How to make a Natural Shower Jelly

Every other month, Formula Botanica challenges its community of students and graduates to make an organic cosmetic formulation and share their photos with each other. We’ve run some great challenges recently such as:

• How to make a natural gel scrub
• How to make a butter scrub
• How to make a body melt
• How to make an aqueous gel using a natural solubiliser
• How to make a body butter
• How to make a night-time facial oil for mature skin

Introducing: Shower Jelly

Have you ever wondered how to make those ‘jiggly’ shower or bath jellies that are on trend now? You can make these fun shower or bath jellies without using Sodium Laureth Sulphate or artificial colourings or without needing to preserve them synthetically. We’ll show you how to make these trendy shower jellies using natural ingredients that are gentle on the skin, fun to use during shower/bath time and everyone in your family will love them!

Shower jellies are really fun products but as long as you’re working with natural ingredients, the jellies may lose water during storage and change their pretty form. To avoid this, prepare small volumes and use them rather quickly (otherwise you might see a very strange product lying in your soap dish!).

Shower jellies are, as the name reveals, like jellies. They have a recognisable shape but are not quite as hard as soap or even those hardened fruit jellies. It means you cannot wrap them like a soap, but instead they should be packed in a jar.

How to formulate a Shower Jelly

In this tutorial, you will learn how to work with gums. Students are taught how to work with gums to thicken or add stability to an emulsion or a gel cleanser in our Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation. Further studies on how to create synergy by blending different gums to achieve the desired rheology are part of our Advanced Diploma in Organic Cosmetic Science.

When making shower jellies, the sky is the limit. We only recommend as always to follow the Keep it Silly Simple (KISS) principle to first understand the role of each single ingredient and their interaction with other ingredients.

Basically you can prepare shower jellies in a jar (to be applied with a spoon or spatula) or as a stand-alone form (which is slightly more challenging than the first version). For this challenge we’ll make stand-alone shower jellies.

Keep in mind that the higher the concentration of the surfactants the spongier the final shower jelly. In mass production on a larger scale, they deaerate the blend to reduce the foam and get a smooth texture.

Making Shower Jellies: Formulation Method

Follow our simple general method for formulating shower jellies:

• Dissolve your water-soluble ingredients and emollients in water
• Disperse the gum in water (depending on the gum, you may need to heat the water)
• Blend your surfactants together. You can add your essential oil to this blend without any solubiliser if the surfactant concentration is enough to solubilise the essential oil. This is something you must test for each surfactant blend and individual essential oil blend. If the surfactants can not solubilise the essential oil you’ll need to use a solubiliser for the essential oil.
• Slowly add the surfactant blend to the gum dispersion. Try to avoid agitation (unless you want a spongy bath jelly).
• Add the preservative and adjust the pH according to the preservative requirements.

How to make a Purple Shower Jelly

Method:

1. Weigh and measure ingredients for A in a beaker. Put beaker into a bain marie and slowly warm the infusion.
2. Blend B ingredients together in another beaker and slowly disperse in the warm infusion. Add in small amount of gum+glycerine and stir between each increments to blend well.
3. Add C ingredient to the infusion and blend gently.
4. Blend D ingredients together and add to the above gently to avoid creating excessive foam.
5. Prepare a 1:9 (jelly : deionized water) solution. Measure pH and adjust to 5.0-5.5 by adding lactic acid.
6. Pour the mixture into small moulds for single use. Place them in the fridge overnight to set.
7. Remove the jellies from the fridge and let them retain to room temperature. Store the jellies in a jar to prevent them from drying out.

How to make a Red Shower Jelly

Method:

1. Weigh and measure ingredients for A in a beaker. Put beaker into a bain marie and slowly warm the infusion.
2. Blend B ingredients together in another beaker and slowly disperse in the warm infusion. Add in small amount of gum+glycerine and stir between each increments to blend well.
3. Add C ingredient to the infusion and blend gently.
4. Blend D ingredients together and add to the above gently to avoid creating excessive foam.
5. Prepare a 1:9 (jelly : deionized water) solution. Measure pH and adjust to 5.0-5.5 by adding lactic acid.
6. Pour the mixture into small moulds for single use. Place them in the fridge overnight to set.
7. Remove the jellies from the fridge and let them retain to room temperature. Store the jellies in a jar to prevent them from drying out.

By working with different green surfactants and adjusting their ratios, you can create your desired amount of foam. These shower jellies do not dry out the skin as they are formulated to be pH balanced. The lovely subtle aroma makes shower or bath time a real joy!

It’s now your turn. Keep in mind that the more complicated the formulation (more electrolytes and more surfactants) the more the interaction with your gums and it could be possible that your gums do not form a gel at all. If you’re a Formula Botanica student, then please do participate in our bi-monthly challenge and share your photos with us in the online classroom.

This blog was written by Teresa Foo, Founder of Balm Botanique and a former Formula Botanica tutor. 

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Lorraine Dallmeier

Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetic science school. Read more about Lorraine and the Formula Botanica Team.