Autumn Dream – Face Cream

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I don’t even know how I came up with such a cheesy name for this cream, but let me admit that I ALMOST feel like a poet! 😀 (well ok, I might be joking here… 😉 )

I had promised that I would have finally posted the recipe and the “how to – pictures” of the autumn cream I am using right now… so here it is! 😀
It is my “autumn” cream because it has a bit higher % of fats compared to the cream I make for summer, and also because, since I have utterly sensitive skin which happily gets all red and paining with the first colds, I have added a lot of active ingredients with soothing properties! 😀

FORMULA:

Phase A
Water to 100 (HERE the explanation)
Glycerin 3
Xanthan Gum 0.2 (I realized my carbopol ultrez 21 had expired so I could only use the xanthan gum. I would have wanted to add it at 0.3% and lower xanthan gum to 0.15 or 0.1. With only xanthan gum the cream comes out anyway but it has a better touch if it contains carbomer) 😉

Phase B 
Murumuru butter 0.5 (Normal skin: 1.5, Dry skin: 2.5)
Safflower oil 0.5 (Normal skin 1.5, Dry skin 2.5)
Methyl Glucose Sesquistearate 3 (this is the emulsifier)
Cetyl palmitate 1 (this is a thickening agent and in this amount won’t make the cream very thick but it will be a soft cream. For a thicker cream I would have added cetyl palmitate at 2% or I could have kept it at 1% and added another thickening agent like cetyl alcohol at 1%)
Tocopherol 0.5 (this is vitamin E)
Propylheptyl Caprylate 1.5 (this is a very light synthetic oil which doesn’t have other property than making the cream feel very light too. Normal skin 2, Dry skin 3)

Oily Phase C: 
Bisabolol 0.5 (this is a soothing active ingredient. It is quite expensive but it is worth it in my opinion 😀 )
Black Currant Oil 1 (this is a medium natural oil which is said to have good properties against rosacea and, in general, it is good for the capillary… good to have it in a cream in winter time when the capillary go through a lot of stress! Normal skin: 1.5, Dry skin: 2)
Dry Flo 0.5 (this is actually the commercial name of an hydrophobically modified corn starch: it helps to not get a shiny face after applying the cream: good for oily skin – it can be added up to 1%-, but I like to add it also for any other kind of face cream because it gives a better finish 😉 my opinion).

Water Soluble Phase C: 
Hydrolized Silk Proteins 2 (any other protein like milk, oat… would have worked)
Allantoin 0.4 (usually I mix these two together first because Allantoin disperses very well in hydrolized proteins for me! 😀 )
Water 5 (this is just water which I add to better “melt” the next dry ingredients. Of course it has to be included in the final calculation to know how much water to add in the Phase A without exceeding 100 gr)
Dry Extract of Vitis Vinifera 0.2 (it’s a powder and it has good properties, once again, for capillaries)
Dry extract of Raspberry 0.1 (also this one is a powder)
Dry extract of licorice 0.2 (of course a powder as well 😀 this one contained 20% of Glycyrrhizic Acid, which has very good soothing properties!)
The only bad thing about adding dry extracts from plants is that usually they don’t have exactly a white color (you will see in the pictures 😀 ) and therefore they change the color to the cream :D, also, they might have some kind of smell! Sometimes it is possible to find pure active ingredients like, for example, glycyrrhizic acid… but in this case it is a difficult ingredient to work with.
Hyaluronic Acid Gel (which we made HERE) 5

Preservative (I used Cosgard at 1%)
pH 5.5

Well done!
If you made it till here… here we go with the HOW TO! 😀

Phase A:
– I measure glycerin and xanthan gum

– I measure water and add it little by little stirring with a spatula 😀

I set it aside.

Phase B: 
– I measure all ingredients and put them together.

(yes it is not very visible but here you are supposed to see all the ingredients of phase B :D)

– I put both Phase A and Phase B in a double boiler to make them reach 70°C. In the meanwhile I measure the two Phase C! 😀

– Oily Phase C:


– Water soluble Phase C:

(as you can see… not exactly white color extracts! 😀 eheheh :D)

Now back to our Phase A and B, which got heated up to 70°C 😀

This is heated Phase A (it is not very visible but I wanted to show you that it is a gel)

– I pour, little by little, Phase B into Phase A (I was alone so I couldn’t take picture of this cause with one hand i was adding Phase B and with the other I was mixing with a spatula! :D)

– I mix with the immersion mixer making sure that I don’t add any air into the cream!
It will immediately change color into very white 😀
Like here:


– once it looked emulsified, I started mixing with a spatula and kept stirring until it gets to room temperature!
This seems silly but it is very very important: at this point of time the oils and the water might still separate.
As you can see from the picture (probably) the “cream” is actually still very liquid! This is because the picture was taken when the mixture was still very hot. The thickening of cetyl palmitate will occur only once the cream has fully cooled down (and it actually continues after a couple of days).


– Once it reached room temperature I could finally add the two Phase C!

– I stir with a spatula:

– I add the preservative

– I used the immersion mixer one last time just to make things more smooth 😉

– I checked and adjusted the pH to 5.5 pH (using an acid like, for example, or lactic acid.. but this time I didn’t need to adjust it because it was already 5.5)

And… TADAAAAA 😀