Un-Talcum Powder

I went through several trials and errors before I finally decided this was the best recipe for talc free powder. As I state on the de-funk de pits thread, I'm fat, so I use powder every day to keep me feeling dry. I have this recipe on SoapMaker 3. I initially made it using small amounts to avoid wasting supplies, which is why the amounts are so small. My next batch was 1000 grams and I decided it is definitely "the one." My latest batch is five pounds.

The rice flour I used was Three Elephants brand. It is an ultra fine ground flour that is soft and not scratchy at all. That is the key to a good powder. Making sure you have ultra fine ground flours. I found it at an Asian market. I'm sure there are probably other rice flours that are ground as fine, but this was the only brand (and I've tried a bunch) that was fine enough that it didn't scratch.

Small (160 g) test batch

Arrowroot Powder 50 g
Rice Flour 50 g
Diatomaceous Earth 25 g
White Kaolin Clay 25 g
Baking Soda 10 g

Medium (1000 g) batch

Arrowroot Powder 313 g
Rice Flour 313 g
Diatomaceous Earth 156 g
White Kaolin Clay 156 g
Baking Soda 62 g

Monster (5 pound) batch

Arrowroot Powder 25 oz
Rice Flour 25 oz
Diatomaceous Earth 12 oz
White Kaolin Clay 12 oz
Baking Soda 5 oz


I have found that the best way to add fragrance to the powder is by adding some fragrance to a cotton ball and then putting the cotton into your powder container. Shake it up and leave it alone for several hours to settle. ( I don't know where I got this tip; it was on a website, but I don't remember which site. Sorry!) If you add the fragrance directly to the powder, you get clumps that you have to break up. But by adding it to the cotton, you can leave it in as long (or not so long) as you want. If it is a strong fragrance, you can add only a few drops of fragrance and leave it in for a short amount of time. The nice thing about the cotton ball method is, you can't really over scent it.

Unless of course you DRENCH the cotton square with Dragon's Blood FO and put it in there for a couple of days. But no one would possibly be dumb enough to do that, would they. :headbanging:

Let me know if any of you try the powder and if you like it or hate it. Feel free to post your own recipes or ask questions about this one.

THANK YOU, Teresa! I really appreciate your sharing this.

I don't use powder a lot, but it's a good thing to have handy in the summertime when it's really hot and humid. A sweaty underwire bra can be torture.

Regarding rice flour -- I have some already that's Bob's Red Mill brand. Do you have an opinion about that rice flour? Too coarse? Fine enough?

I never woulda thought Dragon's Blood could be too strong. :mrgreen:

What's the DE for?

I am surprised you did not find the DE scratchy.

Well this is very timely for me Teresa - I just started messing around this weekend with making bath powder. I didn't like grittiness of arrowroot powder, and find that cornstarch and tapioca are the silkiest. but they don't fluff much with a powder puff and thought I'd try dry flo ts starch. (but I'd have to order it first)

What kind of texture does rice flour have? (which translate into "do I really want to drive all over to find some?)

DeeAnna said:

THANK YOU, Teresa! I really appreciate your sharing this.

I don't use powder a lot, but it's a good thing to have handy in the summertime when it's really hot and humid. A sweaty underwire bra can be torture.

Regarding rice flour -- I have some already that's Bob's Red Mill brand. Do you have an opinion about that rice flour? Too coarse? Fine enough?

I never woulda thought Dragon's Blood could be too strong. :mrgreen:

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You are welcome!! Bob's Red Mill is one of the first ones I used. I had it on hand (it makes great pancakes). I found it to be too scratchy. If you toss some into a fine meshed sieve and shake it, you'll notice you're left with granules. Those granules hurt like heck when you rub them on your skin!! The Three Elephants brand doesn't have those granules.

BrewerGeorge said:

What's the DE for?

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Deodorant qualities. It also has anti-caking qualities. Finally, it has some anti-bacterial qualities. I thought I'd give it a try since I had some in the house. I replaced some of my baking soda with the DE. I liked the feel much better. It wasn't as irritating and I found it worked much better too.

Susie said:

I am surprised you did not find the DE scratchy.

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Not at all! It is food grade and very fine and powdery. It is much softer and less scratchy than baking soda. I wanted to replace all of my baking soda with it, but discovered keeping the baking soda at about 10% works out well. I started with four ingredients at 25% each and adjusted them accordingly. I ended up with 10% baking soda, the addition of DE and offsetting the other ingredients. It was a laborious process. It took about a year to get it right.

lenarenee said:

Well this is very timely for me Teresa - I just started messing around this weekend with making bath powder. I didn't like grittiness of arrowroot powder, and find that cornstarch and tapioca are the silkiest. but they don't fluff much with a powder puff and thought I'd try dry flo ts starch. (but I'd have to order it first)

What kind of texture does rice flour have? (which translate into "do I really want to drive all over to find some?)

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I don't know what flo ts starch is, but yes, you do really want to drive all over to find some rice flour. Start with the Asian stores in your area. Rice flour has the texture of talc, IF it is ground fine. I don't like tapioca and cornstarch because they feel "crunchy" to me. If you can't find an Asian store in your area, see if you can find "Three Elephants" brand rice flour on line. I need to finish getting ready for work, but when I get home tonight, I can post a photo of what the bags look like. I'll also look for it online when I get to work.

ETA: When I finally found the "right" rice flour, I bought 24 pounds of it. It is going to take a long time to go through 24 pounds of rice flour, but I've got it!!

If your local grocery carries Bob's Red Mill products, the chances are good they carry that brand of rice flour. It may be in a special section as in our local Hy-Vee.

Teresa flo is modified tapioca (Natrasorb) , very good for keeping the scent, smooth silky powder, completely dissolve in water
http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.ca/search?q=natrasorb

Dahila said:

Teresa flo is modified tapioca (Natrasorb) , very good for keeping the scent, smooth silky powder, completely dissolve in water
http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.ca/search?q=natrasorb

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Thanks for clarifying, Dahila! I had no idea what flo ts starch was, never heard that abbreviation before.

Since this is an international forum I notice it is helpfull to write things in full sentences sometimes, at least when we talk about specific ingredients that not all of us know about, it makes things less confusing. If flo ts starch is simply Natrasorb, then that makes it easier to understand what the product is, at least for me. (And so we can google it, and see if it is something awesome we need in our life... *grin* : )

Thank you for this recipe, Theresa!

I read the recipe and found I actually have all the ingredients on hand, yay. I will try the smaller recipe first, in case my arrowrootpowder isn`t fine enough.

Will try the sifting tip you gave DeeAnna : )

MySoapyHeart said:

Thanks for clarifying, Dahila! I had no idea what flo ts starch was, never heard that abbreviation before.

Since this is an international forum I notice it is helpfull to write things in full sentences sometimes, at least when we talk about specific ingredients that not all of us know about, it makes things less confusing. If flo ts starch is simply Natrasorb, then that makes it easier to understand what the product is, at least for me. (And so we can google it, and see if it is something awesome we need in our life... *grin* : )

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"Dry Flo ts Starch" is the only identifying label on my package. No where does it say "Natrasorb".

I just did an online search for Three Elephants brand rice flour and ended up with Erawan brand rice flour. There are two types, a red one and a blue one. Get the red. The blue one is "glutenous" rice flour and I'm guessing that will be very sticky if it gets wet. That's the polar opposite of what you want to happen in a powder. The bag of Erawan brand flour looks just like what I have at home, so I imagine it would be OK. However, I would just try one bag to make sure it is a super fine and silky feeling flour before I bought any significant amount of it. I don't have powder puffs, so I'm rubbing the powder on and it can be scratchy if you don't get the right kind of flour. Even baking soda is too rough for my skin, that's why I had to reduce it so much.

I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes. If you do a batch with cornstarch or tapioca flour to compare with the rice flour powder, let me know how you like the different textures. I have tapioca flour at home, but haven't wanted to use it because it feels weird to me.

Teresa I had not added that it is so light that 8 oz is a huge bug, I mean like 5 kg of flour. That size, Eight oz will last you for ever . I add it to all my bath bombs and bath salts
In powder I would use it as scent keeper, and instead of Baking soda (huge no for my skin) I would exchange it with Magnesium Hydroxide, it very smooth, at least the one I have

Okay, so here's a totally off the cuff thought -- If baking soda is often irritating to the skin, especially hot sweaty skin like underarms and underboobs and such, and mag hydroxide is not (at least based on all the reports shared in Teresa's "defunk da pits" thread) .... then why not use mag hydroxide in place of the baking soda in Teresa's un-talcum powder?

Feel free to shoot me down about this notion. I'm really just talking off the top of my head here.

edit: It appears skin absorption of MgOH2 is minimal although there are not a lot of studies about this. Inhalation of the powder would certainly something to minimize -- but that is true of any of the ingredients in this powder. Ingestion is the main path for human exposure of MgOH2 (laxative, antacid) and serious health problems can arise if mag hydroxide is overused.

There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of concern overall about MgOH2 as a toxin -- even the EWG website isn't foaming at the mouth about it. It seems to be a fairly safe chemical to use as long as a person is sensible. Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225636/

lenarenee said:

"Dry Flo ts Starch" is the only identifying label on my package. No where does it say "Natrasorb".

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Dear lenarenee:
Sorry, I didn`t mean to sound snippy, if that was what I sounded like.

I am probably very slow, since to me Dry Flo ts Starch - the way you wrote now, with capital letters in there, is easier identifying as a name/brand for me, and I would understood that this was the name of the powder. Since it was written in a casual way (lowercase letters only) it just looked like it was an abreviation for something I had no clue what was.

Not saying this to nitpick, just wanted to let you you know how my slow head works trying to read and communicate in a language that is not my own, and that I limited knowledge of. Things fly by me and I can`t always keep up, which obviously was the case here.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Dahila said:

and instead of Baking soda (huge no for my skin) I would exchange it with Magnesium Hydroxide, it very smooth, at least the one I have

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DeeAnna said:

Okay, so here's a totally off the cuff thought -- If baking soda is often irritating to the skin, especially hot sweaty skin like underarms and underboobs and such, and mag hydroxide is not (at least based on all the reports shared in Teresa's "defunk da pits" thread) .... then why not use mag hydroxide in place of the baking soda in Teresa's un-talcum powder?

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That's exactly where my mind was going as well. My mag hydroxide is ultra super-smooth without any graininess or scratchiness to speak of at all- so I'll be subbing it in for the baking soda when I make up a batch of Teresa's powder (thank you so much Teresa!).


ETA: For rice flour- I have a bag of Authentic Food's super-fine white rice flour on hand for when I make gluten-free baked goods for my SIL. The stuff is like talcum powder- no grit whatsoever in it. I buy it from Wholefoods. It's a little pricey, but it's worth it because of how super-fine it is (much, much finer than Bob's Red Mill, which I also have on hand). So for those that can't find the Three Elephant brand, you might be able to find the Authentic Foods brand instead.


IrishLass

Hmmm. Interesting that a bunch of us would have about the same thought at about the same time. I bet I was writing my reply about the same time Dahlia submitted hers.

They say " Great minds think alike "

MySoapyHeart said:

Dear lenarenee:
Sorry, I didn`t mean to sound snippy, if that was what I sounded like.

I am probably very slow, since to me Dry Flo ts Starch - the way you wrote now, with capital letters in there, is easier identifying as a name/brand for me, and I would understood that this was the name of the powder. Since it was written in a casual way (lowercase letters only) it just looked like it was an abreviation for something I had no clue what was.

Not saying this to nitpick, just wanted to let you you know how my slow head works trying to read and communicate in a language that is not my own, and that I limited knowledge of. Things fly by me and I can`t always keep up, which obviously was the case here.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings.

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Oh no that's not it at all Soapy Heart - please don't worry. I just couldn't confirm that the two products were the same thing and I didn't want anyone to make a purchase thinking they knew what they were getting! (I did a little searching on Google but still couldn't find info that the two items were the same thing!)

Okay, found a brand new freshly opened local Asian store with rice flour for $1 (hooray for not having to drive to San Diego!) Haven't played with it yet to see what the texture is like. Teresa I know exactly what you mean when you say the tapioca is "crunchy" - I actually like that. But I think that very feature is what keeps the powder from "lifting" well. The dry flo stuff is nice, but if the rice flour works even half as well, I'd rather use that and not have to special order the dry flo (shipping costs as much as the dry flo itself).

I'm really interested in the magnesium hydroxide powder too - where did you find that?