I dreamt up this cleanser for my friend and super-awesome yoga instructor Danny. He’s pretty much the sole reason I’ve been able to start running again, so when he mentioned he’d be interested in trying some of the things I make, I was on it (I definitely prefer to thank people with personalized DIY concoctions instead of a bottle of wine or flowers wherever possible). I was immediately drawn to the idea of a coniferous-y cleanser, and though I made this Forest Facial Cleanser over a month ago, it seems fitting to share it while I’m relaxing in the middle of a forest in Manitoba.
This is an evolution of earlier facial cleanser recipes I’ve shared, starting with foaming lotions and slowly moving away from the emulsion base towards this sort of thing, which I suppose is basically a very dressed up, gentle liquid detergent. In this one I reduced the surfactants by 5% for a gentler cleanser; I’ve been doing some really interesting reading over at It’s All In My Hands on calculating the active surfactant matter of a recipe. For this one we’re using 6% Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate and 9% Cocamidopropyl Betaine. Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) is 84% active, so out of the entire recipe that’s 5.04% active SCI. Cocamidopropyl Betaine is 30% active, so that means 2.7% of the entire recipe is active Cocamidopropyl Betaine, for a total 7.74% active surfactant matter. I recently made a hand wash that’s 15% ASM and I’m finding that to be a bit drying, so I’m thinking my starting point for hands and face will be around 7.5–10% from now on.
For most liquid surfactant-based concoctions containing Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI), step one is usually melting the SCI into a liquid surfactant like Cocamidopropyl Betaine. For some reason, this takes ages for me (I may just be impatient), so a month or so ago I made a paste of the two that I keep in the freezer. To do this I weighed out 100g of Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) (2 parts) and 150g Cocamidopropyl Betaine (3 parts), stirred that together, and popped it in a water bath until I had a smooth, even, white paste. I transferred that to a 250mL (8oz) mason jar, labelled in, and keep it in the freezer to scoop into as needed. I can easily add more Cocamidopropyl Betaine if the recipe calls for it, and I intentionally chose a fairly high SCI: Cocamidopropyl Betaine ratio so it would be unlikely I’d ever need to melt more SCI. So far this has been a pretty awesome shortcut—I’ve used this jar of paste to quickly make facial cleansers for several friends!
The dressed-up bits include a long-time cleansing favourite of mine: French green clay! I love the added cleansing boost it brings as well as the lovely dusty green colour that’s perfect for a Forest Facial Cleanser. Fortunately the viscosity the Crothix brings is enough to keep the clay in suspension, so no shaking is necessary! There’s also a nice trio of humectants: glycerin, sodium lactate, and panthenol. You’ll also find some soothing aloe vera and some silk, which contributes some film-forming goodness to help keep the cleanser from being too drying.
Our blend of essential oils is summer in Manitoba perfect; bright, piercing spruce and fir are mellowed out with deep, mysterious oak moss absolute and sweet, spicy cardamom. It’s the perfect pick-me-up first thing in the morning, and just might help send you off into dreams of frolicking in the woods in the evening. If you’re not a fan of foresty smells, feel free to customize the blend as you prefer.
If you decide to go the pre-made-paste route, once that’s done this is delightfully simple, if not a bit time consuming (though it’s mostly downtime). Most of what you’ll be doing is waiting for the surfactant blob to dissolve, and then let it cool before scenting, thickening, and preserving, so most of the time is just waiting (smart Marie uses this time to clean up her messes… other Marie uses this time to fritter time away on the interwebs because she is already “being productive” 😝). Anwho! Let’s go make some Forest Facial Cleanser—time frittering optional.
Forest Facial Cleanser
6g | 0.21oz Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) (USA / Canada)
9g | 0.32oz Cocamidopropyl Betaine (USA / Canada)
or 15g | 0.53oz 2:3 SCI:Cocamidopropyl Betaine pre-made paste (see pre-amble for details)80g | 2.82oz distilled water
2g | 0.07oz panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
5g | 0.18oz French green clay
0.5g | 0.018oz aloe vera 200x concentrate powder
2g | 0.07oz sodium lactate (USA / Canada)
1.5g | 0.05oz hydrolyzed silk (USA / Canada) (wondering about substitutions?)
2g | 0.07oz vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)10 drops spruce essential oil
20 drops fir essential oil
3 drops oak moss absolute
4 drops cardamom essential oil
0.5g | 0.018oz Liquid Germall Plusâ„¢ (USA / Canada) (or other broad spectrum preservative of choice at recommended usage rate [why?])4g | 0.14oz Crothixâ„¢ Liquid (USA / Canada)
Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a wide, flat-bottomed sauté pan.
Put on your dust mask and weigh the Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) and Cocamidopropyl Betaine into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to let the Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) dissolve into the Cocamidopropyl Betaine. This will take a while! It took about an hour for me—keep an eye on your water bath so it doesn’t simmer dry.
While the surfactants do their thing, weigh the water, panthenol, French green clay, aloe vera, sodium lactate, silk, and glycerin into another small heat-resistant glass measuring cup or beaker. When the surfactant mixture looks mostly uniform (perhaps just one or two white blobs left), pop the water mixture beaker into the water bath as well to heat that through.
When the water part has heated through and appears uniform, scrape the surfactant paste into the water part—I found it helpful to pour a bit of the water mixture into the surfactant mixture and give it a light stir before scraping that surfactant mixture into the water beaker. The surfactant mixture will be quite thick and paste-y. Leave the remaining measuring cup/beaker that contains everything in the water bath to allow the lumps of surfactant paste to dissolve, gently stirring occasionally to break up any surfactant blobs.
Once the mixture is completely uniform and there are no more surfactant blobs, remove the beaker from the heat and leave it to cool for about half an hour. When it has cooled so it’s just slightly warm to the touch, stir in the essential oils and preservative. Cover with some cling film and leave to completely cool—overnight is a good length of time, but if you get carried away and it ends up being a day or two, that’s ok, too.
When your cleanser is SUPER cool (I covered mine and put it in the fridge for an hour), we can add the Crothix™ liquid to thicken it up. I added about a gram at a time and stirred to combine, ending up with just about 4g (0.14oz). Crothix™ liquid is a wonderfully powerful thickener, and it can take a little while to really kick in, so be patient between additions and make sure you aren’t seeing any wispy floating blobs when you stir before adding more.
When you’re happy with the consistency of your cleanser, decant it into a 100mL pump-top bottle (I like this bottle paired with this pump-top) or a squeezy bottle with a flip or disc top (like this one).
The pH of this is ~5.5 without any adjusting.
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this cleanser contains water, you must include a broad-spectrum preservative to ward off microbial growth. This is non-optional. Even with a preservative this project is likely to eventually spoil as our kitchens are not sterile laboratories, so in the event you notice any change in colour, scent, or texture, chuck it out and make a fresh batch.
Hey Marie, this sounds like another winner! Can’t wait to make it. Reading through the recipe I noticed this: “When it has cooled so it’s just slightly warm to the touch, stir in the rose water, panthenol, green tea extract, and preservative.” Probably from cutting and pasting – sounds like the Green Tea Facial Cleanser. I’m sure we could figure it out but thought I would mention it in case you want to change it.
Thanks, Kelly! I was able to send a hot spot to my laptop from my phone and fix it from the highway somewhere in rural Manitoba 😛
I love this recipe! Another use for the Oak Moss Absolute which I totally fell in love with in the ginger lotion! Now I need a face cream to match. :). Thank you Marie 🙂
Woo! I love the face cream idea, too…. hmmm. Stay tuned 😉
I love your idea of pre-melting & mixing SCI and CocoBetaine — thank you so much! It’s like masterbatching your oils in soapmaking, or melting down a huge amount of Palm oil and repackaging it into mason jars.
You are very welcome! I’ve found it to be SO helpful—just last week I went to make a shampoo bar for my dog that used SCI and Amphosol CG and I needed a different ratio, so I had to make the paste from scratch. After an hour it still hadn’t melted fully! Pre-made paste all the way 😛
Hi Marie, this sounds great. I don’t have oak moss, what could I use instead? I love the idea of pre-making the SCI paste. I’ve made your lemon rose shower gel, and it’s amazing (so creamy and smells awesome), how much paste would I use in that recipe?
Oak moss is super unique, so there is no substitute, but I think some vanilla-y would also work. The paste is 2:3 SCI:Amphosol CG, so you’d need 50g for the body wash.
Hello Adrianne,
I had purchased a sample size vial of Oak Moss Absolute from Eden Botanicals. I used it in the Ginger lotion that Marie had posted a little while back. I absolutely love it. Such an earthy outdoorsy scent! It is so unique and I can’t wait to try it in this eo combo. Anyway, for I think, $3.00, you can try a sample. I will be purchasing a small bottle from them.
hi Marie! Loving your blog so much. Thanks for all you do. You may (or may not) find this helpful. I had a bad experience once while using the water bath method of a double boiler so I figured out a work around.
I picked up an old crock pot from a thrift store and I simply sit my heat proof bowls inside the crock, turn it on low, put the lid on and walk away. I don’t have to worry about the water evaporating too quickly or things getting too hot and it doesn’t need constant attention.
Great tip! Do you have any issues with condensation on the lid dripping into your containers?
Hi Marie, bought your book and love it.Is this wash more gentle than the green tea and roses cleanser? I want to make that one but I read in this post how you have adjusted your surfactants.if so, how would you modify the great tea cleanser to be as mild? Thanks
This one has a lower surfactant concentration, so it will be a bit gentler. You’d simply use the same amount of surfactants as used here and increase the amount of water to compensate 🙂
Can I use Guar Gum instead of Crothix for a thickening agent?
I wouldn’t recommend it; I’ve thickened with xanthan gum before and it’s really boogery and gross, and I don’t find guar to be all that different. If you don’t have a thickener I’d probably put this in a foamer bottle instead.
Good to know 😉 I have some of those from making the orange dream foaming soap (which I love!!!)
Been googling “Humblebee and me face wash” for the past few days trying to decide which one I wanted to make.. I’ve been completely out of face wash (I was using 3 different ones – on different days of courrrrse) and was in total “no soap or whatever was in the shower” washing mode. I haven’t made a thing in a couple of weeks but now that I’m out of like, everything, I need to snap out of it. I made conditioner and am making this tomorrow. My SCI + Coco betaine concoction melts fairly quickly, I’d say… 20-25 from the time I set my beaker in hot water. Anywho, it’s good to be back making stuff!!!!
Thanks as always for the amazing recipes.
Woo! I’m nearly out of my facial cleanser and I can’t wait to dream up another one when I get home from NYC next week 😀 Happy making!
Oh, and by the way, it’s been about 65 degrees Farenheit here in Pennsylvania and my thumbs are already cracking and bleeding… and hurting like crazy. Do you think we’ll see any thick, rich hand cream for the upcoming months when everything just dries right up??? I have always loved the cream Cera-ve, the one in the jars. Have u ever heard of it? I would looove a cream like that that doesnt cost $17 (for a 350mg jar). I think it also has tons of preservatives.
Something like this? 😉 I’ve been using it on my hands like mad, too!
Hi Marie, on the subject of thickening after everything is ready (so no second guessing am I putting enough whatever in for this to be the way I want it) – here you do it with Crothix that I had absolutely NO luck finding in Europe – I read in another formulation of yours that you used salt as a thickening agent.
Now my question is, are Crothix and salt interchangeable as thickening agents? Or using one or the other depends on the formulation? Thanks!
Patrizia, you can find crothix at thesoapkitchen.co.uk hope that’s of some help.
Thanks Pauline! I’d still be interested to know if salt and Crothix can be used interchangeably though 🙂 Marie?
I have used both methods and while salt is cheaper, crothix is definitely more reliable. I’ve thickened fragranced things with salt and come back to something with the viscosity of water 8 hours later, which was definitely a bit of a puzzler. The salt curve of any given surfactant formulation will vary, so you’ll need to start with very small amounts of salt to ensure you don’t over-shoot it, as too much salt will cause it to thin right back out again. If that happens, feel free to thicken with crothix afterwards, ha.
I have not found them to be fully interchangeable, though I am far from an expert on this! My experience has been that crothix is foolproof, and salt is a bit fussier (some concoctions have thickened well initially and then been watery by morning). This article and this one may provide some more clarity 🙂
Can I substitute Kaolin Clay for the French Green Marie, and maybe a smidge of colourant?
Thank you 🙂
Yup! There’s really no reason to add any pigment unless you really want it to be green, though 🙂
That’s great, thanks Marie 🙂
Hi Marie, Do you think this would work in a squeezable tube container instead of a jar?
It definitely will, but I’m wondering if you may’ve commented on the right recipe as this cleanser would never work in a jar—it’s far too liquidy and should only be used in a squeeze or pump bottle/tube.
Is there any substitute for Crothix? I currently have guar, arrowroot, xanthan gum, and lecithin granules (I dissolve the lecithin in cold water, in the fridge for a few hours and it turns into a wonderful liquid thickener). I also have olivem 300 and a lot of the other emulsifiers and surfactants. I’m thinking that the lecithin, although more of an emulsifier than a thickener, would be my best bet. What is your opinion on alternatives for Crothix? And if go with lecithin granules, how much would you suggest I use?
You can try salt. All the other things you’ve listed would make for a pretty gross final consistency; I find using gums as the primary thickener gives a product with a pretty snotty final texture, and I suspect you will have emulsion issues with lecithin as it’s oil based and not the sort of emulsifier that will self-incorporate in a large amount of water—it can incorporate a small amount of water into a large amount of oil, but that’s the opposite of this situation. Happy making!
I just had another idea for thickening this without Crothix, besides lecithin, maybe a combo of BTMS-50 and olivem 300…? I keep running into the same problem when I go to make something, I am ALWAYS missing one ingredient! I have dozens and dozens of raw materials, except that ONE certain very important ingredient. It seriously never fails LOL!
Olivem300 isn’t going to do anything to thicken (it’s a thin liquid), and adding enough BTMS-50 to thicken is going to drastically alter the recipe; you’d have to add it during the heated phase, and incorporating large amounts of a cationic emulsifier is going to impact the lather and cleansing power of the end product. Crothix is something you’ll use a lot if you want to make surfactant-y things—it’s well worth investing in, I promise!
Hello Marie, I don’t have sodium lactate. Can I make this without it or substitute with something else?
You can replace it with more water 🙂
Thank you so much for the answer. I’ll be making this as soon as my surfactants arrive. Quick question though. I have been washing my face daily with just water and rhassoul clay for a while now. I don’t make it pasty, very diluted just enough to be able to wash my face quickly. It’s been clearing up my skin so well. The pores got tighter and my skin seems brighter now. The only drawback is my skin feels a lot drier, strangely it doesn’t look that drier though. So question is this. Does addition of panthenol, silk, glycerin, and aloe vera add and retain moisture compared to just water+clay washing I was doing?
I’ve been going through your website so much at once(there are a lot of information!) i can’t remember if I saw an oil face cleanser with clay. Did you make anything like that yet?
Yes, those extra ingredients do help make the cleanser more mild. As for clay cleansers—this one has clay in it 😉
I already bought all my ingredients and I’m so ready to dive into this! Although I am curious on substituting the surfactants in this formula. I recently got some Sodium Lauroyl Oat Amino Acids, because its great for sensitive skin, and it comes in a liquid form. Would you think that’s a good substitute for the SCI? And if so, would there even need to be a heating phase, or do I just combine the Cocamidopropyl Betaine liquid with the Sodium Oat Amino Acids. Sorry for the amateur question, I’ve been doing so much research and I still can’t quite find an answer.
You’re right on track with this! You can use the foaming oats in place of the SCI here, and you won’t need to heat it, there are just two considerations. 1) Viscosity: using something liquid in place of something solid will result in a less viscous end product. I doubt you’ll notice much of a difference here, though, given the low use level (and the large % of water). 2) Active surfactant matter. Liquid surfactants are less concentrated than solid ones, so replacing SCI with foaming oats will lower the ASM of the end product. I’ve made plenty of facial cleansers with very low ASM values, though, so given where this formula starts ASM-wise, I’m confident this swap will not negatively impact the performance of this cleanser.
Happy making!
Marie,
I have a similar question. I have foaming silk. Can I use that instead of SCI?
You can, just keep in mind the different active surfactant matters; you may need to adjust the recipe to keep the final ASM the same 🙂
hi,greeting from chile.in my country there is no sci,but coco betaine is in almost every shop for natural cosmetics.is there a recipe with just coco betaine in your blog?
thank you.
Here’s one 🙂
I have stored My aloe Vera 200x powder in a dry cool area, but now it has turned into hard rocks. Is this common with this powder? Should I grind it and re-store it in an airtight container? Or do you think I should toss it?
I suspect it has attracted some moisture to it, similar to how brown sugar seizes up. I’d just bash it up and keep going, and try double-bagging it in the future 🙂
Hi marie, I want to try out this recipie. I have SCI but I dont have amphosol CG. Instead I have coco glusocide (gentle foam). Can I replace cocamidopropyl betaine with coco glucoside?
Sadly I really don’t recommend it; give this a read for more information 🙂 Will it fail catastrophically if you do? Probably not. I still wouldn’t, though. If you want to work with surfactants at all you should really get some amphosol CG as it will end up in pretty much everything you make with surfactants. Happy making!
Hi Marie. Would this be safe for use around the eye area?
I’m also wondering about another thing concerning the french green clay in both this recipe and the forest cleansing balm, and none om my googling is helping me.
I know you shouldn’t use AHA/BHA’s and manual exfoliants at the same time, so I’m wondering if the french green clay is exfoliating at all? Is it safe to use with acids, or do I need to leave it out?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t worry about it—French green clay is very gentle. You’ll get more physical exfoliation from your pillowcase 🙂
Also, I use AHAs & BHAs daily and will still do one or two clay face masks a month. I don’t have terribly sensitive skin, but that has worked well for me! The only things I am careful to space out more are high strength AHA peels (25–30%) and anything quite scrubby (like this). Happy making!
Generally yes (I use it to wash my whole face), but it will likely sting if it gets in the eyes so I wouldn’t use it to remove eye makeup.
The SCI and Cocamidopropyl Betaine paste doesn’t need a preservative, right? Just melt them together and put them in the freezer til I need to use them? Of course I’ll add a preservative w/ the finish product, but just the paste itself doesn’t need any?
Nope! I wouldn’t keep it around for a decade or something, but I’ve even been testing a paste in the fridge and after over a year I’ve noticed no changes 🙂 Happy making!
Hi Marie,
I don’t have the aloe vera powder extract I do have the liquid ectract though from voyageur. In their website, it says, 1 gram of the powder is equivalent to 200 grams of pure aloe. How much will I use then for this formula?
It’s the same concentration level as the powder I used, so I’d use it at the same rate. Happy making!