Rich nourishing night cream with a palm-free emulsifier

Summer is not yet completely over here but we need to start planing our autumn/winter skincare and today I have a lovely rich facial lotion to share with you.

This lovely emulsion is made with our natural and palm-oil free emulsifier Dermofeel GSC which is a hot process emulsifier.

It is not quite my usual KISS style. If you have never worked with this emulsifier, have a look at our previous posts:

How to work with Dermofeel GSC Palm oil free

Light-feel day cream with organic macadamia & hemp seed oil

This is quite an easy to handle emulsifier with a very lovely skin feel. It doesn't create high viscosity creams and if you want such creams you need to apply high concentrations of waxes and butter in your oil phase.

For this tutorial, I've chosen some lovely plant oils and extracts and active ingredients. This sunshine colour comes from our organic calendula CO2 extract.

Here we go with the formulation and instruction:

Formulation:

Procedure:

1- Heat phase A and B separately in a water bath @ 65-75 ^oC.

2- Blend phase C and E separately at room temperature. For phase C you may want to use a magnetic stirrer for a better and easier dispersion of aloe and caffeine powder. You can do this with a spatula if you don't have any  but it is much faster and easier with a magnetic stirrer.

3- Blend Phase D at ca. 30 ^oC. This helps disperse calendula extract easily in the oil phase.

4- After phase B is completely melted and uniform stop heating and add the oil phase to the water phase while stirring.

Your emulsion looks like this. With a bright yellow colour.

5- Now add the rest of the water phase and stir further (phase C).

6- Homogenize for a few minutes. The colour immediately becomes paler as you homogenize. This is because the particle size is reduced.

7- Add the second oil phase (phase D) and blend. Now disperse the gum phase. You may homogenize for 1-2 minutes again after dispersing the gum phase.

8- Continue stirring until the emulsion has a temperature below 30 ^oC. We are using Versatil TBG as our preservative and we know that this preservative reduces the pH. Measure the pH of a 10% dilution of the emulsion and adjust it around 6. We've added a few drops of a 25% NaOH solution.

9- Add the preservative. Prepare another 10% dilution and measure the pH again. The pH should be between 5,2-5,5. If the pH is higher, add lactic acid or citric acid to reduce the pH. If the pH is lower than this range add a solution of Sodium hydroxide to increase the pH. 

Read our previous post about the importance and how-to of pH measurement in a cosmetic lab:

How to adjust the pH of your cosmetic products

10- When the pH is in the desired range take your microkit and stability samples and fill the lotion in a suitable container.

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