Category: Acne

Aloe Vera Face Cream DIY

Hello there! 🙂

I am back with a new recipe for a summer cream light in texture, very hydrating and nourishing. 🙂

Aloe Vera Cream Cover

I have been using it for a couple of weeks and I really like it.
Obviously my “grease fall” composition is intended for what my skin likes (nowadays my acne days are only a distant memory but I am always scared it might come back: so I still formulate in order to give my skin fatty acids that won’t give any advantage to acne 🙂 – you can read more HERE). You can, as always, change the grease fall for your own purpose and needs 🙂

The texture is light and quite fluid, it absorbs very easily and it has a quite “matte” finish thanks to the butters.
The active ingredients make for a soothing, hydrating and quite nourishing cream 🙂

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Sulfur Mask – for acne and oily skin

Hello there! 😀

The recipe of today is for all of you people struggling with an acneic skin or very oily skin, it is, in fact, a recipe for a mask that will really help you control the oiliness and will help dry up the pimples much faster! 🙂

Sulfur Mask DIY


I loved the idea of combining zinc oxide (which has great soothing properties – but leaves the face quite “white” and therefore it is great in a mask that can be washed off) and sulfur (you already know that it is good against acne and oily skin! 😀 ). It could be a good idea to add some salicylic acid (0.5% should be enough) but since I was going to use this mask in spring/summer I preferred not to add any (acids are never a good combination with possible sun exposure).
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Hyaluronic Acid Serum for Problem Skin

Hello there! 😀

Hyaluronic Acid Serum for Problem Skin

Today I am back with a recipe for an extremely simple yet effective serum… however there are a couple of things I need to say first!
1) This serum is formulated to help a problematic skin. With this I intend a skin which suffers of mild blemishes every now and then, maybe a little irritated and with a few red marks left by previous spots, add an oily T-zone… and that should be it 😀 . The ingredients of this serum will HELP the skin keep hydrated, will help keeping the oiliness under control and will help to soothe the skin (it might also have some effect against the red marks). Obviously, this serum is NOT A CURE for acne or for serious condition skins: it is just a help. I want to underline this because too often, online, we read about “the final cure for blablablaaa” but those are almost cheats 😀

Well… now that you have this “critic eye” opened… let me introduce you to my new and amazing (now I can say it ahahah 😀 ) serum recipe! 😀

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Lactobionic Acid Cream DIY

Hello there!
This is a recipe for an amazing cream (I have used it for few months now, so I edited the beginning of this article) 🙂

Lactobionic Cream 10

[If this is the first time you read on this website, here are many articles about how to make REAL creams at home. Learn a little bit of theory and this page will start making sense too 😀 GO HERE you won’t be sorry! ]

This cream has a quite consistent oil phase (or Phase B) because I needed it for winter, however (after one month of trial) I don’t think it is enough greasy for people with dry skin or who live in very cold countries (I find myself in Finland at the moment and at -20°C my skin was still dry 😀 ).
For this cream I tried to formulate a different grease-fall compared to what I usually make because, even though I have a quite oily skin, I have found out that low-density oils appear on my skin much more easily than more heavy ones: that’s because the lower the density of an oil, the higher the spreading ability. So that’s it, I tried adding more butters than I normally do and I must say my skin liked it, even though I am still not totally satisfied with the feel of this cream and I will definitely have to experiment much more before I find the “perfect grease-fall”.

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How to formulate a Face Wash – with Recipe

Now that we have studied the theory of Surfactants (here and here) and we have the values of some of them… it is time to finally formulate! 😀

The recipe of today is for a very delicate Face Wash which helped me when I used to suffer of a mild but annoying and constant (meaning that my skin wasn’t covered in pimples completely but I did have a few all the time and this lasted over two years) form of acne. I should make a post about this! I used to be quite aggressive with my skin: I was scrubbing, using alcoholic toners, applying aggressive creams… but nothing was helping (on the contrary…).
Then one day I decided to give a break to my skin, I stopped scrubbing crazily, I stopped attacking my skin and I started concentrating on eating more healthy food and… TADAAA it did the trick 😀 I simply found out that all my skin needed was to be treated gently.

DIY Face Wash - Recipe

This is how the formulation was done:

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On Surfactants and Formulation (face wash, shampoo and shower gels)

So now we know how to combine (and why to combine) the different surfactants… but how to calculate the Active Surfactant Matter we want in our product? (which also mean: how much surfactant we have to add to our product to have the surfactant concentration we want to obtain?).

As I already explained the Surfactant Matter of a liquid surfactant which we buy is not 100%: the surfactant is made of the Surfactant Matter and Water (and probably other ingredients like glycerin, for example); therefore every surfactant we buy has a “Active Surfactant Matter” percentage which is what we have to consider.

As I wrote in the previous posts about formulation of detergents (shampoo, bubble bath, shower gel, face wash), the amount of the TOTAL Active Matter of surfactants has to vary according to the purpose of our detergent.

Generally this is the scheme:
– face wash: <10% 
– detergent for intimate use: <10% 
– shampoo: 10%-15%
– shower gel: 15%-20% 
– bubble bath: 20%-25% (in case you really use it only to make bubbles in the bath tub and you never use it directly on your skin, you could even reach 35%… but I don’t suggest it).

Now let’s learn how to formulate the detergent.

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Sebum Normalizer cream Recipe

DSCF3535

This is a cream made specifically for oily skin and for spring days! 😀
There are two important active ingredients in this cream which will perform the function of oil-controllers:
– Azelaic Acid 
– Tiolisine 

The Azelaic Acid however is insoluble in water or oil therefore it is very difficult for us to use it in our home production (you can find it in online shops of raw materials but I don’t know how it could be used since it is impossible to melt it or dissolve it properly in any liquid)… this is why in this recipe I have used a derivative of Azelaic Acid called Azeloglicine (it contains approx 30% of Azelaic Acid in a hydrophilic form! Bingo! :D).
Azelaic Acid is mainly used for its oil-control properties but it is also used to treat acne (both comedonal and inflammatory) because it kills the bacteria which cause acne and it also decreases the production of keratin which is a substance that promotes the growth of bacteria.
Tiolisine is a sulfurated aminoacid derivative which also has sebum-normalizing properties and it is usually used between 2-4% (3-5% in detergents like shampoo for dandruff).

The recipe I have made for this cream is as simple as possible.
Now I write the recipe and then I explain some more things:

RECIPE: [in case you are new to the making of creams, HERE you can learn what I am talking about ;)]
PHASE A:
water to 100 (HERE the explanation)
xanthan gum 0.11 (possibly not the transparent kind: for gels the transparent xanthan gum is good, for creams the other is better)
carbopol ultrez 21 0.3
glycerin 2.5

PHASE B:
Methyl glucose sesquistearate 2 (I use this low percentage because the oils in this cream are very low)
Cetyl Alcohol 0.8
Cetiol sensoft 1.5
Evening Primrose Oil 1
Hemp oil 0.5
Tocopherol 1

PHASE C 1 : 
Bisabolol 0.5
Dry Flo (INCI aluminum starch octenyl succinate) 0.7

PHASE C 2 :
Azeloglicine 6
Tiolisine Complex 2.5

Preservative 0.6 (or according to the right percentage of use of your own preservative).

Adjust the pH at 5.5 – 6
The oil percentage is so low it could be considered an oil-free cream.
The consistency of the cream is rather fluid: I always have the feeling that thick creams are more suitable for dry skins (at least this is the feeling I get: if a cream is thick, I unconsciously associate it with the idea of a “too rich” cream for an oily skin), while fluid lotions give me better the idea of something light. So this is all up to you (if you want a thick cream you can rise the cetyl alcohol up to 1.5%… but since this is like a wax on our skin, I don’t recommend it :D).
Cetiol Sensoft is a very light synthetic oil which gives a smooth touch to the cream. If you want to avoid using synthetic oils and you wish to use only natural oils, you could substitute this ingredient with the same amount of jojoba oil (which is a bit more dense but it is the lightest natural “oil”).

Hope this was helpful to those of you who have trouble with oily skin!
Let me know if it worked for you 😉

HAVE A GREAT DAY! 😀