Using cosmeceuticals in our facial products

So you've found a few cosmeceuticals you like and you're wondering how you can incorporate them into a lovely facial product. For the most part, you'll want to stick to leave on products like lotions or toners because a lot of them are completely wasted in a cleaning product as they'll just wash off and you'll be left with no active ingredients. Remember that you don't want to combine a bunch of exfoliating ingredients in one product as it can be too much for even the most resistant skin and you want to check your pH when you're done (click here for more information on raising or lowering pH).

So let's take a few lovely cosmeceuticals and incorporate it them into a lotion. I'm not suggesting you use all these ingredients in one lotion, but you probably could. I've already incorporated beta glucan and niacinamide into this lotion, so let's tweak it a little further. As I noted in the original post, this will have less water than a normal moisturizer, so it might be more suitable as a night cream.

I'm including Pepha-Tight at 3% in the cool down phase and 5% Matrixyl 3000 in the cool down phase, so I'll have to remove 8% water to accomodate these changes. This will be a very thick night cream for dry skin. If you have normal skin, you'll want to play with the water amounts and perhaps use the more watery lotion found in this post (scroll down to the bottom for that recipe).

MODIFIED EVEN FURTHER FACIAL MOISTURIZER FOR DRY SKIN
WATER PHASE
20% aloe vera
20% lavender hydrosol
18% water
3% glycerin
2% other humectant
2% hydrolyzed silk protein
2% niacinamide
2% beta glucan

OIL PHASE
12% oils
4% e-wax or Polawax
2% cetyl alcohol

COOL DOWN PHASE
0.5% to 1% preservative
2% panthenol
0.5% green tea extract
0.5% chamomile extract
1% Vitamin E
2% DMAE

3% Pepha-Tight

5% Matrixyl 3000

Follow the basic lotion making instructions for this recipe. 

Wow, this is a lotion chock full of amazing cosmeceuticals! If all of these ingredients do what they promise, we should have smoother, tighter, brighter, younger looking skin in a few weeks. (That sounded sarcastic...it wasn't intended to be.) Of course, we can't expect miracles like that, but a well created facial product with great anti-oxidants, humectants, and other ingredients that will moisturize and hydrate our skin is always a good thing.

Join me tomorrow for more fun formulating with our cosmeceuticals!