My Incredibly Green Cream

I had dried herbs hanging all over the house in the autumn
and I am always looking out for suitable containers for dried
herbs, face creams, body lotions, lip balms and toners.

I have been making face creams for almost two years now. I really like that and I use no commercially made creams anymore.  In fact, my cousin and I were talking and she was telling me how someone had given her a sample of a well known brand of face cream and she almost threw up because it smelled so artificial.  I so agree.  All those famous brand creams now are about as appealing to me as nuclear waste.

The creams I make are usually made with beeswax as an emulsifier.  That makes a thick, very creamy and slightly oily cream that is very good for the night.  It is concentrated and a little goes a long way.  I tend to slather on lots and lots, probably I use too much, and I really shine in bed at night.  But I have been searching for a lighter emulsifier as an option for daytime.  I ordered some vegetable emulsifier and it came with an ingredients label that said: Sodium Lauryl Sulfate!  That is very irritating to the skin and it is one of the ingredients that I want to avoid.  So I haven't used it at all.

I was really please to read Texia's (at Sanga natural) post about homemade emulsifiers.  She did two recipes and I have made them both and already used one in a cream.  I have a lot of dried herbs and herbs macerated in oil and I figured that I should use all my herbal oils for something.  So I decided to make an incredibly green cream.

The Incredibly Green Cream:

Oil phase - 70g of macerated oils: 20 g. each yarrow (Achillea) oil, chickweed (Stellaria) oil and Calendua oil.  10 g. mock orange (Philadelphus) oil.  And additionally almost 1 tsp. Njóli (Rumex) oil.
Into the oil I added a pinch and a dash of AHA and A retinol.  I don't have a scale that measures accurately in small increments so I eyeball the small stuff.

Water phase - 120 g. herbal tea: I made tea with the following herbs: Yarrow (Achillea), chickweed (Stellaria), shepherd's purse (Capsella), Comfrey and Viola.  I let this steep for about an hour and then I added a bit of licorice extract and niacin as well as the preservative Natrium benzoat.

Making cream is just like making soap, minus the lye.  I warm the ingredients in bain marie and then pour the water phase into the oil while whisking with a stick blender.
I forgot to write how much emulsifier I used, but I think it was somewhere between 10 and 20 g. and I put it into the water phase.

I like the cream very much, so thank you Texia.  I've been using it for about 2 weeks now, both morning and night.  It absorbs well so that my husband's goodnight kiss doesn't slide right off.  It is chock full of goodies for the skin and smells a bit green and I am pretty sure that it has taken twenty years of my appearance already.
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