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Homemade winter facial cream recipe with avocado and macadamia oil – lecithin and beeswax as emulsifiers
The winter is behind the door, the weather is rainy, windy and cold. A real challenge for our skin.
Soon, there will be snow and we will go skiing and there will be a lot of sun. One more reason to make a protective winter facial cream.
Contents
How to design a winter facial cream?
- A protective facial cream should be greasy enough to make a layer protecting from cold and wind – therefore I designed a recipe with 50% of oils. Such a high proportion of oils allows us to use only lecithin and beeswax as emulsifiers, which makes the cream very natural.
[A side note: Although not considered a real emulsifier, beeswax is a co-emulsifier and helps stabilize emulsions. At least this is what I have read in books on cosmetics formulations.
It is also a main emulsifier in cold creams – creams with high proportion of oils. From my experience, it works well for creams with high proportion of oils, although such an emulsion is difficult to make and may need a very intense mixing – which means that the physical emulsification plays a big role in creating the emulsion.
Also to my experience, in combination with lecithin it creates an emulsifier system for around 1:1 oil vs water recipes, such as this one]
- We want the oil to have skin repairing properties.
- We want a little bit of sun protection, too
Avocado and macadamia nut oil are the ideal candidates for our purpose.
Avocado oil thanks to its high phytosterol content is used in cosmetics as a skin repairing, moisturizing oil that regenerates skin cells and is used in anti-aging creams and creams for sensitive and dry skin. I had at home avocado butter, which is pretty much the same thing as oil, just that it was mixed with some hydrogenated vegetable oil to make it butter.
Macadamia oil – similarly to avocado butter is used in anti-wrinkle creams and is skin regenerating. Is a bit less greasy than avocado oil.
Both oils have mild sunscreen properties.
For the water phase, I decided to use rose water. First, it smells nice, second it has some nice, skin calming properties.
I will elaborate on all ingredients more in detail in some of my future posts.
The recipe was similar to my Maringold hand protection cream , just in this case I hand stirred the recipe – yes, it is possible!
Avocado-macadamia protective winter facial cream recipe
| Phase | Ingredient | % | g | oz |
| A | Rose water | 48% | 45 g (~1.5 TBP) | 1.59 oz |
| A | Lecithin granules | 3% | 3g | 0.1 oz |
| B | Avocado butter | 21.5% | 20g g | 0.7 oz |
| B | Macadamia oil | 21.5% | 20 g | 0.7 oz |
| B | Beeswax | 5% | 5 g | 0.18 oz |
| C | Preservative of choice | 1% | 1g | 0.035oz |
Instructions
0. Do sterilize all your utensils, bowls/pots and cream containers. This can be done by:
- boiling in water for 10-15 minutes (beware of non-heat proof plastic containers)
- or by soaking everything in a chlorine tablet solution (the kind you use to sterilize baby bottles)
- by 70% alcohol solution
1. Let soak lecithin granules in the rose water (1/2 an hour should be sufficient for this quantity)
2.In another pot melt gently avocado butter and beeswax in the macadamia oil. Beware not to overheat (80°C, 176°F)
3. Heat the rose water with soaked lecithin to 70°C (158°F).
4. Slowly pour the oil phase to the rose water with lecithin and stir until emulsion takes place.
It is important to stir until the emulsion reaches room temperature – mainly when hand stirring!
You can help the cooling down by placing your bowl to cold water. However – do not cease stirring, if you cease stirring before the emulsion cools down, it can separate (if this does happen, stir faster or switch to a mixer)
Emulsifying with beeswax and lecithin can be tricky and requires much of physical stirring.
This gives around two small 50g (1.8.oz) containers.
I tried this recipe last year when snowshoeing – I applied the cream before leaving the house on me and my fiancé.
Results – 5 hours from 12:00PM to 5 PM snowshoeing on the snow planes, full sun. My skin was not burned, I felt it very nice and felt protected. I loved it!
PS: Do you like my recipe? What is your experience with lecithin and beeswax as emulsifiers?
Leave me your the comments below, I will be happy to read it!
Have a nice day,
Evik
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#4 written by Sarah 8 years ago
Thanks for this recipe. I’ve been looking online for a recipe using lecithin as an emulsifier. I am going to use this as the base for making a cream for my 12 month old who has very dry skin prone to eczema. I’ll keep the proportions the same but will use jojoba oil, shea butter, raspberry seed oil and carrot seed oil (CO2 extract). I’ll also use aloe vera gel in place of the rose water. We live in Australia and raspberry and carrot seed oil are reputed to be very effective sunscreens. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Oh and i’ll also add a few drops of myrrh essential oil which is meant to be anti inflammatory, antioxidant and also have sunscreen properties.
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#5 written by Sarah 7 years ago
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#6 written by evik 7 years ago
Hi Sarah, honestly, the only way I know is to use a trick when you add an emulsifier to your avocado oil: http://www.gracefruit.com/emulsifiers-thickeners/gfbutter-fix-powder.html
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#7 written by piera 7 years ago
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#9 written by Ruth 7 years ago
Hello,
Thanks for your info. I really like the cream!!! I have two questions:
1. What do you use for a preservative?
2. I want to use sunflower lecithin in liquid form. Do you have any idea how to make the adjustment? know I have to add about 30% more to adjust for the oil, but I prefer to use it because it is nonGMO and I want to stay away from soy anythng. What phase would I add?
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#11 written by Alex 7 years ago
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#12 written by evik 7 years ago
Hi Alex, it did not separate. If I may cite a scientific paper here: “Lecithin is a known antioxidant compound (Evans, 1935, Feigenbaum, 1946 and Judde et al., 2003) with good emulsification properties” (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378517313003396). I have more tests to do, but what I can confirm is that it emulsifies nicely emulsions with 30% of oils. The emulsion is liquid milk, therefore it must be combined with gums or waxes (beeswax, etc…), or fatty alcohols to make it cream. I can tell that it does not work for 5 or 15% oils.
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#13 written by evik 7 years ago
… I found more information here: http://www.adm.com/en-US/products/food/lecithin/Documents/Lecithin%20as%20an%20Emulsifier.pdf
They say it should work with 5% of oils, too, but it did not work for me, but I am not sure if I used the same procedure (warm vs cold emulsion).
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#14 written by Colleen 6 years ago
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#16 written by Lynnie 6 years ago
what grapefruit seed extract have you found that actually works? I noticed you said “not all of them work”. Do you think rosemary co2 extract could work simarlily? would optiphen plus work in this recipe? I see companies that sell creams with no presercatives, with no fragrances or frangrance oils to hide the preservative. I look through the ingrdients thoroughly and can find no preservatives and I want to know how they do it! Otherwise I suppose ill use optiphen. id also like to experiment with aborcide.
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#18 written by karin 5 years ago
Dear Evik, I really like your idea of soaked soya lecithin. I am trying to put more water than oil in the cream, but I can only find recipes with about 50% oil and 50% water. Do you know if it is possible to mix water and oil with less water than oil with natural emulsifiers? I succeeded making a cream with just beeswax, a bit of glycerin and jojoboil with a 50% 50% mix, and thought if by adding extra lecithin may be it is possible to make less oily creams? Do you have any experience with this? Many thanks, Karin
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#21 written by Paulen 3 years ago
Do you use a common source for these ingredients? which one do you use?
If you infuse your weed, and/or make a tincture, why throw the weed away. I always thought it was a good fiber and certainly, even if all the ‘good’ has been processed out, it would serve as dietary fiber in your concoctions. I don’t have a tmeter or tcheck, and everything have made thus far has shown absolutely NO indication that there is weed in it at all. Can the decarb process rob too much of the THC from the fruit? I’e had gummies that provided a smooth buzz. Nothing I make does.
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#22 written by Kathy 3 years ago
Hi Evik,
I finally got around to trying this recipe. You seem to be the only one posting how to get the lecithin granules to dissolve. My lotion, for the first time making this recipe; I was happy with. The issue I need to solve for. Now is it feels a little grainy when applying and if i keep rubbing it in it does get better. I have no issue after a week of any seperation which I am very happy about. The look in a tub actually looks light and fluffy (guess I beat it up well). Do you have any advice on how to get the grainy feeling to be creamy? I soaked it for about 1 1/2 hrs. Maybe use my emulsifier on just the soaked lecithin first before incorporating the oils? Any help you can provide is much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing your recipe’s!
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#26 written by Christine 7 months ago
Thank you so much for this article and all your articles, they are very informative and I love diy’ing at home, thank you thank thank you! Just wondering if you could tell me how long this is shelve stable. Debating on how much to make, my daughter and I have eczema and I find making batches helps, have one here one at work one at school one in the car lol. But if they only last a little while I may consider the less is more.
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#27 written by Sara 3 months ago
I have made a cream with commercial 99% aloe vera gel instead of water and lecithin with beeswax for emulsifier. The recipe is about 50% oil so it is a bit greasy but absorbs after a few minutes. I dissolve the lecithin in the aloe vera and I have had no problems with separation. I added zinc oxide to give me some sun protection. Very nice and effective.
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That’s a great idea for winter (and Christmas present), however I have a mixed oily skin, do you think I could use it even with a 50% fat phase?