Autumn Dream – Face Cream

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! 😀
Since my “perfect fat % for autumn cream” is indeed a very personal thing, I will add in the recipe few modifications you can do in case you have normal or dry skin! (after all, lotion making is all about being able to make what suits ourselves best! 😉 ).

IMPORTANT: If you are new to the world of (“serious”) DIY Lotion Making… well DO NOT DESPAIR for I have gone through each and every step in my previous posts! 😀
On top of the page you can reach the Index of the website or you can start HERE by reading the first part of  the theory of lotion making 😀

If, instead, you already know what’s behind and you want to know where to buy the cosmetic ingredients (cause most of the ingredients in this recipe cannot be found in a normal shop and often not even at the chemist… or well, if you find them there, they might charge you a lot more money than online) HERE you can find a list of websites that sell them online!

All done?
Good!
Now we are ready to go! 😀

This is the RECIPE:

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. If, however, you do own that carbomer, you could add 0.3 of it 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. If you don’t have this one but have another one, you can substitute it freely. However remember that the procedure to make this face cream may change if you change the emulsifier so it’s important you know how to use the one you have 😀 )
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. If you like thick thick cream that won’t move around that easily in a pot… you might want to use cetyl palmitate at 2% or you might keep it at 1% and add another thickening agent like cetyl alcohol at 1%)
Tocopherol 0.5 (this is vitamin E, if you like you can add up to 1)
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 😀 )
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 if you have bit oily skin – you can add 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 (if you have any other hydrolized protein, like milk, oat… it should do just fine 😀 )
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 normal 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. You can find it in creams for rosacea skin or for leg circulation! Very good! 😀 )
Dry extract of Raspberry 0.1 (also this one is a powder. If you don’t have it you can omit it)
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 your cream :D, also, they might have some kind of smell! You might as well purchase directly pure active ingredients like, for example, glycyrrhizic acid… but in this case it is a difficult ingredient to work with. Plus I like colored creams 😀 so this is my choice 😀 *
Hyaluronic Acid Gel (which we made HERE) 5

Preservative (mine goes at 0.6, but depending on the one you have you will have to add it at its own requested %)
pH 5.5

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

NOTICE I made this cream not for 100 gr but for 1 Kg… so don’t get confused if you see a big amount of ingredients 😀 (it is not easy to make only 100 gr of cream because it is very difficult to mix it properly when it comes to putting together Phase A and B, I suggest you make at least 300 grams to have a better result :D)

Phase A:
– measure glycerin and xanthan gum (if you are also using the carbopol ultrez 21, follow the instructions HERE)

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

Set aside.

Phase B: 
– 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)

– put both Phase A and Phase B on fire to make them reach 70°C. In the meanwhile let’s 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)

– 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)

– Mix with the immersion mixer paying attention that you don’t add any air into the cream!
It will immediately change color into very white 😀
Like here:


– once you believe that you mixed enough, start mixing with a spatula and keep 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 so if you keep stirring you actually help them keep together 😀 once they have cooled down they are more likely to not separate! Là! 😀
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) so don’t despair at all: at this point it is not supposed to be thick… yet! 😉


– Once it reached room temperature you can finally add the two Phase C!

– Stir with spatula:

– Add preservative

– Use immersion mixer one last time just to make things more smooth 😉

– Check pH and adjust it to 5.5 pH (using an acid like, for example, lactic acid.. but in my case I didn’t need to adjust it because it was already 5.5)

And… TADAAAAA 😀

Now apply and enjoy… 😉

For more recipes click HERE 
To learn how to formulate cosmetics click HERE
For a list of online cosmetic ingredients suppliers click HERE 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.