For the purpose of cosmetic manufacture and producing your CPSR, it is best to use weight rather than volume for all your ingredients before calculating the percentages. This will create a consistent way of measuring your ingredients to calculate the percentages.

For example if we have the following recipe:

• 15 drops Lavender Essential Oil
• 30ml Olive Oil
• 10ml Almond Oil
• 5ml Jojoba Oil
• 0.5ml Vitamin E

We first need to convert all of these to weight from volume

We do this by measuring our ingredients and then weighing each ingredient on scales.

Converted to grams our original formula is now:

• 2.1g Lavender Essential Oil
• 29g Olive Oil
• 9.5g Almond Oil
• 4.4g Jojoba Oil
• 0.4g ml Vitamin E

Now that we have all of our ingredients, it is very easy to calculate the percentages.

Firstly we need to add up the total weight of all the ingredients: 45.4g

Then to work out the percentage each individual ingredient makes up we simply divide the ingredient weight by the total weight and then after times by 100.

So for our example above

Lavender Essential Oil: 2.1 / 45.4 = 0.0462

Olive Oil: 29 / 45.4 = 0.638

Almond Oil: 9.5 / 45.4 = 0.209

Jojoba Oil: 4.4 / 45.4 = 0.096

Vitamin E: 0.4 / 45.4 = 0.008

Now we multiply each of our results by 100

Lavender Essential Oil: 0.0462 x 100 = 4.62%

Olive Oil: 0.638 x 100 = 63.8%

Almond Oil: 0.209 x 100 = 20.9%

Jojoba Oil: 0.096 x 100 = 9.6%

Vitamin E: 0.008 x 100 = 0.8%

You can see that you now have the percentages of each ingredient in your product. It will now be easy to scale your production to any batch size you wish to.

There are a few different ways that a percentage can be calculated. The following formula is a common strategy used to calculate the percentage of something:

1. Determine the whole or total amount of what you want to find a percentage for

For example, if you want to calculate the percentage of how many days it rained in a month, you would use the number of days in that month as the total amount. So, let's say we are evaluating the amount of rain during the month of April, which has 30 days.

2. Divide the number that you wish to determine the percentage for

Using the example above, let's say that it rained 15 days out of the 30 days in April. You would divide 15 by 30, which equals 0.5.

3. Multiply the value from step two by 100

Continuing with the above example, you would multiply 0.5 by 100. This equals 50, which would give you the answer of 50%. So, in April, it rained 50% of the time.

Types of percentage problems

There are three main types of percentage problems you might encounter in both personal and professional settings. These include:

Finding the ending number
Finding the percentage
Finding the starting number
1. Finding the ending number

The following is an example of a question that would require you to use a percentage calculation to find the ending number in a problem: "What is 50% of 25?" For this problem, you already have both the percentage and the whole amount that you want to find a percentage of.

So, you would move to the second step as listed in the previous section. However, since you already have the percentage, instead of dividing you will want to multiply the percentage by the whole number. For this equation, you would multiple 50%, or 0.5, by 25. This gives you an answer of 12.5. Thus, the answer to this percentage problem would be "12.5 is 50% of 25."

2. Finding the percentage

For a percentage problem in which you need to find the percentage, a question may be posed as the following: "What percent of 5 is 2?" In this example, you will need to determine in a percentage how much of 2 is part of the whole of 5. For this type of problem, you can simply divide the number that you want to turn into a percentage by the whole. So, using this example, you would divide 2 by 5. This equation would give you 0.4. You would then multiply 0.4 by 100 to get 40, or 40%. Thus, 2 is equal to 40% of 5.

3. Finding the starting number

A percentage problem that asks you to find the starting number may look like the following: "45% of what is 2?" This is typically a more difficult equation but can easily be solved using the previously mentioned formula. For this type of percentage problem, you would want to divide the whole by the percentage given. Using the example of "45% of what is 2?", you would divide 2 by 45% or .45. This would give you 4.4, which means that 2 is 45% of 4.4.

If you purchase your packaging from Naturallythinking or from one of our approved suppliers, you simply need to select from the packaging dropdown box the type of packaging you are using.

You need to select both the Packaging Material and the Closure

Packaging Material dropdown

Select the type of material (Aluminium, Plastic or Glass and if appropriate colour). If your product is in plastic packaging, it is important to select the type of plastic the container is made from . The majority of plastic containers ar either PET or HDPE plastic.

Closure Material dropdown

Select the type of material (Plastic, Glass etc.) and the type of liner your closure has. The majority of closures are Aluminium or PP Plastic and may have a glass pipette. The majority of liners are either EPE/EPA or aluminium closures.

What if my packaging option isn't shown

Please select the closest packaging option from the dropdown. It is important that you obtain a foodsafe certificate from your packaging manufacture to verify its suitability with cosmetics. If your manufacturer has specific testing information for the product with Cosmetics, that is equally acceptable. It is important that you keep this information in your Product Information File as it verifies the compatibility and safety of the packaging you have ordered.