…your guide to making natural soap and other bath & body products!
My LUSH FUN duplicate
I was asked by one of you if I could make a duplicate of LUSH FUN.
For those who do not know what I am talking about – to cite LUSH – it is a “multi-purpose moldable soap”. Simply, it is kind of a play dough that foams. Ideal for children in bath 🙂
Technically it is not soap. As I will show below, the foaming comes from sodium laureth sulfate.
How I duplicated the LUSH FUN recipe
I was very interested by the idea, Lush again has come with something inventive, therefore I went to buy me one – remember, if you wish to duplicate, you always have to try the original…
I selected the green one, as it smelled very citrusy and fresh, which I like.
Next thing to was to check the ingredient list:
INCI: Talc, Cornflour (cornstarch), Glycerine, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Lime Oil, Lemon Oil, *Citral, *Limonene, *Linalool, Perfume, Gardenia Extract, Colour 42090
The most important here is talc, cornstarch, glycerin (these three make he consistency of dough) and sodium laureth sulfate (that is the surfactant added to all industrial shampoos and LUSH FUN foams thanks to it!). The rest are essential oils, perfume and colour.
Those of you who are concerned about natural products just understood that LUSH FUN is really not what one would call a natural product. Handmade does not mean natural… I will try to make more natural and less controversial version of LUSH FUN (no talc, no SLES or SCS) in my next experiment, so far, just the non-natural version….
Once you know the ingredients, you should try to estimate their ratio – we know that INCI lists ingredients in decreasing order and that colourants and fragrances should not consist more than 10% of the recipe (well, normally less than that, but LUSH puts really a lot of perfume in their products…)
My estimate was as follows
Talc – 30%
Cornstarch – 22%
Glycerin – 20%
Sodium Laureth Sulfate – 20%
Perfume + Essential oils – 6%
Colorants – 1%
My other question was – where do I find talc? I had a substitute for sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) – sodium coco sulfate (SCS), a slightly less controversial surfactant than SLES, I had cornstarch and glycerin, colours and essential oils. But talc… I think it can be ordered somewhere…
While searching for talc, I found it is the main ingredient of baby powders. And my baby powder was composed of talc and distarch phosphate (which is basically a modified cornstarch. Therefore I used it instead of first two ingredients of the recipe. So can you use yours.
I started to experiment and finally I added a bit more of baby powder and this is the recipe that I find the closest to original, I just put much less of the fragrance….
LUSH FUN duplicate recipe
46g (62%) Baby powder(or 32% talc + 30% cornstarch)
12g (16%) Sodium coco sulfate (SCS)
14g (19%) Glycerin
0.5g (0.7%) Colorant – I tried two: blue food colouring dissolved in glycerin and green mineral oxide, also dissolved in glycerine
1.5g (2%) Fragrance (I used EO Verbena, but if you use EO lemon or other citrusy EO, that would be sufficient)
Instructions
1) Dissolve SCS in glycerin by a very gentle heating. If you do not dissolve it well, your play dough will be crumbly. It can take up to 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.
2) Once SCS dissolved, stir in the colourant.
3) Then add the baby powder- you will have to work the dough with hands (preferably in gloves so that you do not color yourself)
4) Once dough well done, incorporate the fragrance.
This is comparison of the consistency of my LUSH FUN duplicate and the original
And here I compare how the two foam – LUSH FUN original on the first and my LUSH FUN duplicate on the second video
Do you like it? Did you try something similar? Leave me a comment below!
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Hi! We tried your FUN dupe recipe and were very satisfied at first with the results! The dough looked great and was easy to work into different shapes. However, just a few hours later it had dried up into a crumbly mass that was no longer manageable. The only thing we used differently from your recipe was SLS instead of SCS. We mixed SLS powder into the liquid glycerin, heated the mix up gently, then added the baby powder, colourant and flavors. But something just didn’t work out! 🙁
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#9 written by evik 4 years ago
Humm, it is possible that using SLS made the difference, as to my experience, it “soaks” much more liquids than the SLS. Now if you just add a bit more glycerin to your dried paste, it should help.
Also, in general, the paste dries pretty fast, it should be in a plastic wrap (the original FUN from LUSH dries pretty fast, too). Hope this helps and thank you for the feedback! Evik-
Hi Evic,
I just found your blog. I intend to make a moldable soap using pure soap flakes which can be purchased online. I will try the cornstarch or modified tapioca starch, soap flakes and glycerin. Thank you for the ratio. It gives me a place to start. I don’t upload videos…not that good with technology.
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#11 written by Kelly 4 years ago
I love the way you explain the process! Are you a science teacher? 🙂 I am new to this but I actually learned a lot of new things reading this article. For example I didn’t know the INCI lists in decreasing order which is helpful to know for creating dups. As far as the baby powder you used, was it unscented and what brand did you use. The baby powders I have are talc free unforturnately. Is it possible to use a Billiard’s Talcum powder like here (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000645ELU/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
and add cornstarch?
I recently became introduced to Lush and love the Red fun (so does my son!) but most of their products are incredibly expensive considering the ingredients are easy accessible…just not the process.-
#12 written by evik 4 years ago
Hi Kelly, actually, I am 🙂 The brand very probably won’t matter to you, as I used one that is produced in Slovakia (http://www.slovakshop-cy.com/rozne/1302538767-aviril-detsky-puder-s-azulenom.html). For the Billiards Talcum – technically, I believe so. Not sure if it is pure enough to put on skin, though… I am seriously considering making some talc-free version!
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#17 written by Laureline 4 years ago
Hi and many many thanks for your work with this recipe :)) ! I can’t wait to try it out, but something is bothering me, you used 62% of baby power, but in case we have talc, you advise to use : 30% talc and 22% cornstarch, which means 52%, is something missing ? Or is this normal because of your baby power composition ?
Please note that talc can be all natural, I found some natural talc from aroma-zone.
Have a nice day ! -
#19 written by Laureline 4 years ago
Thank you Evik for your really fast answer 😉 .
Let’s do this then, I’ll try your recipe with the 32/30 %s, as soon as I receive my new passion fruit EO 🙂 . Thank you again for cracking this FUN recipe :)) !
PS : I found your website by looking for FUN diy, and finally added you to my favourites, it really is full of good recipes and ideas ! Thank you !
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#20 written by N Bear 4 years ago
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I found that with what I was doing pure cornstarch made a solid till you stop playing then melty liquid if that makes sencse
With what I did it was:
Baby powder
Dr bronners
Glycerin
ColourAnd in about that order as I make i mix I don’t really measure it appears to foam up decently THO and has a nice smell too perhaps even stronger then the lush! (I just got 2 of the gold ones)
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#29 written by soapy sam 2 years ago
Hi just wondering why does the scs have to be dissolved in glycerine what would happen if I didnt and just combined the two, and does this need to be the same method if i use sls or slsa? Also I notice the lush recipe uses lemon and lime oil so coldd i add olive oil to try to get the right consistancy? Thanks for sharing the recipe
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#30 written by evik 2 years ago
Hi Samantha. If you do not dissolve SCS (or SLS or SLSA), you will get – well, undissolved beads/noodles/prills/flakes in your LUSH FUN duplicate and it might have problems with consistency (not smooth, crumbling). Lemon and lime oils are only essential oils, their quantitity is very small. Omit them completely if you do not want any fragrance, or put in different essential oils. Olive oil is a different kind of oil – fatty and no fragrant in this sense, so would make it oily.
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#32 written by Marisol 2 years ago
I love this recipe!! T.H.A.N.K. youuuuu!! I will try this NOW! I have seen videos where they use shampoo and it seems to work but they say it dries pretty fast. I’m glad you mentioned the same happens with the “Real” thing. My only concern now it’s the coloring. I see in your vids that Lush’s does not “shed” its color and the DIY version (food coloring) does. Maybe we need to play with different pigments and see what works best.
Saludos from México -
#35 written by Nicolle 1 year ago
I am trying to whip some up as party favors for my son’s birthday. After poring over a doZen recipes i decided to just make it with simple mix of 1 part plain RICE flour + 1 part cornstarch + 1 part sodium bicarbonate+ some cream of tartar + my favourite bubble bath + body lotion + extra virgin coconut oil. I just mixed the dry ingredients first then folded in the wet mixture until it rolled up into a nice easy to mold ball of bubble play doh!
I think it takes a bit of luck and enough elbow grease!
I will say that using the body lotion instead of more bubble bath helped the dry mix keep together and the cream of tartar helped keep it crumbly. If u try this recipe and it works for u please let me know! Nikiism@icloud.com -
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What a great idea! I am really loving your blog.