How to make an organic facial cream with Xyliance

Today's tutorail is written by Jilly who is an adorable tutor by Formula Botanica and a very talented and exact formulator.

I love Jilly's tutorials because she not only explains each single step in a didactic method but explains why she has chose each ingredient.

For this tutorail, she has used xyliance to create a rich facial cream with Xyliance which is a natural and plant based emulsifier for making rich O/W emulsions. Here you are :

O/W facial emulsion with Xyliance

Up until now, Xyliance is my favourite emulsifier to create O/W emulsions. It is easy to work with and it creates stable and oh so smooth creams with a soft texture. In general the final result is a luxurious white cream, unless you work with intensive coloured oils and/or extracts. My inner child goes crazy for yellow and orange shades, so let’s see if I am able to attain this .

This time I have stepped away from our beloved KISS principle and made it a tad more complicated.

Let’s have a look at the ingredients I have chosen:

Oil phase:

• Buriti oil, wild crafted, cold pressed: Amazing colour! High in beta-carotene and oleic acid => anti-oxidant + skin protection + excellent for anti-age products. Has a very nice and satin like skin feel.

• Cherry kernel oil, organic, unrefined: silky oil. Rich in oleic and linoleic acid. Excellent for pampering ageing, dry and damaged skin.

• Macademia nut oil, organic, cold pressed: my all time favourite oil, totally in sync with my skin. It has an excellent silky feel and penetrates rapidly into the skin. Unusually high concentrations of palmitoleic acid; and high in oleic acid.

• Baobab oil organic: Excellent for dry, mature and sensitive skin. Creates emulsions with a silky skin feel. Anti-inflammatory, regenerative and barrier protection. Rich in palmitic acid, oleic acid and linoleic acid.

• Vanilla oil (macerated in organic rapeseed oil): purely for its amazing scent

• Cinnamon oil (macerated in organic rapeseed oil): idem DON’T FORGET TO CALCULATE YOUR ALLERGENS (coumarin & cinnamal)

both vanilla and cinnamon oil are macerated in rapeseed oil, which is not heat sensitive so we can add this before emulsification hence in our heating phase

• Xyliance: fab and easy to work with emulsifier

Water phase:

• rose hydrosol (steam distillation // preserved with 0,6% Geogard 221): stimulating & uplifting, smells faintly of rose. DON’T FORGET TO CALCULATE ALLERGENS (benzyl alcohol)

Gum phase:

Glycerine + solagum AX + Sclerotium => blend I have found most effective to stabilize OW emulsions with a nice and non-tacky skin feel.

Cool down phase:

• Vegeluron: plant-based alternative for hyaluronic acid (this product is preserved by adding gluconolactone and sodium benzoate. Sodium benzoate is a component of many natural preservatives and is added to some hydrosols and extracts to preserve them. If you are using other component containing benzoic acid or sodium benzoate, mind and calculate the max. allowed dosage in your area)

• Panthenol, 75%: or provitamin B5. Improves hydration, barrier repair enhancement, skin soothing, anti-inflammatory, protection against irritation.

• Sodium lactate: natural humectant and moisturiser.

• Jiaogulan hydroglyceric extract (preserved with 3% dermosoft 1388 eco): is a vine that grows in Asia. It is known as "the herb of immortality", "5 leaves ginseng", "sweet tea vine", "southern ginseng" as well as some other names. It is very often compared to ginseng although it comes from another family. It is used because it reduces under-eye puffiness, enhances mature skin barrier strength, and for its anti-oxidant, adaptogenic (harmonizing skin functions and skin physiology) and anti-inflammatory properties.

• D-tocopherol: Vitamin E is an effective anti-oxidant; it both protects the product (lipids) and the skin and hair against oxidation.

• lavender high altitude EO: for me, this is the finest aroma of all lavender oils. Used for its soothing, relaxing (and anti-microbial) properties.

• Euxyl K903: broad-spectrum preservative; contains both oil as water soluble components. DON’T FORGET TO CALCULATE ALLERGENS (benzyl alcohol)

• Rosemary CO2: a wonderful extract that has anti-oxidative, antimicrobial and anti- inflammatory properties. You can add it to all of your carrier oils, oil blends, serums, lotions and balms to prolong the oxidative shelf life of the ingredients and the final product, and to avoid rancidity.

• Sea buckthorn CO2: orange!!! Very high in palmitoleic acid. Plays an important role in maintaining moisture levels and the cellular regeneration of skin. Balancing dry, matured, wrinkled skin to help restore elasticity and firmness

• Pomegranate CO2: pale yellow. Anti-oxidant. Anti-inflammatoiry and anti-age.

Here is our formula:

Oil phase:

6% xyliance

5% buriti oil

5% cherry kernel oil

7,5% macademia oil

7,5% baobab oil

2,5% vanilla oil

2,5% cinnamon oil

Water phase:

Up to 100% rose hydrosol (49,1%)

Gum phase:

4% glycerine

0,4% solagum AX

0,1% sclerotium

Cool down phase:

2% vegeluron

0,2% panthenol

2% sodium lactate

2,5% jiaogulan extract

0,5% tocopherol

0,1% rosemary CO2

1% sea buckthorn CO2

1% pomegranate CO2

0,2% lavender EO

0,9% euxyl K903

Procedure:

1- First, I always prepare my gum/glycerine blend and set this aside so it can hydrate while I do the rest. (is this mini-spatula not the cutest tool in the world?!)

2- Then I prepare my oil phase and water phase in two separate beakers. Look at that amazing colour of the oil phase!!!!!

3- Put both beakers in a hot water bath

4- When both phases reach 70°C, turn off the heat and add the water phase to the oil phase, slowly but in a non-stop steady stream, stirring continuously with a glass spatula for a minute or two

5- Now we can start homogenizing with our Kai Blendia. You'll immediately see a colour difference.

6- Homogenise for 1-3 minutes depending on your batch (I did 2 minutes for 100g); now you place the beaker in a cold water bath to help cooling down.

7- The gum/glycerine blend look like this in the mean time

8- When your pre emulsion has cooled down a bit, you can add the gum/glycerine. You will immediately notice a change in the viscosity,

9- Now start with adding the vegeluron because this is quite a high viscosity ingredient, blend it in with your spatula and give another few bursts with the Blendia

10- Now add panthenol, sodium lactate and jiaogulan extract one by one, stirring well after each addition. Our cream looks like this afterwards

11- Now we can add the sea buckthorn and pomegranate CO2 extracts, stirring well after each addition.

12- Add tocopherol, rosemary and lavender EO, stirring well after each addition. We do 3 rounds of 1 minute with our Blendia and our cream looks like this

13- Before we add our preservative, let’s measure our pH!! We make a 10% of our product to do this. I take 1g of product and 9g of distilled water (freshly boiled + cooled down!!). We have a pH of 5,74

14- I know by experience that my preservative reduces the pH. To avoid sedimentation of benzoic acid (which is in my preservative), I add a few drops of a 10% Sodium hydroxide solution to first increase the pH and then add the preservative. The optimum performance pH for my preservative system is 5,0-5,5

15- After adding sodium hydroxide and blending, I add the preservative and measure again the pH by preparing a 10% dilution of the emulsion

This is now perfectly in range. You may need to fiddle around a little bit for pH adjustment, raising and decreasing it according to your preservative requirements. This is a time consuming but quite an important step to guarantee the microbial and physicochemical integrity of your emulsion.

16- Now we can transfer our creams in lovely jars . Don’t close them yet, let them breath for a couple of hours first.

And here they are, all finished and lovely! I am aware that this colour is not for everyone but for me it works and it makes my happy, it’s like a bit of sunshine in a jar . The scent is utterly out of this world amazing! It’s difficult to describe because there is none of the ingredients overpowering, but they all blend beautifully together and what comes to my mind is “warm and comforting"

Here a close-up of the texture

If you're inspired by this tutorial feel free to send us your photos and comment either per mail or to our Facebook page. If you post any photos on Instagram, don't forget to tag @SkinChakra.

BeHappy and have fun

Disclaimer: SkinChakra is responsible for the content of this blog post. Please send your comments and questions directly to SkinChakra and don't try to contact Jilly in private or via any other online forum/platform. Jilly or one of our team will happily come back to you.