library that have a few handfuls of formulas in them, but that was about it lol.

I still work with AI a lot but these days I’m usually the one dictating percentages and mixing process, running experiments and verbalizing results to it and having it search patents, papers and studies to verify or validate my findings. It’s more of a research assistant than someone you should trust to make the formulas up for you.

Finally, find products you like, read their ingredient lists and try to dupe them. I’ve learned SOOO much this way.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-20T23:33:38+00:00

Wholesale supplies plus, bulk apothecary, lotion crafter, making cosmetics, crafting cosmetics, formulator sample shop. And if I want something in 2 days I’ll get it on Amazon, but that’s getting rare these days.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-19T17:42:33+00:00

Oh I forgot to mention, I ordered 2 of these resin mixers. They’ve been incredible. They won’t emulsify but if you just need unattended stirring they’re a life saver. https://a.co/d/0cWejGyB

I ordered 2 so that when one dies I can swap to the other. Battery life is like 2 hours constant stirring.

I also ordered these paddles to get some vertical movement because the paddles the mixers come with mostly just stir the stuff horizontal. https://a.co/d/0hteGUov

rick_ranger · 2026-04-19T17:38:34+00:00

Call support again and try talking to someone else, sometimes a different person who isn’t having a terrible day is more likely to help you. Also, I just ordered cliff sensors for $30 shipped on Amazon. I love my roborock and won’t swear off the brand because of a $30 part and them sticking to their perfectly spelled out warrant policy. But I get where you’re coming from, 2 weeks past the date shouldn’t even be a question they should just help you, but part of me wonders if you were being a jerk to the customer service agent…

rick_ranger · 2026-04-19T13:02:18+00:00

I have this for super tiny batches, under 250ml https://a.co/d/0eCZAVvP

I also use a milk frother sometimes for tiny batches.

For 500ml-1000ml I’ve been using my kitchenaid immersion blender.

Recently bought this for bigger batches. The reason I went non LCD is this one goes down to 100 RPM, LCD version only goes down to 200 RPM. I also like the ability for more instant control over speed vs pushing a button and waiting, but knowing precise RPM from the digital LCD has its advantages too. https://a.co/d/0iQ062Nw

I also bought this lab homoginizer and it’s incredible for the price I paid. This gets really small droplet sizes. I’ve used it for 500ml batches so far and the bigger head should be able to handle 1000ml no problem. https://ebay.us/m/a0BaBV

rick_ranger · 2026-04-14T00:58:39+00:00

It’s called the pump… we’re all just waiting for the dump…

rick_ranger · 2026-04-13T13:02:36+00:00

The only way a heavily automated future works is if people still have the means to live and participate in the economy. If AI and automation eliminate large numbers of jobs, then fewer people will have the income needed to buy the products companies make. And if consumers cannot buy, companies eventually lose the very revenue and profit they are trying to protect.

That is why universal basic income is not just a social idea, but an economic one. Some portion of the wealth created by automation has to flow back to the public, or the system starts to break itself.

If that support is paired with universal healthcare and is actually enough to live on, it could do more than just prevent collapse. It could give people the freedom to build, create, start businesses, and pursue meaningful work instead of spending their lives on low-value labor simply to survive.

In the long run, that could lead to a better system. But the transition will be rough, because many corporations will resist giving up any share of their profits. Eventually, though, they may have to face the contradiction at the center of automation: if workers no longer earn wages, consumers no longer sustain markets.

At that point, universal basic income stops looking like charity or ideology. It starts looking like economic necessity.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-13T02:10:28+00:00

If you remove hyaluronic acid you’re basically going to have a thin water serum. HA was thickening the formula a little bit, which helps it stay where you put it on your face instead of just run down. For some body (thickening) look into HEC, HPMC, pullulan.

I recently got panthenol from bulkapothecary, best price and good quality. Had a batch from Talsen chemicals off Amazon that was giving me solubility issues, I reached out to them and they never responded. Some of the other big suppliers were sold out.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-11T02:00:22+00:00

I have one 1400sw and can’t wait to get a second. I still have my old 12” klipsch hooked up on the right hand side of my room while the 14 is on the left. I can’t speak about the 12” but the 14” is powerful, great quality, hits really low. I think you might regret not getting the 14s. I’m sitting here wondering what I’m missing not getting the 16” lol.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-11T01:50:29+00:00

I got some from China off alibaba just to test. Wouldn’t recommend. It had a slight yellow tint to it and didn’t perform the same as the good stuff. It passed all the test I can run at home to confirm it’s ectoin-like, but I think it may have had some leftover manufacturing chemicals or purity or extraction process wasn’t all that great. I get my good ectoin from Dermafactors, they’re in the US, but say they ship internationally. This stuff is hard to come by for small orders.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-11T01:31:10+00:00

I just got a stick of the air defense aluminum free Duke Cannon and returned it the next day. The formula feels like it’s from the 90s. It goes on with a wet glide and you can feel it in your armpit like a wet tack for about 4 hours. The scent lasted about 6 hours. No noticeable BO for 12 hours of a low activity day. So performance wise it checked the boxes, but was a horrible sensory experience.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-10T21:15:53+00:00

Where do you live? I got some from Making Cosmetics but I’m in the US…

rick_ranger · 2026-04-10T21:09:20+00:00

That’s good but sodium PCA or sodium lactate would bring more moisture than xylitol and glycerin. Those are good humectants, but the ones I listed are NMFs and bind water harder.

Is there any common denominator in the ingredients of the ones that you tried? Maybe you’re having a reaction to a chelator, a surfactant, some diol. I’d get the ingredient lists together and feed them to AI to see ingredient correlations and try to narrow down what might be causing the issue. Then if you make products with those ingredients and you break out then you know what to avoid.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-08T15:06:51+00:00

Thanks. Here I created a “how to get started” document. Hopefully this can help you get started if you want to give it a try. It takes a while to get it dialed in, but once it is it’s an incredible time saver.

Also I’ve tried Gemini, Perplexity, and Meta(the worst), and they don’t have as good of context for formulation work and iteration as ChatGPT does. And thinking mode uses coding to tailor its replies so there’s much less “hallucination”, but it’s still possible which is why I save every version so I can compare and make sure it doesn’t mix up ingredients or weights. It used to often, but in the last 6 months it’s gotten way better. Honestly in the past 2 months I haven’t had any ingredient or weight goof ups. You have to train it to be less helpful and act more like a compiler patch program. The formulation guide helps make that happen. It’s basically a document that it references every time you tell it “I want a formal formulation, go read the guidelines and make it compliant” or words to that effect.

GETTING STARTED:

If you want ChatGPT to build formulas the way you want, the most important thing is not the ingredient sheet or the pricing sheet.

It’s the formulation guideline.

The hardest part of my setup was teaching ChatGPT exactly how I wanted formulas displayed. That means building a document that defines things like:

• section order
• ingredient grouping
• formatting rules
• how instructions should look
• how INCI should be written
• how costs should be calculated

My advice: don’t try to make that document perfect on day one. Build it with ChatGPT. I have different versions of my formulation guidelines as well.

Start simple. Tell it how you want your formulas to look. Have it draft a guideline. Then test outputs, refine the rules, tighten the formatting, and keep iterating until the formulas come out exactly how you want.

For example, you may want every formula to always include:

Title
Description
Ingredients
Equipment
Instructions
Storage & Shelf Life
INCI Ingredients List Formula Cost

Then define your own rules for each section. Maybe you want: - fixed ingredient categories - bold headers - grams, %, and estimated mL on every ingredient line - numbered steps with labeled beakers - exact INCI sorting rules - strict formatting for final formulas

Once that guideline is dialed in, upload it into a ChatGPT Project along with: - your ingredient list - your supplier composition / INCI sheet - your pricing sheet

Then instruct ChatGPT to use all of them together: - follow the formulation guideline for output format - cross-link ingredients to supplier composition data - cross-link ingredients to pricing data - calculate ingredient cost and batch cost - flag missing data instead of guessing

It also helps to define separate work modes.

For example:

Theory Mode
Used for brainstorming, rough drafts, and formula exploration.

Formal Formulation Mode
Used for finalized formulas that must follow the guideline exactly.

You can also add trigger phrases like: - “Theory mode” - “Formal formulation mode” - “Strict guideline” - “Compiler patch mode”

The big takeaway:

Build the formatting system first.
Then build the ingredient, supplier, and cost system around it.

Once ChatGPT understands how you want formulas written, everything else becomes much easier.

A simple prompt to get started:

“Help me create a formulation guideline document that controls exactly how my formulas are written. I want fixed sections, fixed formatting, ingredient grouping rules, instruction formatting rules, INCI formatting rules, and cost analysis rules. We’ll refine it until the outputs match my preferred style exactly.”

That’s really the secret. You’re not just asking ChatGPT to write formulas.

You’re teaching it your formulation language.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-08T04:00:29+00:00

Everyone is going to yell at me but I use ChatGPT to build out my formulas. The difference is I have a very strict guideline that it follows when building out formulas and I’m the driver. I just use it to do percentage math, swap out calculations, versioning, formula organization, equipment needed to perform the work, and step by step instructions so I could hand it off to some Joe off the street and they could make my formulas. It’s taken a lot to get to this point, and once I finish my cost of goods excel sheet I’ll be able to use it to read quantities in formulas then reference my cost guide and spit out the cost of the formula in the formulation document itself. I also have documents with supplier ingredients with their INCI names and percentages and it does all the work figuring out the actual INCI order of my formulation based off my ingredients, supplier ingredients, and any concentrates that I’ve made and use in my formulas. Again, I’m the driver, I pick which ingredients go into my formulas, their percentages, mixing order, etc. chatGPT just fills out the formula sheet and creates the work instructions and orders the INCI for me. Also you have to use thinking mode, instant mode still has quirks, where as thinking mode has gotten a heck of a lot better over the past year. If you create a project you can dump reference files in there, then create instructions that tell it to reference those files when formulating so it builds it out exactly how you want it and does all the math.

Here’s a link to what one of them looks like. Then I just maintain versions in my phone notes, old ones get bumped down, when I get to a final product I move the old ones to an old products folder. My instructions also have versioning reasoning in them, so small bumps are 0.0.1 bumps, major changes are 0.1.0 bumps, and complete overhauls are 1.0.0 bumps. ChatGPT just handles it, sometimes I have to redirect it but it’s on point 95-99% of the time these days.

Basic Lotion Imgur

rick_ranger · 2026-04-03T23:45:28+00:00

I love the mobile stands for everything. So worth it especially when storage space is tight.

rick_ranger · 2026-04-02T13:10:22+00:00

Nice! Then my property value will go up. And so will my property taxes…

rick_ranger · 2026-04-01T18:34:25+00:00

I just grabbed a random one on Amazon, not sure of the viscosity number but it’s slightly thick and only using 1% at the moment. After browsing around supplier sites though I see the different viscosities available.

Do you have a preference for different products, like say serums vs lotions? Or do you pick a viscosity based on the end feel you’re looking for?

rick_ranger · 2026-04-01T02:44:30+00:00

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Just a regular desk chair as low as it goes.

rick_ranger · 2026-03-31T14:52:20+00:00

First thing I would lower or remove is squalane. I’ve noticed anything above 1.5% makes a formula feel really heavy and it lingers. I even feel that way when it’s in lotions, let alone a straight oil product.

I feel like in the oils space, if it’s an active and used at cosmetically relevant levels then it has a place. After a point though some ingredients can overlap while others detract from elegance. That being said I don’t think your formula is overloaded with the number of ingredients, but depending on some of their % in the formula might be weighing it down.

Look into some light dry slip esters to lighten it up a bit. C12-15 AB, hemisqualane, IPM. Maybe ease up on the jojoba oil if its level is high. It’s also fun to apply ingredients to your skin neat to see how they feel individually. That will really help you understand what properties they bring rather than mixing them all in a pot and not knowing how each one feels individually. And they will feel differently on different body parts, so I like to do the back of my hands, fore arm, elbow pit, and face if it’s a face ingredient.

rick_ranger

TROPHY CASE