- Shark Sauce Part 1: The Recipe
- Shark Sauce Part 2: The Tutorial & Giveaway!!!
Again, these will be my crappy Snapchat pictures. Maybe I'll have Mr. Snails record me making it one day, and get y'all some better quality pictures/video, but in the meantime, it's just me DIYing in one hand and taking pictures in the other.
OMG y'all, I had so much trouble with this picture. It just did not want to work. I think it's STILL not working, so click here to view the .gif in its actual entirety. Anyway, this part has to be handled pretty thoroughly or it will be a pain. Combine your oils, Vitamin E, and Polysorbate 80 together and STIR. WELL. Here's also where I went wrong: I doubled my batch size to 60 ml instead of my usual 30 ml and still used the same sized cups, which meant I couldn't fit everything in and I stirred the oils into the water phase in two different sections....which means you get floating cheese curd things.
What I should have done (and did do in the next batch) was move my water phase into a larger container first. From there, stir rapidly with the glass stirring rod while drizzling the oil phase (that you mixed really well) in slowly. You can see the cup that looks like it's full of frosting? That's the oil phase added to some of the water phase, but I had to stop, because it filled up the cup. It's nice and creamy and smooth, which is what we want. But then I added that lovely creaminess to the rest of the water phase, and it just....it was already more solid, and didn't want to drizzle in nicely. So it floated on top in little curdles instead. This is easy enough to fix, just a little annoying and tedious, as you basically have to go in and smush to break up all of those little globules. Another option is to bottle everything, put the lid on, and shake the crap out of it, although that's not exactly guaranteed to break up everything. This typically does not need any pH adjusting, but ALWAYS test pH on your products and always patch test! Ideal range for this is between 6-7. Bottle it up, and dispose of trash and wash your glassware. Celebrate!
Troubleshooting Consistency
Is your serum too sticky? Too many humectants will make it feel sticky - try decreasing or dropping them out entirely. Is your serum too runny? Increase oils and Polysorbate 80 (a 1:1 ratio between those two) for a creamier solution, or add some xanthan gum to thicken it to more of a gel. Increasing the amount of sea kelp bioferment or seamollient will also help give it more of a jelly consistency.
What Can I Leave Out?
Literally everything except for the preservatives. If you want to use Vitamin E though, make sure you use an emulsifier, or it will just sit there, on top of your serum...mocking you. If you use only Vitamin E and no oils, and you use it at 1%, then you only need 1% of Polysorbate 80, although it will be difficult to pour, which is why I suggest a carrier oil. If adding in the oil phase intimidates you, you can definitely leave the whole section out and just bump up that lovely SKB.
My serum is separating!
Sometimes that happens after you've finished with the product and bottled everything up. This means you didn't emulsify it properly - whether you didn't add enough Poly 80, or you didn't stir everything well, or you didn't break up your little cheese curds all the way. Or sometimes, it's none of those things, and you should've added a little xanthan gum to stabilize the solution. It's an annoyance, but it doesn't bother me personally too much. When I make it for other people though, I toss the batch (or keep it for myself), and start over again. I really want to emphasize that if you want to do an oil phase to really stir that Poly 80 in and then drizzle the whole oil phase slowly into the water phase while stirring steadily with your other hand. It makes everything go so much smoother. When in doubt, you can definitely sprinkle in a pinch of xanthan gum, which will help keep things from separating.
I don't wanna make it....
Hey, I can help with that too! Check it out - a giveaway! Please read the Terms & Conditions. This is a U.S. only giveaway (although I might open up a new giveaway worldwide later), and you must be 18 years or older to enter. Remember, YMMV, and I am not responsible if you have a bad reaction with this product. (Patch test!)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
When I get new bottles or when I empty out an old one, I run them through the dishwasher on the top rack, or I boil them for a couple of minutes. After that, I close them tightly until I'm ready to use them. When that happens, I wash them with hot, soapy water using dish soap, rinse them thoroughly, and do a second rinse with 70% rubbing alcohol. I lay them out on paper towels to evaporate. It does not say on here or at the end, but when the ampoule is finished, and I'm ready to pour them into the bottles, I'll rinse the bottles out with distilled water or aloe vera juice or whatever I have on hand (the droppers too). This way, I get rid of any leftover alcohol in the bottle without contaminating my stuff. I use regular nitrile gloves and pour rubbing alcohol over them like hand sanitizer to limit contamination.
Print out a copy of your recipe and grab a pen in case you need to make adjustments or notes. Gather up all your ingredients. I wipe down everything with sanitizing wipes to avoid contamination and then lay down napkins in case of spills. This includes the scale, calibration weight, pen, and my phone since I use it quite often during the process. Calibrate your scale using the required calibration weight, and I always double check. I think some people have said that you only have to calibrate it once in a while, but I do it before every session.
This part is super boring. You're just going to go down the recipe and measure everything out into separate cups. I use shot glasses to mix ingredients a lot, but I don't use shot glasses to measure, because the max on my scale is 100g, and it tends to be a pain with a heavier glass vs. little 1g plastic cups. You'll see in the picture that at one point, I spill a bunch of Seamollient all over the scale, because I just tried to free pour it. This is why you should always use disposable pipettes or oral syringes. I also recalibrated after I turned the scale off to clean it.
My favorite part, because you get to feel like a wizard here. There isn't necessarily a right order to add everything. My general rule is to put everything liquid in the water phase together, add the dry stuff, and then move on to the next phase. If you use something like ceramides, it is easiest to add a little aloe vera juice, hyaluronic acid, or water to the ceramides while stirring to water it down. If you try to dump a bunch in to the ceramides, or if you just dump the ceramides into the water phase, it'll end up being little floating globules and takes a while to break apart. If you're working with sodium lactate, at least with LotionCrafter (which is where I got mine, I don't know if it's different elsewhere), it comes in large flakes, like kosher salt. This makes it so you have to crush it down in water to dissolve. You can probably let it sit there for a while, or just stir constantly, and it'll dissolve on its own, or heat it up, but I prefer to just crush it with my glass stirring rod.
What I should have done (and did do in the next batch) was move my water phase into a larger container first. From there, stir rapidly with the glass stirring rod while drizzling the oil phase (that you mixed really well) in slowly. You can see the cup that looks like it's full of frosting? That's the oil phase added to some of the water phase, but I had to stop, because it filled up the cup. It's nice and creamy and smooth, which is what we want. But then I added that lovely creaminess to the rest of the water phase, and it just....it was already more solid, and didn't want to drizzle in nicely. So it floated on top in little curdles instead. This is easy enough to fix, just a little annoying and tedious, as you basically have to go in and smush to break up all of those little globules. Another option is to bottle everything, put the lid on, and shake the crap out of it, although that's not exactly guaranteed to break up everything. This typically does not need any pH adjusting, but ALWAYS test pH on your products and always patch test! Ideal range for this is between 6-7. Bottle it up, and dispose of trash and wash your glassware. Celebrate!
Troubleshooting Consistency
Is your serum too sticky? Too many humectants will make it feel sticky - try decreasing or dropping them out entirely. Is your serum too runny? Increase oils and Polysorbate 80 (a 1:1 ratio between those two) for a creamier solution, or add some xanthan gum to thicken it to more of a gel. Increasing the amount of sea kelp bioferment or seamollient will also help give it more of a jelly consistency.
What Can I Leave Out?
Literally everything except for the preservatives. If you want to use Vitamin E though, make sure you use an emulsifier, or it will just sit there, on top of your serum...mocking you. If you use only Vitamin E and no oils, and you use it at 1%, then you only need 1% of Polysorbate 80, although it will be difficult to pour, which is why I suggest a carrier oil. If adding in the oil phase intimidates you, you can definitely leave the whole section out and just bump up that lovely SKB.
My serum is separating!
Sometimes that happens after you've finished with the product and bottled everything up. This means you didn't emulsify it properly - whether you didn't add enough Poly 80, or you didn't stir everything well, or you didn't break up your little cheese curds all the way. Or sometimes, it's none of those things, and you should've added a little xanthan gum to stabilize the solution. It's an annoyance, but it doesn't bother me personally too much. When I make it for other people though, I toss the batch (or keep it for myself), and start over again. I really want to emphasize that if you want to do an oil phase to really stir that Poly 80 in and then drizzle the whole oil phase slowly into the water phase while stirring steadily with your other hand. It makes everything go so much smoother. When in doubt, you can definitely sprinkle in a pinch of xanthan gum, which will help keep things from separating.
I don't wanna make it....
Hey, I can help with that too! Check it out - a giveaway! Please read the Terms & Conditions. This is a U.S. only giveaway (although I might open up a new giveaway worldwide later), and you must be 18 years or older to enter. Remember, YMMV, and I am not responsible if you have a bad reaction with this product. (Patch test!)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
