Treat your skin to a nourishing and luxurious face cream made by you!
This recipe uses ingredients that lock moisture into the skin and soothes irritation, leaving your skin looking smooth and nourished.
Keep reading to try our face cream recipe!
Why Make Your Own Face Cream?
The best thing about making your own face cream is they don’t contain harsh or drying ingredients that may damage your skin!
If you have dry skin or irritated skin, a face cream will not only provide extra moisturising properties but it will help soothe irritation and overly dry areas.
In this recipe we are using calendula extract as it is great for soothing irritated skin, eczema and rashes due to its anti-inflammatory and soothing properties! It creates a super lightweight face cream that feels really nourishing on the skin.
This recipe is more of an intermediate recipe, so if this looks too complicated you could try our face oil recipe. However, this is not a lightweight result and it will be oily, so it may take longer to absorb into the skin.
What is Calendula Extract?
Calendula extract is a dark red to brown coloured liquid with a natural floral scent. The calendula is extracted from yellow flowers of the calendula plant (also known as marigold).
The marigold plant is an annual flowering plant that is commonly grown in Europe and Mediterranean regions.
Our calendula extract is not 100% natural as it is diluted. The ingredients in the extract are: glycerin, aqua, calendula officinalis flower extract, citric acid, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate.
Let's have a go at our calendula face cream recipe...
Ingredients
Water phase
- Water 71.5g | 71.5ml
- Panthenol 1g
- Hydroxyethyl cellulose 0.5g
-
Geogard ultra 1.5g
Oil phase
- Shea butter 5g | 5ml
- Argan oil 10g | 10ml
-
Emulsifying wax 5g
Cool down phase
- Allantoin 1g
- Calendula extract 2g
- Hydrolysed silk 2g
-
10/90 lye solution or 10/90 citric solution
Method
1. Heated water phase
- Weigh the water, panthenol, hydroxyethyl cellulose and geogard ultra.
- Combine in a heatproof bowl.
- Heat over a pan of boiling water or in a double boiler.
- Mix well until the geogard ultra has dissolved.
- Remove from the heat.
2. Heated oil phase
- Weigh the shea butter and emulsifying wax.
- Heat over a pan of boiling water or in a double boiler.
- Mix well until the shea butter and emulsifying wax has melted.
- Measure the argan oil and add it to the mixture.
- Once fully combined, remove from the heat.
3. Cool down phase
- Weigh out the allantoin powder, calendula extract and hydrolysed silk and mix.
- Measure the temperature of the water solution to check it is below 50°C.
- Once the it has reached temperature, add in the calendula mixture to the water and combine.
4. Cooling and whipping process
- Add the liquid oil mixture to the water solution.
- Blend with a stick blender in short pulses for 1-2 minutes.
- Once blended, leave the mixture to cool to around 25°C and stir occasionally.
5. Test the pH
- The pH of body lotion should be in the range 4.5 - 5.5
- Take 2g of the face cream and mix it in 18g of water until dissolved.
- Using a digital pH meter, measure the pH.
6. If necessary, adjust the pH
- If the pH of your face cream is too low, make a sodium hydroxide solution.
- Put on your gloves, mask and safety goggles. For more information about safety when using sodium hydroxide, click here.
- Weigh 10g of sodium hydroxide and 90g of water.
- Add the sodium hydroxide to the water and stir until dissolved.
- Using a pipette, add 0.5g of the sodium hydroxide solution into the diluted face cream sample that you used for pH testing.
- Test the pH again, if the pH is still under 4.5, repeat the last steps until the pH is 4.5-5.5.
- Once the correct pH has been reached, record the amount of sodium hydroxide solution needed and add this to the remaining face cream.
- If the pH of the face cream was over 5.5, you can follow this process but use 10g citric acid diluted in 90g water.
7. Pour into containers
- Once all of the ingredients are fully combined, pour the mixture into a container.
- Now your face cream is ready to use!
Continue Reading
Now that you've learned how to make a face cream, why not continue learning?
- If you loved this recipe, try some more skincare recipes like our niacinamide serum!
- Interested in more simple skincare recipes? Check out our clay face mask recipe!
- Explore the world of haircare with our conditioner recipe!
Did you try our face cream recipe? Let us know how you got on in the comments!
