How to compose a recipe for your DIY cream?
If it’s your first experience in making homemade cosmetics and you don’t know where to start I advice to make some Body Lotions or Hand Creams and not the Face Cream when trying for the first time.
Face Creams are generally more difficult to produce so let’s start with something easy. In today’s blog I am going to present you an Easy Hand Cream Recipe.
But first let’s do some theory
Step 1, the Formula is always the same:
Water+Oils+Emulsifier+Active ingredients
Start learning the cream crafting by preparing the Body Lotions and Hand Creams. Don’t go for the Face Cream on the Day 1.
- Water — is the main moisturizer in our cream.
- Oils — are the protective layer. They prevent the moisture from evaporating. They also have some nourishing vitamins for our skin.
- Emulsifier — is the crucial element in cream-crafting. Emulsifier will make it possible to mix water and oils and produce a stable emulsion to which we will then add active ingredients. As a rule of thumb, the emulsifiers are added in the oil phase, but sometimes some of them have to be added in a water phase (this information is written on a package of the product).
- Active ingredients — vitamins A,C,E and pro-vitamin B5 , hyaluronic acid,zinc oxide, essential oils, etc.
As a general rule of Thumb, try studying successful recipes of other cooks before coming up with your own!
Step 2, Doing the Math:
So say we want to make 30 grams. Then the 30 grams would be the 100%. Devide it by 100 to get the value of 1%. Knowing how much worth is 1% of the Formula we can then calculate the presence of all of the ingredients.
The water phase is 70–75%
The Oil phase is 10–25%
Active ingredients are 5–20%.
Pay attention to the Active ingredients. Their suggested presence in the formula is always indicated on the package!
Here is the example of an easy Hand Cream recipe:
Shea Butter — 5% -1.5 grams
Almond Oil — 15% -4.5 grams
Vitamin E — 0.3% -0.09 grams
Any Essential oil — 0.5% -0.15 grams
Water — 72.6% -21.7 grams
Olivem 1000(emulsifier) — 6% -1.8 grams
Preservative Optiphen — 0.6% -0.13 grams
You can check the general cream crafting steps in this article.
Things you should avoid mixing in one Formula:
Pay attention to the active ingredients. You can mix any oils together in the oil phase the same goes for the floral waters in the water phase but the active ingredients are always tricky! It is usually indicated on the package if the active ingredient is incompatible with any other active ingredients. Beware.
Choosing the Oil right for your Skin type:
- Normal skin — jojoba oil, coconut oil(butter), hemp seed oil, macadamia oil and almond oil.
- Dry skin — avocado oil, jojoba oil, sesame oil, macadamia oil and almond oil.
- Oily skin — argan oil, jojoba oil, hemp seed oil, macadamia oil and almond oil.
- Combination skin — apricot oil, avocado oil, hemp seed oil, macadamia oil, almond oil, peach oil, cocoa oil and coconut oil.
Check out this quick article on how to define your skin type.
The recommended usage of an Active Ingredients
The recommended usage of an active ingredient is always written on the packaging. Which makes it really easy to count. There are different active ingredients that have to be added with different ways. Some of them don’t like the high temperature, some others aren’t soluble in water or in oil. The information about condition of adding the ingredient into the cream or other product also is written on the packaging.