Rose and Orange Blossom Cream

I just suddenly got the urge to make a cream, so I did.  And now I have the softest extremities imaginable.  I haven't made a cream in ages.  No special reason for that.  I think it was that I made so many infused oils and started to use those straight on my face and really liked that.  But this evening I was surfing the webpages that I have in my Blog roll on the right and came across Curious Soapmaker's Rose essence facial cream recipe, all pink and pretty.

So, like scratching an itch, I immediately dove into my cupboards to dig out the cream making stuff.  I resisted the strong urge to add everything but the kitchen sink and chose just one additive, Allantoin, which is a nature identical substance that is derived from the roots & leaves of the Comfrey plant.  I love Comfrey and grow it in my garden.  It has loads of medicinal benefits, mostly due to that wonderful substance.  I have tons of other stuff, but the appeal of the Rose face cream was it's simplicity, so I restricted my use of ingredients this time.

Being, of course, completely unable to follow other peoples directions, my recipe is different from hers,  but I started out with the same proportions as she did: About 20% oils, 6% emulsion wax and 74% water phase.  The proportions changed as I weighed my ingredients because I didn't have as much of as I wanted of the Rose water, but I improvised and added the Orange Blossom water and selected my favorite (at the moment) oils and other ingredients.

The exact recipe (as far as I remembered right after I made it (my process tends to be very organic, I use whatever strikes my fancy at the moment I make things)) is as follows:

Oil phase:
Argan oil               22 g / 0.77 oz
Borage oil             10 g / 0.35 oz
Evening primrose   8 g / 0.28 oz
Peach oil                6 g / 0.21 oz
Lanolin                  4 g / 0.14 oz
Oils total: 50 g / 1.76 oz

Emulsion: I used CreamMaker wax from Making Cosmetics 15 g 0.53 oz

Water phase:
Rose water                      30 g (that was all I had) / 1 oz
Orange Blossom water    90 g / 3 oz
Glycerin                          10 g /0.35 oz
Water                              20 g / 7 oz
Allantoin (from Making Cosmetics) 2 g / 0.07 oz
Water total: 152 g. / 5.3 oz

Preservative: Potassium Sorbate 1 g / 0.035 oz

I knew I wanted the oil phase to be mostly Argan oil.  It's simply lovely on the face as well as the hair.  And then I found the Borage oil and Evening Primrose, both of which are very nice.  I wanted to add Lanolin since I'm not allergic to it and it's just the best softening ingredient for the skin.  This much I know from spinning raw wool.  I just love the way my hands get all soft from the Lanolin in the wool.  The Peach oil I used to fill up the quantity.

I dug out the rest of the Rose water I knew I still had from the Italy visit and weighed it, only to be slightly disappointed there wasn't more of it.  But I quickly decided to use Orange Blossom water since I love that scent and I had some sine my last time in Paris.  And I wanted to use Glycerin. I like that as a humectant. And then I filled up with water so the scent would't be overpowering.  I didn't have any beetroot powder, but I had beetroot, so I cut of a small sliver and put it in the water phase along with the allantoin and the preservative.

Then I heated both the oils and the water up in a water bath and whizzed it together using a stick blender.  I added quite a bit of Rose Maroc essential oil which I had in a diluted form (5% with coconut oil) and a little bit of Neroli oil until I liked the combination of the two scents.

I now have several weeks supply of the loveliest light and airy pink face cream which I put into the two wonderful Onix cream jars my little sister gave me for Christmas.  They have been begging for something luxurious and this cream just fits the bill.  I put the rest into two small metal jars and three plastic pump dispensers ready to go to the gym with me.

And now I really want to make a soap to go with that cream.  Since I almost used all my Rose Maroc oil I guess I'll use some Rose Geranium or maybe Rosewood.  And since it begs to be pink, it would need to have Rhubarb root oil...

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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