The Trouble With Making Your Own Sunscreen

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Yes I have gone sunscreen crazy a little over the last week or so but it is for a good reason. It&#;s hot here in Australialand right now, hot, UV rich and waaaay too long between pay checks to go buy a $20 bottle of SPF 30 something for some people.  That and the fact that there are a growing number of people for whom consumer SPF 30 plus sunscreen no longer cuts the mustard &#; too many chemicals, what about nanoparticles,  too much synthetic perfume,  allergic to the preservatives and so on.

So is home-made sunscreen possible?

I would strongly advise against trying and that&#;s not because I have shares in a sunscreen company because I don&#;t.  It&#;s hard. Very hard. It&#;s expensive and hard and more importantly sunscreens are not just any old cosmetic, they might just save your skin.

The googlesphere is jam-packed full with recipes teaching you how to make your own homemade sunscreen.  A typical recipe looks something like this:

To make 100g

25g of Zinc Oxide powder

50g Shea Butter

10g Jojoba Oil

2g beeswax

3g Cocoa Butter

10g Olive Butter.

Mix it all up and voila, your own sunscreen and as Zinc Oxide gives somewhere between 1-1.5 SPF unit per % added you have a product with an SPF of between 25-35. Amazeballs.

Only you probably don&#;t.

Having worked with zinc oxide sunscreens for the last three years with varying success (and lots of failures) I can assure you that it is a pig of an ingredient being both difficult to blend into a base and keep dispersed in said base.  Being a strongly charged particle it tends to migrate towards its self and form big clumps at every available opportunity (think of it like a super charged magnet that it sitting just shy of the pulling ground of a complimentary magnetic item). It doesn&#;t take much before whoooooosh, it&#;s moved and attached its self to its neighbour to form a duo that is TWICE AS STRONG AS IT WAS WHEN ALOOOOOOONE.  You can easily see what will happen next. It&#;s chemical carnage.

But you can&#;t necessarily see that and as I found to my detriment a couple of years ago, ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is pain.

I started off in by merrily mixing my zinc oxide into a base, not really aware of how bad it could get and enjoying each little win like I was some genius in a world filled with losers who just didn&#;t see what I saw.  I wondered why everyone from within the industry shied away from this type of formula, why they refused to take on this work and why they looked at me with that &#;oh no you haven&#;t&#; look when I told them about my happy successes.  I was happy because my creations had not yet been tested.

But then came the day of reckoning.  I took them to the sunscreen testing lab and they failed.

I had various goes at testing my &#;babies&#; SPF&#;s.  Those that I expected would give me an easy 30 came in at a dismal 12,  those that were a sure 15 were only a 7 and one that looked amazing and a sure-fire 35 ish read only 8 on the SPF scale.  Epic failures all and what was worse was that this was all my own work.  In the early days I wasn&#;t really doing this for customers, I was just teaching myself some bits and pieces.  Trying it on for size and investing in my future.  Well, at $700 ish a pop for the basic stuff sunscreen testing is NOT something that you want to keep getting wrong and each failure hit me like a brick. And keep in mind that by this stage I thought I was onto a good thing and knew what I was doing &#; I won&#;t even go there with the tens of formulation tweaks that I tried and subsequently failed at.

One thing that I realised early on was that just because you put zinc in, it doesn&#;t mean that it stays sitting in the formula in a useful place.  A good sunscreen has to cover the skin evenly like a good coat of paint and unfortunately for zinc users, that chemical prefers to clump together giving you dense lumpy areas that you may or may not be able to see with the naked eye and then empty wasteland craters all of which can act as lenses for sunlight and actually magnify the rays as they come through.

Yes it is true, adding lots of zinc to your product COULD leave you with a hole infested sun magnifying glass rather than a nice, uniform sunscreen. Ouch!

Then came some progress.  I read a bit more, observed a little closer and tweaked a few techniques until something started to stick.  My reported SPF&#;s were still a bit lower than I wanted but we were on the right track, no zinc was cottage cheesing and the product was feeling good on the skin.  But that was over one year and several thousands of dollars worth of investment in time, materials and testing later and that was BEFORE we started trying to change preservative systems, add different actives, change emulsifiers and add perfumes.  Another thing I&#;ve learned with zinc only sunscreens is that every little change is a big deal and can make a big difference. And that&#;s where I&#;m up to today with a few ideas that work and a few that didn&#;t.

I&#;m not saying that I&#;m a genius and if I can&#;t do it you must be made to think that you can, honestly I&#;m not.   What I am saying that even with all of my friends in the right places, chemical resources, laboratory equipment and analytical testing experience I still stuffed up a lot before I started to make progress and surely that has to count for something.  I was lucky in as much as nobody was risking their lives with these failed formulations, the only thing being risked was my money at that stage and thankfully that is replaceable.  Our health isn&#;t always so easy to claw back.

The trouble with making your own sunscreen is that while it looks ever-so-easy from the ingredients list in reality there is a whole chemical dance that has to go on to get these things singing. Now you may just hit the jackpot and come up with a beauty but it is more likely that you won&#;t so please, please, please be careful and if this is something that you are likely to dish out to babies, your children or your elderly relatives do consider investing in at least one proper SPF test, just to be on the safe side.

Home made sunscreen? In my eyes it is just not worth it unless your home made sunscreen is a nice big hat or burquini &#;

1st August Update:

This post has had a lot of traffic thanks to it being shared far and wide by various websites, blogs and forums.  I wrote this in December and since then I&#;ve continued to work on a number of zinc based formulations. I have one tinted moisturiser which recorded an SPF of 12.8 on the market (a secondary sunscreen) and two zinc only formulations pending marketing that meet SPF 15.  I also built a framework formula based on zinc oxide that went on to achieve an SPF of 40.  In addition to that I&#;ve formulated an SPF 40 formula that contains organic pigments and another two formulations with titanium dioxide as the main filter that meet SPF 15 requirements.  I&#;ve also worked on a number of natural sunscreen projects that for one reason or another failed to make it to market. It isn&#;t easy to meet everybody&#;s expectations.  That said  I achieved all of the above (which might not sound impressive, I don&#;t know) with the help of my homogeniser, propeller mixer, stability testing protocol, microscope and a huge investment in SPF testing (it costs around $300 per subject to get SPF tested and you need 10 people to form a panel).  I still wouldn&#;t recommend anyone trying to short cut the big bad chemical industry by making your own products at home as even with the right equipment and a few years of trying behind you it is so easy to get it wrong.  Even a change in fragrance can affect SPF.

It has been interesting to watch the comments roll in over the years (and on other forums) and yes, there are always people who read this and still feel that they know best.  Good luck to them I say,  may the force be with you.

Amanda x

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Where to Buy Personalized Sunscreen Items & Why Are They Important?

Our personalized suntan lotion bottles, custom sunscreen sprays, and image printed sunburn care kits can go a long way in building brand awareness during spring and summer. However, they can do more than just promote your brand; they can actually save lives. Long-term exposure to UVA rays & UVB rays can result in skin damage and premature facial aging. More severe outcomes can include cataracts (for which our promotional UV resistant sunglasses are a great safeguard) and even skin cancer. The most dangerous form of skin cancer that UV rays from sunlight can cause is called melanoma.

Responsible for over 10,000 deaths every year, melanoma often starts out as a mole or "sun spot". When these spots become larger, elevate from the surface of the skin, discolor, and become painful, melanoma is already well underway and immediate treatment is needed. It can occur anywhere in the body, even in the eyes. However, it is most commonly found on the mid-to-upper back in men and on the legs or buttocks in women. The lighter one's skin color, the higher their risk of developing this deadly condition. It has killed many well-known people, including Reggae musician Bob Marley, college football & NFL coach Bruce Snyder, and actress Tammy McDonald, just to name a few.

While this is certainly a serious topic, the good news is that there are many ways to protect yourself to greatly reduce the risk of melanoma as well as the less severe effects of sunlight such as sunburns. We offer a wide variety of promotional sunscreen giveaways and sunburn treatment kits that can help your customers, employees, and target customer base safe & able to concentrate on just having fun in their summer adventures. Read on and we'll explain our many personalized suntan lotion products to you, enabling you to make the best choice both for your business and the people it relies on.

Understanding the Needs of Your Audience

Providing value is the mark of every successful brand. Through the delivery of its product or service, the organization must be providing a solution to a problem that the consumer has. This problem could be something big like needing a place to call home or something small like keeping important keys in one place. If customers believe that your product or service is the best solution available to them, then you have successfully provided value.

This idea of value also plays a role in your marketing efforts as well. Any form of messaging that passes between the company and the customer must provide value, either from the content or the delivery method. A social media post must be informative and catch the attention of the user. An must have a subject line that is enticing enough to convince the reader to click on it. A billboard must present an enticing action step that drivers want to take like calling a number or visiting a store location. Effective marketing combines medium and message into a powerful tool that drives action with your customers.

Branded merchandise is a marketing strategy that businesses use to increase visibility for the organization. There is an initial investment in items that would be useful for their target audience. These items are then imprinted with company information like a branding image and/or the name of the organization. Then, the items are given away to clients, employees, or other parties to create impressions for that company. As the products are used, awareness of the organization increases in the community, resulting in a growing customer base.

Value in the Form of Protection Against UV Rays and Skin Cancer

The key to a successful promotional product campaign is choosing the right items to give away. What will your target audience appreciate the most and use frequently enough to justify the cost? Sun protection products can promote your organization while protecting customers and their skin from harmful sun exposure during outdoor activities like awareness walks, corporate picnics, trade shows, or just a day on the beach during the summer. When you spend money on these types of products to give away to customers, employees, or members of the public, you are investing in repeat exposure for your company.

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Design Your Own Sunscreen & Custom Sunburn Care Products

 

If you're looking to keep brand awareness hot this summer by helping to prevent sunburns, our company logo sunscreen sprays are the way to go. They have some advantages over traditional lotions & creams. One advantage is that sunscreen spray is much easier to apply to hard-to-reach parts of the body. Another benefit comes in the form of greater ease of application and fewer gooey, sticky fingers. However, they are not recommended for use near open flames and readily flammable materials.

While our sprays are certainly popular, there will always be a place for our more traditional promotional suntan lotion giveaway items. In general, lotion is a better option than spray when it comes to use by children. Users have a greater degree of control when using lotions, creams, and ointments. They also avoid the negative effects of accidentally breathing in sun block, which can potentially occur if sprays aren't used carefully.

Our sunscreen promotional products come in many different forms and in a broad assortment of handy carrying vessels. In this section, we'll explain our most prominent varieties in more detail, helping to guide you to the best choice for meeting your promotional needs.

One of the old standbys, our wholesale sunblock squeeze bottles won't be disappearing any time soon. These are most likely the type of containers you're most familiar with. They're quite simple to operate; just open the cap, squeeze, and apply to the skin. We offer these in many different sizes, including 1/2 ounce, 1 oz, 1½ oz, 2 oz, and 4 oz bottles

Our custom logo printed single use sunblock packets are a practical option when looking for an affordable promo product, particularly when buying larger orders. They can be ordered on their own or as a part of our custom sunscreen kits. They're small enough to easily fit into a pocket and break out for use in both planned and impromptu situations.

One of our more innovative giveaway items that's sure to grab attention are our promotional eco-friendly collapsible sunscreen bottles (opens in a new window). They're good for the environment in the fact that they're reusable and that they also can be compressed to leave behind a smaller amount of plastic when empty and discarded.

If promotional novelty items are on your mind for your next trade show or event, we suggest you consider our credit card style anti-sunburn spray containers. Flat, easy to store, and fun to use, these handy items are certain to garner plenty of attention for your personalized image design imprint.

Another one of our fun and whimsical takes on suntan spray containers can be obtained when buying our wholesale sunscreen pens in bulk (opens in a new window). These travel size suntan spray containers are easy to fit in pockets, purses, handbags, and fanny packs. Most have a clear body, making your image design all the more prominent.

The next custom sunscreens we'll touch upon are our roll-on promotional sunburn ointment sticks. These come in customizable imprinted tubes, very similar to those in which you'd expect to find lip balm and are applied in the same way. Some of them actually do incorporate lip balm, but we'll get to those a bit later.

Most, but not all of the scenarios in which sunscreen is applied involve warm temperatures. Naturally, these can lead to perspiration. Some sunblock creams can be compromised by this, but we have multiple forms of promotional sweat resistant suntan lotion to avoid such troubles. As hot weather and swimming go hand-in-hand, we also offer bulk water resistant sunscreen giveaways for summertime trade shows and events.

As we promised a few paragraphs erstwhile, we'll now tell you about our custom sunscreen and lip balm combos. Coming in both stick and lotion forms, these are special sunscreens aimed at protecting lip and facial skin against the damaging effects of exposure to harmful UV rays.

The last group we'll introduce is our smorgasbord of business logo scented sunscreen sprays & lotions. They come in a broad range of different fragrances, with vanilla and tropical-inspired aromas being among the most popular gifts.

We understand that there are a lot of different allergies out there that you or your target market have to deal with. That's why we provide special types of sunblock products for those affected. Additionally, we pride ourselves on supplying businesses with sunscreens that contain no potentially dangerous chemicals. The next four paragraphs will explore this topic in more detail.

When trying to promote to the broadest audience possible, promotional allergy safe sunscreen is a wise investment. As the name would imply, these are specially formulated suntan sprays and lotions aimed at reducing the potential of allergic reactions. It's important to note that the word hypoallergenic describes the property of greatly lowering the chance of allergic reactions and not a 100% ability to block them out entirely.

Many of our offerings in the sunblock category come in the form of promotional PABA free suntan lotion. PABA is an abbreviation of para-aminobenzoic acid, a chemical that can potentially speed up sunburns for some users rather than preventing them. It's also very harmful if ingested by pets and is a chemical that we suggest strongly avoiding while pregnant or nursing.

Give users the gifts of both physical and mental comfort with our wholesale discount oxybenzone free sunscreen products. Oxybenzone is a colorless and mostly odorless chemical compound that is quickly soluble in nature. Scientists believe there is a potential link between contact with oxybenzone and hormonal problems. Without getting too technical, our endocrine system communicates with our bodies via hormones. This is how growth, fertility, and secondary sex traits are regulated. It's particularly active in the case of young people who are going through puberty and those right on the brink of it. Some studies have indicated that oxybenzone can cause fertility problems, particularly in young people, by disrupting the hormonal signals sent forth by the endocrine system.

One allergy that is increasing in both incidence and awareness is gluten intolerance. While celiac disease is the main culprit, there are a variety of other proven and suspected cause of gluten allergies. Those dealing with such an allergy need to be very careful of what they eat and which items they handle in order to stay in good health. That's why our customized gluten free sunscreen lip balm is a rising star on our site.

SPF is an acronym for "Sun Protection Factor". Essentially, the SPF number of any given sunblock represents the ratio of time before harmful UVA rays and UVB rays can redden skin when said sunblock is in use compared to how long it takes to redden unprotected skin. Consequently, it follows that higher numbers signify stronger protection. We carry several custom SPF 15 sunblock giveaways as well as company logo imprinted SPF 30 sunscreen bottles and packets

These items aren't just for summer though; UVB rays are present and dangerous during winter too. This is because of their powerful reflecting abilities, which is why ice and snow sometimes reflect light to a nearly blinding degree. Skiers, snowboarders, and all other outdoor winter athletes will want to stay protected from the harmful rays they are exposed to while speeding down the hills or gliding around the rinks.

In addition to our standalone sunscreen promotional products, we also carry a variety of custom logo sunscreen and sunburn care gift sets. You'll also want to take a look at our promotional beach first aid kits. These contain many items for treating and preventing sunburns, as well as bandages, hand sanitizer, insect repellent, insect bite treatment supplies, and many other useful components. When users enjoy a day full of fun in the sun knowing that all of their bases are covered, they'll have your business to thank for their good times & happy memories.

Supplementing the many sunscreen items we've already told you about are a few odds & ends that don't really fit in any one category. That doesn't make them any less important though. That's why we're going to spend the next three paragraphs extolling the virtues of these relatively elusive items.

When you buy our wholesale discount UV ray meters in bulk (opens in a new window), you'll be supplying your customers and employees with a truly useful tool. They're shaped much like a credit card and easily fit into wallets, billfolds, pockets, and tote bags. They can also be fitted for use on keychains and use a color-coded meter to show the intensity of UV ray exposure risk in any given environment. These products provide safety for consumers at any outdoor event in warm weather by measuring harmful UVA and UVB rays.

Do you want to supply users with a practical giveaway item that is easy to transport and can generate advertising impressions anywhere? If so, we're sure you'll love our promotional sunscreen bottles with carabiner clips. These allow users to easily attach bottles of suntan lotion bearing your image design to belts, keychains, water bottles, and a virtually endless list of other items.

Aloe vera is a very soothing substance found in certain varieties of succulent plants. It has many curative properties, with the benefit of treating sunburns and insect bites/stings being among them. Our promotional aloe vera sunburn lotion items are a must-have for all warm-weather outings and outdoor events.

At 4AllPromos, we give you the freedom to design your own sunscreen spray units, lotion bottles, sets, and accessories. You can work alongside our team of professional artists to create the imprint designs that will make your artwork look its best and draw in the most visual impressions. Single color screen printing is often the most affordable option, but for faster production times and more color-rich graphics, we suggest going with full color (aka 4 color process) printing.

Does your business want to create promotional products that are visually stimulating, bursting with color, and require only brief production times? We would have to imagine that you'd answer to the affirmative on all three counts. When this is the case, you can turn to our full color imprinted sunscreen items to catch plenty of eyes & ad impressions while beachgoers and lounge lizards catch some rays.

For more information, please visit Lotion Plastic Bottle.