Radiance DIY Face Moisturizer Lesson

What Are Facial Emulsions?

An emulsion, more commonly referred to as a cream or lotion, is a moisturizer that is massively popular with consumers across the globe. It’s perhaps the most recognised skin care product, and one that definitely deserves a place in your repertoire.

Emulsions are a combination of two skin care ingredients, water and oil. But as you may know, these two ingredients will not come together on their own.

Let’s go back to middle school science class. We’ve all done that experiment. You have a bowl of regular tap water, and you’re instructed to add a little liquid oil. When you do, we see that the oil just pools on top in greasy puddles. 

No matter how much you stir or swirl or whisk, there’s no way to get these two substances to combine on their own. This is where emulsifying wax comes in to do the hard work for us, and force water and oil to come together.

Both water and oil have important applications in skin care. Water is light and cleansing, and oil is heavy and moisturising. But sometimes oil alone can be a little too heavy or greasy. 

By combining both water and oil together in a cream using emulsifying wax, we get a lighter moisturizer that feels silky and creamy on the skin. This is the magic of the emulsion. 

Furthermore, unlike with our all water and no oil micellar waters, we can use both water and oil soluble ingredients here. The emulsion is a highly versatile product, and perhaps the best vehicle providing therapeutic and cosmetic benefits for the skin. 

The Ingredients

Carrier Oils

Carrier oils, also known as base oils, are our liquid oils. They’re the natural expressions of various plants, nuts, seeds, fruits and resins and are the most important ingredient in our oil part. While they aren’t the only type of oil we can use, they usually make up the bulk of it. 

We call them carrier oils because they’re traditional role is to ‘carry’ essential oils and active botanicals onto the skin. We need this because many of these concentrated ingredients cannot be used directly on the skin without causing harm. 

The principle is similar in an emulsion, to allow us to use other ingredients that really make our products high performance. While carrier oils have many therapeutic and cosmetic benefits of their own, these benefits are usually more gentle and subtle. 

Furthermore, carrier oils are great at moisturising the skin. Not the best, as we’ll come onto next, but still fantastic. But much like our essential oils and botanicals, the ingredients that are better at moisturising can’t really be used directly on the skin. 

Cosmetic butters and waxes, for example, are too stiff to use on their own. In fact, you might bruise or tear the skin if you try to. Again, they must be ‘carried’ onto the skin. 

Cosmetic Butters

Another oily ingredient we can use in our emulsions are cosmetic butters. Much like carrier oils, they’re naturally sourced from various plants, and provide unparalleled natural hydration for the skin. 

Many cosmetic butters leave a very thin film on the skin. You won’t notice it’s there, but you will notice the effects. This film actively prevents moisture being lost from the skin, locking it in and keeping the skin softer and more supple for longer. 

Furthermore, many cosmetic butters also possess therapeutic benefits beyond this, much like our carrier oils. They’re full of vitamins, minerals and other compounds that can bring about positive change in the skin. 

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that butters also provide some functional roles in our emulsions. They help provide some viscosity (stiffening power) for the lotion, and also help to make it feel creamier and more luxurious.

Emulsifying Waxes

Emulsifying wax, commonly referred to as e-wax, is the backbone of our creams. Not only do water and oil not mix together, but they actively repel one another. This is due to the shape of oil and water molecules, which makes them unable to latch on to molecules other than their own. 

Emulsifying wax provides a thin barrier between our oil and water molecules, allowing them to sit together without all that repelling they like to do. 

This is a very reductive explanation, but we don’t need to know exactly what’s going on. The main takeaway here is that without the e-wax, we have no cream. 

You’ll also notice that we’re including an ingredient alongside our emulsifying wax called cetyl alcohol. This is a thickening agent that we use to bring further viscosity to our product. While we could increase our e-wax, this would make our product heavier. Cetyl alcohol keeps it feeling light and thick at the same time. 

Don’t worry, cetyl alcohol’s name is deceiving. There is no alcohol in this ingredient, at least not in the way we would expect. Cetyl alcohol is 100% kosher and halal. 

Essential Oils

It’s time to break out those lovely smelling oils! Yes, you can use them in all of your creams! Because we’re combining both oil and water together, we do not have the same solubility problems for this one. 

Essential oils, commonly abbreviated as ‘EOs’, are aromaceuticals, meaning they combine gorgeous aromas with therapeutic and cosmetic benefits. They’re the concentrated expressions or distilled product of various plants, nuts, seeds, fruits and resins. They smell just like the source they come from. 

EOs have powerful benefits for our skin. They have been proven to penetrate deeper than any other cosmetic ingredient, delivering hydration to the very core of our skin.

Furthermore, EOs have the power to bring about amazing positive changes to the skin. Some will brighten and condition, others are cleansing and detoxifying. There are EOs that are wonderfully balancing, and a few even have the power to turn back the clock and rejuvenate skin. 

Because essential oils are very concentrated, they cannot be applied directly to the skin. Skin that comes into contact with undiluted EO is at risk of a nasty skin reaction. Then, as skin is subjected to repeated exposure, the risk of a skin reaction becomes more and more likely. 

As we like to make our own cosmetics from scratch, exposure to undiluted essential oil is much more likely for us. Therefore we must take precautions to protect ourselves, such as wearing gloves and protective eye goggles when making our products. See your health and safety lesson for more guidance. 

Do We Need A Preservative?

As we discussed in one of your previous lessons, all products that contain water MUST be preserved. So therefore we must once again use a preservative here. It doesn’t matter that we’re combining water and oil together. In fact, that makes the problem worse. 

We’re giving microbial life everything they need to survive when we add water. By adding oils and other lovely ingredients as well, we’re actually feeding the bacteria and mold so it can grow at optimum levels. 

By using a preservative system that is broad spectrum, we eliminate the risk of microbial growth and mitigate the chance of a dermal bacterial infection. You wouldn’t play with fire, after all. Protect yourself and those around you. 

What About Extracts?

Absolutely, you can include lots of different kinds of extracts. Furthermore, by making an emulsion, we open the door to many different oil soluble botanical extracts! 

The chief oil soluble botanical extracts are the macerates, also known as ‘infused oils’. These are carrier oils, namely sunflower oil, that have had plant matter steeped in it for long periods of time. 

As plant matter is steeped, it is actively infused with the oil. Tiny, oil soluble molecules are drawn from the plant and transform our ordinary carrier oil into something a bit more special. 

As you learned in your previous lessons, extracts carry the properties and benefits of the plants they are made with. They’re such a wonderful way of packing benefits into a product, and if synergized properly can help make a product much more high performance. 

DIY Rose & Lavender Face Moisturizer

This rose and lavender face cream incorporates some of the ingredients we used in the micellar water. In a cream, they synergize for a wonderfully moisturising emulsion that provides some great anti-aging benefit. 

Furthermore, it has a gorgeous aroma of lavender, with a subtle hint of rose. When combining two strong smelling ingredients, it’s important that they smell good together. This combination is lovely and will smell fantastic on the skin. 

We have reused the rose hydrosol, d-panthenol powder and AHA fruit acid extract. It provides excellent hydration to the skin, as well as being intensely soothing and healing also. 

This emulsion is ideal for anyone with mature or dry skin. Furthermore, anyone with mature skin will notice that it provides excellent rejuvenating power. 

If used alongside the rose micellar water, you will get some fantastic synergy going as both are intended for dry or mature skin types.  

Ingredients

DIY Peppermint Face Cream

This peppermint face cream is the companion to the peppermint micellar water. We’ve again tried to reuse some of the ingredients, to further create synergy but also give you more bang for your buck. 

Much like our micellar water, this recipe is synergised for oily skin, but would be great for just about any skin type. Because this is a moisturizing product, we have included d-panthenol in this recipe as well, to further aid hydrating the skin. 

Aloe vera gel and seaweed together is a heavenly combination. Aloe is deeply healing, so great for fading out blemishes and minor wounds. Seaweed is deeply detoxifying. On contact with the skin, the cells absorb it’s nutrients which helps them expel waste and toxins more easily. 

Lastly, the peppermint essential oil is super soothing and also very detoxifying for the skin. This is the perfect face cream for anyone that has trouble with oily, acne prone skin. 

Ingredients

Method

As this recipe is also an emulsion, you can follow the method above and swap out the ingredients for this formula. 

However, don’t be alarmed by the thick water part. This will be caused by the aloe, and shouldn’t make a difference. But you will need to scoop the water part into our oil part rather than pour. When you first mix them, it looks a little like frogspawn. But a bit of vigorous whisking should resolve this.