Have you ever looked at your face moisturizer and wondered how it was made or what ingredients it was made with? Believe it or not those are important questions. What ingredients that are in your moisturizer is an obvious concern. With all the fuss about ingredients in food you might think the cosmetic industry would be pro-active and figure out that people are tired of harsh, unpronounceable, questionable ingredients in their toiletries. After all, breathing, eating and skin absorption are the main avenues for chemicals and poisons to enter your body, but those potentially harmful ingredients remain in a lot of cosmetics, even the high end products. Many cosmetic companies claim you need these ingredients to “turn back time” and appear younger than your age, which of course is not true. Clear youthful looking skin begins with your diet! Nevertheless, people buy into the “fountain of youth” advertising campaigns and the nasty ingredients remain in cosmetics. Also, cosmetic companies, just like food companies, have to make sure they have a shelf-stable product so they add preservatives.
How your face cream is made is equally important. Consider a time or a place where you can’t buy toiletries. Perhaps you’re on a tight budget and this is not a season of your life that you can afford high dollar (or low dollar) moisturizers. Maybe you’ve take the plunge and decided to move off-grid, miles away from a store or heaven forbid there is a economic collapse and items are not as plentiful as they once where. Then what? Yes, I know, you’ve got some things in your preps, but how long will they last? Do you know how to make your own toiletries? You really should consider trying to learn now, while the learning environment is comfortable and forgiving. That is exactly what I’m doing. This is my second post on natural toiletries (read the first here) and in the coming months I hope to add quite a few more, even moving on to soap making. I’d love it if you learned with me, or if you are already making soap, lotions, ointments and deodorants sharing your knowledge. So let’s get started with making our own homemade face moisturizer.
To make your own homemade face moisturizer you will need:
3T Cocoa Butter
3T Beeswax
6T Almond Oil
6T Jojoba Oil
2T Rose Petals
3T Natural Emulsifying Wax
1T Rose Hip Oil
1T Vitamin E
20 Drops Geranium Oil
Take the 2 tablespoons rose petals and infuse them with 1/2 cup hot filtered water.
Let them steep for 30 minutes to an hour.
Take your cocoa butter, beeswax, almond oil, and jojoba oil and place them in a double boiler. I just made a double boiler out of a glass measuring cup and a pan. I have about an 1 inch to an inch and a half of water on the bottom of the pan.
Then in another double boiler (again I just made one from a measuring cup and a pan) place your emulsifying wax and your strained rose petal infusion. When you strain the rose petals be sure to remove all the petals and squeeze the water out of the petals, you’ll need every drop.
You will have both double boilers on the stove at once. Turn both burners to low to melt the wax and cocoa butter. When both mixtures are melted turn off the heat. Now, here is the tricky part. You are going to mix one mixture into the other but you have to make sure they are very close to the same temperature. If one is hotter than the other the emulsifying wax may not thicken your face cream.
After they have both cooled a little (don’t let them get to room temperature), I used my finger to check to make sure they felt like they were the same temperature. If you are certain both mixtures are the same temperature, pour one into the other.
Then take a whisk and stir vigorously for several minutes to make sure the mixture is well combined.
Add the rose hip oil, vitamin E and Geranium oil. Then stir for a few more minutes to make sure everything is mixed thoroughly.
Place into a glass or metal container. Remember this face moisturizer does not have preservatives so you might consider storing it in the fridge if you don’t plan to use it right away. The trick to making your own toiletries is to store (or better yet grow or buy locally) the ingredients to make them, rather than storing the ready-made product. So be sure to make only the amount you will use in a reasonable amount of time, a few weeks. Since this cream has beeswax and vitamin E it should store at room temperature (if you don’t live in an extremely humid or a hot climate) for a few weeks; just keep an eye on it and make sure you use it, instead of letting it sit on your bathroom counter.
Have you ever made face cream or lotion?
