I am loving this gentle (yet super effective) creamy lavender cardamom cleansing lotion these days. It got its first hardcore test late one night (ok, early one morning) when I returned from a sparkle themed party with a good half of my face completely coated in neon pink glitter thanks to some Ben Nye Glitter Glue and some slightly misguided Pinterest inspired glitter dreams. I’d definitely gone way overboard with the glitter application (I was aiming for something Coachella-esque but ended up straddling the line between “sparkle spartan” and some sort of Vegas Barbie cancan dancer) and was definitely a bit worried about a) getting it all off and b) getting it all off without sandblasting my face with glitter flecks. This creamy lavender cardamom cleansing lotion was more than up to the task (phew).
This creamy cleanser is really just lotion, with one cleansing addition—Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) (USA / Canada) (or SCI). SCI is a safe, super gentle surfactant made from coconuts that’s sometimes sold as “Baby Foam” since it’s mild enough to use in baby products. It gets a 1/10 safety rating on Skin Deep (that’s what coconut oil and almond oil get, for reference).
I am totally smitten with these tubes—GoToob from Humangear.
I read that SCI can be tricky to dissolve/melt into things, so I decided to do some experiments. I started my blending a few spoonfuls of it (the variety I have is a somewhat clumpy powder) to a fine dust in my DIY only coffee grinder (make sure you wear a dust mask for this bit—you don’t want to inhale fine powders) and then set off to see how it’d dissolve in water. The answer? Very well! As long as you sprinkle it over the surface of the water a wee bit at a time it’ll easily incorporate with a bit of gentle whisking. I also learned that it’s very absorbent; 5g in about 100g of water will make quite a thick, creamy paste, which I didn’t expect at all!
Once you’ve got the SCI ground up, this cleansing lotion is crazy easy to make (and it’s not like grinding up the SCI is hard!). Heat the two parts, combine them, whisk everything together, and gently add the SCI. That’s it! You’ll be left with a lovely tube of creamy cleanser that you can massage into your skin and easily rinse off, leaving your skin gently cleansed and feeling lovely. Give it a go, I think you’ll love it 🙂
Also, can we talk for a moment about how awesome Humangear GoToobs are?! I got a couple for Christmas last year and I am smitten. They come in a variety of sizes and colours, and while they’re more expensive than most of the packaging I use, they are fantastically re-usable (and they don’t leak!). They dissemble into three pieces so you can thoroughly clean them, and the squeezy silicone bit is wonderfully resilient. Most squeezy tubes I’ve purchased from DIY type supply shops are pretty darn hard to properly clean out and use again, so I’m thrilled with these things (these ones are also mucho easier to fill than most other squeezy tubes I’ve worked with thanks to their wide mouths). Amazon sells them if you want to grab a few 🙂
That little dot on the tube is there because there’s a suction cup on the other side of the tube, making it great for shower use.
Look at how easily they come apart!
Creamy Lavender Cardamom Cleansing Lotion
5g | 0.17oz complete emulsifying wax (not beeswax!)
4g | 0.14oz unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
4g | 0.14oz castor oil (USA / Canada)
5g |0.17oz grapeseed oil50g | 1.76oz distilled water
2g | 0.07oz vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)4g | 0.14oz powdered Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) (USA / Canada)
20 drops lavender essential oil
10 drops peru balsam essential oil
6 drops cardamom essential oilBroad spectrum preservative of choice (why?)
Kick things off by running a few spoonfuls of SCI through your DIY-only coffee grinder to turn it into a fine powder. Make sure you wear your dust mask while you do this, and leave the lid on your coffee grinder for several minutes after grinding to give the dust time to settle, making it harder to accidentally inhale. Measure out 4g (0.14oz) of that powdered SCI and set it aside.
Combine the emulsifying wax with the unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada), castor oil (USA / Canada), and grapeseed oil in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat.
While the emulsifying wax mixture is melting, combine the water and glycerin in a small glass measuring cup and gently warm.
Once the emulsifying wax mixture has melted, add the water mixture. Heat through to ensure everything is melted before removing the pan from the heat.
Whisk the mixture as it cools (or use an immersion blender, which will help lotions made with Polawax or Emulsifying Wax NF thicken up faster)—it will thicken into a nice white cream (the thickening may take a few days if you are using a different emulsifying wax than Emulsimulse/Ritamulse and no immersion blender).
Now’s the time to add the SCI! Sprinkle it over the surface of the lotion a wee bit at a time, gently whisking to incorporate it. Don’t use an immersion blender for this part, or for any part afterwards, or you’ll whip it all up into a foamy lather!
Once you’ve added all the SCI, gently whisk in the essential oils and your preservative (though do check the instructions for your specific preservative—some have special instructions for adding to concoctions) and decant the mixture to a pump-top bottle or squeezy tube (I love Humangear GoToobs).
To use, massage a quarter-sized amount of it (or more) into your skin—no need to blend it with water before using. Wipe off with a damp washcloth and enjoy your clean skin!
Don’t have the oils or butters called for in the recipe? Read this for information on choosing carrier oil substitutions.
I’m afraid I’m not familiar enough with surfactants in general to comment on alternative surfactants, and I haven’t tested this recipe using soapnuts, soap, or other natural foamy type things as an alternative to SCI, so I can’t offer any suggestions on that either, though I’d love to hear about it if you try it!
I have the SCI in liquid form, can the recipe be modified for use with the liquid?
Yup! Just use a bit less water to make room for it. You’ll probably need to use a bit more of the liquid variety, but I’m not entirely sure as I’ve never worked with it. Perhaps start with 1.5x the amount and see what you think? You’re really only at risk of making something that’s “too” bubbly, and I don’t really consider that to be a problem 😛
This sounds delicious! It’s on my list, once I source some ingredients…
Thanks! Enjoy it and thanks for DIYing with me 😀
Hi! Do you think SCI can be substituted for coco sulfate?
Thanks for your great blog 🙂
Err, probably? I’ve never worked with coco sulfate so that’s all I’ve got, sorry.
I always steer clear of products that use E wax. I don’t quite trust ‘how’ it is processed. Yes, it’s from a plant, but the big question for me is ‘how are they making this stuff’. if you dig deeper into it, you will see that it’s not the best.
That’s the beautiful thing about DIYing—you can choose to avoid whatever you want to 🙂 There are many kinds of ewax, though—saying you avoid it as a blanket statement is a bit like saying you avoid all bread, assuming it’s all Wonder Bread. There are safer, ECO-CERT certified emulsifying waxes out there, like Ritamulse/Emulsifmulse. But hey, if you want to avoid them, that’s obviously your prerogative. I’ve done my research and feel comfortable using them for myself 🙂
Hey there. I’ve always wondered about the safety of emulsifying wax so would love a good read on the whole process. I have started avoiding using them at all meaning no more water in oil moisturisers for me for the moment (clensears and conditions that I wash of I am OK with since I don’t leave it on my skin for long so don’t give it much of a chance to absorb). The whole reason I started diy’ing was to avoid synthetic ingredients which includes I gradients I wouldn’t normally use on my skin so emulsifying wax stands out as something to be cautious of. If you have any good references then please do share them.
Hey Puja—if you want to learn about the individual components of various emulsifying waxes, Skin Deep is an amazing resource and a great place to start. There are many different kinds of emulsifying waxes, so don’t write all of them off without investigating the individual ones. Emulsimulse/ritamulse, which is ECO-CERT certified, is made from Glyceryl stearate, cetearyl alcohol, and sodium stearoyl lactylate, all of which score a 1/10 in terms of safety (for reference, castor oil gets a 2/10). Are you going to find these ingredients growing on trees in those forms? No, but that does not automatically mean they are unsafe (just like not everything natural is safe, like arsenic), and I’ve yet to see any convincing data beyond to prove that they are. I’d be much more concerned about the microbial growth that can happen in products that use emulsifying wax (and water) than the e-wax itself. Hope that gives you a good place to kick off your research 🙂
I have some Human Gear tubes too. I think I may have found the perfect thing to put in it. These will not be giveaways, but I’ll keep them for myself and my travels. I’m about to make your rose cardamom lotion, all I need is the SCI.
Oh for sure, those Human Gear tubes are definitely keeper tubes, not gifting tubes haha! The three I have are carefully rationed out, especially when I have a trip coming up 🙂
I have GOT to order some SCI!! This recipe sounds awesome! This sounds like a great cleanser for me when my skin is feeling dry and flaky and needs a little TLC. Thanks Marie!
Thanks, Belinda! I absolutely motored through this batch, I liked it so much 🙂 Guess I’ll have to make more!
While I’m dying to try SCI is there another way to make this cleanser similar to my lotion recipes that use: Stearic, EWax, oils, shea butter, glycerin (I usually sub in IPM or Hydrovance) and presevative?
Once I’m out of what I have I will definitely been buying this.
Hey Fuchia! Honestly, the only thing that differentiates this cleanser from lotion is the SCI. If you make it with what you have, you’re just making lotion :/ The SCI is the foaming/cleansing ingredient, so it’s certainly not an ingredient that you’d replace anything you already have with—it’s an entirely different class of ingredient.
Can I use stearic acid instead of SCI?
Hey Nina! That would be sort of like using flour instead of sugar in a cake recipe—they do completely different things. Stearic acid is a thickener, and SCI is a surfactant. Out of curiosity, why did you pick stearic acid as a potential alternative?
I’m so glad you’ve started experimenting with SCI! I’m not as creative as you so I would never think to incorporate it into a lotion. I’m definitely going to make this one. Thanks again and I hope you do more with SCI!
Thanks, Win! I’m definitely having a lot of fun with it, so I suspect you’ll continue to see it around 😉
Hi Marie
Do you use a dust mask with a filter or do you find standard disposable mask is adequate?
Thanks.
Hey Jo! I use one with a proper filter; these are your lungs we’re talking about (and lung cancer is a possibility if you inhale a lot of fine powders), so it really is best to “splurge” here and get something good! I have something like this.
Hi Marie,
Been using another DIY cleanser that I thought was nice enough that I have made it several times. I tried yours as I thought it might be better in summer time and warmer weather. I have to tell you, I was blown away with the way it cleaned. My nose pores were clean as a whistle! The one thing I learned is that as you are massaging in, you reach a point that you feel you need a little water. I wet my hands and continued but the two times I did that, the nose pores were not as clean. SO, I want to tell your readers, don’t succumb to adding the water. It works great just as is and as instructions say. Thanks so much for a great recipe.
Hey Dorsey! I’m so thrilled you’ve loving this cleanser and that it’s really working for you—I LOVE hearing stuff like this from my readers 😀 And thank you so much for your usage tips, and for reading and DIYing with me 🙂
Hi Marie.
Sorry for asking this question again but forgot where I posted original and don’t think I clicked button for notification.
Do you use a dust mask with a filter or is the basic white disposable mask adequate for working with fine powders?
Thanks
You asked (and I answered) just a few comments up 🙂 ^^ Your comment was just caught in the approval queue.
Hi, Marie:
In your recipes need broad spectrum preservatives, will you please include which preservative you used, and your methodology? I am a newbie, who has wasted a lot of ingredients because I didn’t use the preservatives properly. I’ve read your info page, but I need more info about how a pH is to be used, the point to add the preservatives, etc. Your recipes are amazing, and I want to make them for family and friends who have compromised immune systems, so understanding preservatives is essential. Thanks so much!
Hey Karen! I’ve been using Liquid Germall Plus these days as I bought some ages ago and still haven’t polished it off. I advise using an amount on the higher end of the recommended usage rate for home DIYing, and that’s 0.5% for LGP, so that would be about 0.4g for this recipe. For pH—I always recommend choosing a preservative with a broad effective range; broad enough that you don’t have to worry too much about your lotion being the proper pH. Assuming you aren’t adding lots of acidic or basic ingredients, lotions are usually around 7. Preservatives are usually added during the cool down phase, along with your essential oils, after your concoction has cooled to close to room temperature.
If you’re extra concerned about shelf life, I would also recommend avoiding water recipes that contain a lot of extra delicious bacteria food in the water part; things like milk powders, infused herbs, and herbal/plant extracts. You should also use the extended heating method I use in this video 🙂
I hope that helps! I also recommend doing some reading over at Point of Interest as Susan is an actual scientist and really knows her stuff in this realm 🙂
I love this cleanser. I always wanted to make a face cleanser for some time now, but was too afraid to try. I had purchased some SCI and I didn’t know what to do with it. Then I saw your post and I had to try it. I made it about two weeks ago and have been using it since then. I can’t thank you enough for all the DIY projects you’ve posted. I love your blog and can’t wait for your book.
Hey Keiann! I’m so glad you love this 🙂 Thanks so much for reading and DIYing with me!
could you please do a video on this recipee?
I’ll add it to my list 🙂 For reference, the process is nearly identical to the one shown in this video.
Hi Marie,
This looks like another great recipe. I will definitely give it a go once I’ve finished up the lavender cleansing milk I made in April, which I like very much. I’ve been following your blog for about 5 months now and it’s been such an inspiration. Thank you for all the time, effort and creativity you put into Humblebee&Me. As its creator I have to give you a lot of credit for a great new hobby that I can share with family and friends.
It’s also turning out to be a money saver too, after the initial outlay. For example, I have made a shaving cream/paste for my husband using SCI, lots of clay, glycerine, aloe vera juice, argan oil and some EOs which he happily uses instead of the Neals Yard organic close shaving cream that costs £14 or CA$25.
Anyhoo (kiwi in UK trying to speak Canadian – ha ha!!), I’m eventually getting round to the purpose of my comment to this blog, which is that my daughter who suffers from eczema from time to time, has asked me to make her a bubble bath. As you’ve said in previous posts, the basic liquid soap (the easy way) is unlikely to provide the lasting bubbles we associate with a luxurious soak in the bath, so I was wondering if SCI might be the go to ingredient here. Along with some floral water, glycerine, a bit of argan oil and other yummies to help soothe her skin (and mind, as I think stress often triggers flare ups). I plan on making single use batches so will not have to add a preservative. What do you think? Do you have other suggestions?
Lastly I also want to wish you well with your upcoming book launch. It’s wonderful to see someone doing what they love, and getting the recognition and success they deserve in the process.
anna
Hey Anna! Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, and thank you so much for your lovely comment 🙂
I’m afraid I have next to no experience with bubble baths (other than taking them, haha!), and my experience with surfactants is still very limited. I’d head on over to Point of Interest and do some reading there—Susan has probably forgotten more about surfactants than I will ever know!
Hi Marie,
I was trying to make this Facial cleanser but I hv encountered a problem when making it. I used 25% oil phase which includes 6% emulsifier (and I am using olivoil Emulsifier which is an Non-ionic emulsifier) . Well everything was nice and neat before adding the surfactant ( I use 12% POTASSIUM COCOYL GLYCINATE), but once I added in the surfactant , everything separated. The “lotion” became watery again. In the end I needed to add xanthan gum to thicken it up
1)Could you pls tell me the reason behind ?
2) And if I really wanna add some lathery quality into the cream cleanser, what can I do?
Thanks a lot
Hey Renee—I’m afraid I’m still very new to the world of surfactants, and I’ve never worked with the emulsifier or the surfactant you are using, so I can’t offer any advice. Sorry!
Hi Marie! Thank you for another great recipe! I’ve just made this today with a few tweaks to the ingredients, as per what I’ve got on hand. I swapped camellia seed oil for the grapeseed oil, used benzoin for the peru balsam ( it’s on order.), and used SLSa (same amount as recipe) instead of the SCI (only have this one… for now). I love the final product! My skin is not dry or tight as many other cleansers tend to leave my skin. And it smells absolutely heavenly! Followed up with a few drops of your Primpom serum (another amazing recipe I use daily). Can’t wait for your book! Thank you for keeping me inspired with such amazing DIY recipes!
Yay! I’m so glad you made it and loved it—my favourite thing 😀 Woohoo! Enjoy your lovely clean, hydrated face 😉
Hi Marie,
I absolutely adore your website and have recently purchased your book to try making my own mineral makeup. Before I get start making though I would like your advice regarding making my own cleanser, similar to this recipe. I am currently using a bought cleanser that uses sucrose cocoate, polysorbate 80 and cetearyl alcohol. Could you use these ingredients in this or your Meadowfoam Mango Creamy Facial Cleanser? What do you suggest? I would like to try making it myself since I really like it but would really appreciate your knowledge and opinion. I look forward to your emails and posts every week! You inspire me to create so many things! 🙂
Hey Harmony! Out of the ingredients you mentioned, cetearyl alcohol and polysorbate 80 are both emuslfiers, and are commonly found in emulsifying waxes together, so you don’t need to include those—just use an e-wax. The sucrose cocoate is an emollient, not a surfactant, and both the cleansers you mention have plenty of emollients. So, basically, none of those things are really cleansing ingredients (the polysorbate 80 will do some cleansing, but it won’t really generate lather, so if the cleanser you are using lathers, it’s from something else), so I’m not really sure why you want to include any of those ingredients. I predict either of the cleansers would give a fairly similar effect without fussing about including any of those ingredients 🙂
I gave this a go today and I love it! It really is a lotion but it rinses of beautifully, with no dryness and my face feels nice and clean. There was no lather though but I’m
ok with it (the meadowfoam mango cleanser lathers up quite nicely)
Now it just became harder to decide which face cleanser to use as I made about 6 of them from your blog. And love them all!
Awesome! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it 🙂 This was definitely one of my first forays into working with surfactants so I was erring on the side of less rather than more, hence the final product being much more of a lotion than anything else 😛 At least choice is never a bad thing! Thanks for DIYing with me 🙂
Hi Marie!
I made this cleansing lotion yesterday and it is EXQUISITE! Your directions were spot on. Typically, I cleanse with facial oils; however, there are times when I feel change is good. This is my go-to from now on. It is convenient for travel too—I do a lot of hiking/camping so I like clean and easy. I have one comment/question for you: I noticed that after cleansing with this lotion, my face feels a little tight. (I have sensitive, mature skin.) Is there a way to decrease the amount of SCI, to make it less cleansing? Also, I wear hardly any makeup at all so I don’t need a cleanser to remove a lot of makeup. Any thoughts on that would be greatly appreciated. BTW, love your book! My daughter has already marked which cosmetics we will be making together. :>)
Thank you, Marie!
Hey Carolyn! I’m glad you’re enjoying this 🙂 You can definitely reduce the amount of SCI—try 2g instead of 4g and let me know how it goes! Thanks for reading and DIYing with me, and for buying my book!
would dr bronner liquid soap be able to subsitute Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate as cleansing agent?
or am I way off….
Thanks!
I really wouldn’t recommend it as using basic things to wash your face has shown to be quite detrimental to your acid mantle and dermal microbiome. Make sure you read the linked article and check out the sources, it’s all very fascinating!
I have been experimenting a lot with natural shampoo lately and have been playing with soapnut liquid. I have not gotten to a point yet of getting into preservatives (I just make enough for a week at a time and keep it in the fridge). I would like to try preservatives but wonder if something like soapnut liquid will be harder to preserve…it just seems like something that is calling out for mould and fungus to grow in it… The only reference I found to soapnuts on your website was here and one other recipe, so I thought maybe it could be discussed here.
My last couple tries were like this:
40% soapnut liquid
30% rosemary water
20% Body Shop shampoo (i’m trying to wean my hair off of this entirely, and have worked down from 40% to 20%…I want to eliminate it entirely, but just haven’t yet)
5% castor oil
5% honey
I also have tried:
40% soapnut liquid
20% rosemary water
20% Body Shop shampoo
20% coconut milk
These recipes have both been quite successful, they feel pretty great, and lather nice, and almost have a conditioning effect. My thought with using the soapnut liquid for their saponins, is then I don’t need to make actual ‘soap’ and with the soapnut liquid’s acidic ph, perhaps this doesn’t require conditioner after. I have tried following up with an acv rinse, which has gone over well, but have also tried without any rinse and my hair still seemed good.
I guess I am just wondering if you have any experience working with soapnuts very much and what your thoughts are on my recipe. Do you have any suggestions about what would make this better?
Would you consider trying a recipe for shampoo using soapnut liquid as the main cleanser?
Thanks!
Hey Randi! I’m afraid I have zero experience with soap nuts and not a lot of desire to play with them for the hard-to-preserve reason you noted. The recipes you’ve listed here look to be very unstable (no emulsifiers, containing finished store bought products) and nearly impossible to preserve (coconut milk is a big impossible to preserve thing), so I’m glad to hear you are making them in small batches and using them very quickly. If you want to avoid soap making you might consider moving straight into surfactants; they are so much fun to work with, and home crafters have dozens to choose from, so you can definitely find something gentle and lovely 🙂 The series on detergents/surfactants from It’s All In My Hands is a great place to start learning!
Hi Marie, thanks so much for your reply. The article you provided about surfactants was very interesting! I am wondering if you have worked much with any surfactants yourself? Or do you typically go the soap route? The one thing that was appealing about the soapnuts to me was that the soapnut liquid was a low ph which I have read is good for hair (I believe the reason we use conditioner or a hair rinse is to lower the ph after using a regular high ph shampoo). Thank you for your help, and thank you for your awesome blog – I signed up for your beginner course and weekly posts!
I’ve been playing with surfactants quite a lot recently! I’m somewhat limited by what I can get in Canada, but I’ve having tons of sudsy fun 🙂 As such, I haven’t been using soap much recently at all as I am surrounded by all kinds of surfactant things that need to be tested!
We use acidic rinses to pH correct hair, but those are not conditioners; a true conditioner contains cationic/positively charged ingredients that adsorb to our hair, leaving an extremely fine coating that leaves our hair feeling amazing 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Again, thank you for the information. I just read your article about the difference between a hair rinse and conditioner which was very helpful. I will have to look at some of your recipes using surfactants because I would like to make a shampoo that is already a low ph. I live in Eastern Canada, and it’s even worse out here for ingredients… 🙁 I have been thinking of ordering from Saffire Blue or Sunrise Botanics, but neither of them have much for reviews online…I think I will just have to try them out and see for myslef. I read in one of your posts that you like to use TKB Trading, but is it really worth it with the shipping and immigration costs?
Canada is Canada—if you’re ordering online and it doesn’t cross the border it’s the same for you as it is for me! Look at Windy Point and Voyageur 🙂
This is true. I will check those out. Thanks! 🙂
Hi- what is the ounce yield for this recipe?
I’ve got an entire FAQ on this 🙂
Thanks!!
This recipe sounds great! I just have one question about adding the surfactant powder. In the description, you say that you sprinkled and stirred the powder into the water,until it formed a paste,and that it dissolved in the water nicely.The recipe instructions say to sprinkle the powder into the cool down phase of the lotion. So I’m confused about when and how I should incorporate the sci. Does it dissolve in the lotion? Or will it leave a grainy texture to the lotion?
The part in the description you are referring to is where I am describing my experiments with the ingredient leading up to the development of this recipe; follow the recipe as written. It dissolves well.
Hi Marie! I came across your website several weeks ago and have been pouring over all your recipies. I am new to the DIY skin care world and am positively drooling over all the amazing recipes you have generously shared with the world! Thank you for sharing your insight and knowledge with us.
I am looking for a good all around daily facial cleanser and this seems to fitthe bill…unless you recommend another of your recipes?
Also, I have a question about the sodium cocoyl isethionate. The only place I can find the powdered version is NDA and I am unwilling to pay the shipping (to my house in the US, shipping is nearly the same as the cost of the product!) Can I use the noodles instead and just buzz them in my DIY coffee grinder prior to using them as directed in the recipe?
Thanks!
Welcome, Luanne! You definitely can just just powder the SCI yourself—please be sure to wear a well-fitting dust mask, though, as putting it through your coffee grinder will really whip it up and create a cloud of very fine SCI which is utterly wretched to inhale.