Who doesn’t look like a zombie in the morning? (ok maybe you don’t… but I do! 😀 )
So here is a simple recipe for deleting that zombie face!!! 😀
[unfortunately the name “zombie vaccine” is not my invention: I had seen it on a funny coffee cup but couldn’t resist using it for this eye gel! :D]
Today I have decided to share the recipe for this lifting eye serum-gel with you!
Yes, I have called it “serum” because it is made of 100% active ingredients 😉 let me show you how…
It is over a year now that my husband uses my Aloe Vera Hair Gel and he is very happy with it, but I never thought it would be interesting to post about it… until today 🙂
The recipe is really fool-proof-easy and it makes a good hair gel, which won’t become white if you brush through your hair after it dries up, the hairs stay in shape but don’t look glued!
It is also good if you have long hair and you want to give them proteins: use it in small amount on wet hair (just after you wash them) and then dry them as you are used to. In this case it doesn’t keep the shape but makes the hair shiny and in a month or two they look much more healthy and they feel stronger 🙂 (this is my experience).
There are three methods depending on your starting point:
Method 1: if you have Aloe Vera Juice you are going to use it instead of water (substitute the water of the recipe with the juice! 🙂 )
Method 2: if you have the concentrated Aloe Vera Powder (1:200) you will make the gel with glycerin, xanthan gum and water and then add the 0.5% Aloe Vera powder to your gel (it will melt immediately 😉 ).
Method 3: FOOL-PROOF! You can even use a bought Aloe Vera Gel (just make sure the Aloe Vera amount is at least around 95%! Run away from any “10% Aloe Vera Gel”) and add to it the other ingredients of this recipe (of course leaving out the xanthan gum, the glycerin and the water… easy no? :D). This method also works if you have your already homemade Aloe Vera Gel which you read in this post. In case the gel is too liquid, you can add a little bit of xanthan gum to have a more firm gel 😉
RECIPE:
NOTE: every quantity in this recipe is in grams and it is a recipe for 100 gr of product. The meaning of “to 100” means that the quantity of the water (in this case “rose water”) is counted until reaching 100 gr for the entire recipe.Â
Rose water to 100
Sodium Hyaluronate 1
Sk-influx (this is the commercial name of a complex of different kinds of ceramides. You can use what you find with the same function) 2.5
Ceramide liposomes 2.5
D-panthenol 2
Sodium lactate (60% solution) 5
Bisabolol 0.5
Umectol (this is the commercial name of a hydrating complex. Once again: you can freely use a different complex with the same function) 2.5
Hydrolized silk proteins 2
Cosgard 0.6 (this is the preservative)
In the very end I also added one drop of water soluble red food coloring. This is why it is pink (needless to say this is totally up to you).
I made the Hyaluronic acid using rose water the evening before. Of course I used 1 gram of sodium hyaluronate and around 80 grams of rose water… not 100.
The morning after the gel was ready so I just mixed it a bit and added these ingredients in the recipe. I added the preservative in the end.
As you can see there are few oily components like Bisabolol, D-panthenol… quite in a high % (usually a gel is fine up to 1% of oils). The reason is that I used a commercial Rose water 😀
I did not have any substance to solubilize the oils inside of the gel (at the time that i created this serum) so I decided to give good use to those who are usually inside commercial Rose water! 😀 Ok let me explain: inside of commercial Rose water they solubilize stuff like perfume/essential oils and preservative (at least usually). To make the water still clear and transparent they use a bit more solubilizer than needed… you can be sure about this by shaking the bottle of the rose water: if a few bubbles form (kind like in a light bubble bath) then you can be sure there is some free surfactant substance (the solubilizer…) inside of the rose water. I say “free” because part of it reacted to solubilize the oils inside of the water… and part of it is still free and making therefore the water clear once again.
So!
Making a gel with this kind of water and adding oils to it, I used the “free surfactant” and this is why this gel is holding on together! 😀
And this is also why it is not transparent (apart for the fact that Sk-influx are not transparent at all)!
So there it is all the “tips and tricks” 😀
I like this serum very much and I have been using it for the last month on my face 🙂
It is very light (cause it is practically oil free) and needless to say: super nourshing! 🙂
Hope you like it!
Let me know if you have any questions! 😀
A while ago I posted how to make Aloe Vera gel.
I was planning to post a recipe of an hydrating gel (I have been using it in the morning for the last two months and I love it), but before I start, I thought it would be more important to show you how to make the basic ingredients for this gel.
Of course Hyaluronic Acid gel is one of these ingredients!
So tadaaa 😀
I love hyaluronic acid for the property of keeping the skin hydrated, also it is a substance that is naturally found in our skin.
It is used in many anti-aging creams (I don’t believe it is miraculous and it will make wrinkles disappear, but simply because it helps keeping the skin hydrated, the skin appears more plump and fresh).
Recipe:
[WARNING: this recipe, like ALL the recipes in my blog, is of COSMETIC GRADE, therefore this gel cannot be used any differently than by applying it ON your skin]
1 gr     Sodium HyaluronateÂ
98,4 gr  Distilled Water (or Rose water 😉 read the end of the post)
0.6 gr   Cosgard (or any other preservative of your choice: of course if you change preservative, use the amount of preservative which is needed for that specific kind of preservative)
1) Measure the Sodium Hyaluronate
2) Measure the water
3) Pour the Sodium Hyaluronate on top of the water
At this point some people like to mix it and some people like to let it be.
I have actually tried both ways and here is my experience: if you try to mix it at this stage, part of the SH will stick to the spoon. This means that a precious part of your gel will get lost (and SH is not exactly cheap, so you’d want to mind this).
IMO it is better to let the SH hydrate by itself on top of the water for a while, and stir later.
4) Cover the glass with plastic film and let it rest in the fridge for few hours.
5) After few hours the SH will be hydrated. Now you can stir it with a spoon so to make the gel more smooth (there will be harder parts and softer parts).
6) Add your preservative, stir again and put in a bottle 🙂
You can use this Gel by itself, for its great hydrating properties!
If you have a very dry skin you could like to use it before applying your cream 🙂
You could also make a more luxurious gel by substituting part of the water (or the entire water) with Rose water!
As you might have noticed in the market we can find creams or serums that say “40% Hyaluronic Acid”.
Well, as you can see I am using 1% of Sodium Hyaluronate and this is the highest concentration I can use.
It is technically impossible to use 40% of SH inside of a gel: it will never hydrate and you will waste a huge amount of money.
I tried once to make a 2% and it took ages to hydrate. In the end it was too thick. I could still use it but it was not a good gel at all.
I don’t know what they could mean by saying “40% Hyaluronic Acid” on a product where there cannot be more than 2% of SH, but it is long time I stopped believing what I read in the commercials for creams. The only thing I can believe now is the INCI and what I KNOW is that in one cream where it was said “40%”, the Sodium Hyaluronate in the INCI was at 6th place (this means that in NO WAY it could be at 40%, it could have been at maybe 1% or even less).
The only way to be sure of what’s inside a cream or serum or face-gel is MAKE IT YOURSELF!
Not only this is a great thing to learn, it also makes you feel like IT’S ALL IN YOUR HANDS!  😉
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Not everybody is so lucky to have a plant of Aloe Vera.
Personally I have one but my heart doesn’t let me chop off a leg or an arm from it. 😀
Nevertheless when you buy “Aloe vera Gel” usually it is maximum 95% made of Aloe vera, remaining 5% (and this is not a little amount!!!) are other things.
So here is a recipe to make 99% Aloe vera gel where the remaining 1% is composed of Xanthan Gum (natural gelling substance) and preservative.
Preservative is an important step. I know many people who want to do “natural cosmetics” don’t want to use preservatives, but preservative doesn’t necessarily mean “bad”. There are many kinds of preservatives right now; you can choose a paraben free and 100% biodegradable (like the Cosgard which i am using).
The importance of preservatives is that they don’t permit the growth of bacteria inside our water-based cream/gel. If you really don’t want to use a preservative then you should save your gel or cream in the fridge and use it up in maximum one week time.
Recipe:
99 Â gr – 100% Aloe Vera Juice
0.6 gr – Xanthan Gum
0.6 gr Cosgard (I know this doesn’t make 100 grams but 100.2 grams 😀 I can count too, but some preservatives need to be added in smaller amount and anyway 100.2 gr in a bottle of 100 ml doesn’t make a big difference 😀 that’s all)
It's all in my hands 