In the last week I’ve been on some utterly stunning hikes, really soaking up how beautiful Canada is and squeezing the last drops of good weather out of our waning summer. I love a lot of things about the mountains—their beauty, the solitude, the babbling brooks and the pikas—but I think my favourite thing is the air. It’s crisp and fresh, and smells utterly divine. On a warm summer day you can smell the sun-warmed earth mingling with the pine needles and distant whiffs of wildflowers and flowing water. You’re likely to find me standing still, eyes shut, face to the sun, inhaling deeply, whenever I first get out of a car in the mountains, so I suppose it’s no surprise I chase that scent in essential oil blends and my skin care products. This Forest Facial Lotion features a forest-inspired scent blend to tie in with my Forest Cleansing Balm and Forest Facial Cleanser; warm, mysterious oak moss warms top notes of bright spruce and fir and sweet, spicy cardamom. Swoon.
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Last Monday I headed out to Emerald Lake with Lottie and two of my favourite people for what looked like the last day of beautiful weather that week. Emerald Lake is in Yoho National Park, tucked around the corner from the Trans Canada Highway shortly after it crosses the Continental Divide heading westward. We began our hike by meandering around the lake (which is beyond stunning; the lodge perched on the edge of the peninsula is absurdly photogenic) before heading upwards to Yoho Lake—a stunning little alpine lake surrounded by evergreen trees. Lottie took a dip in the lake and we enjoyed some snacks we’d picked up at Canmore’s Summit Cafe earlier. It was brilliant.
While I can’t promise this lotion is quite as breathtaking as an alpine lake, it is still pretty awesome. It’s lightweight and silky, with amazing slip thanks to the oil to water ratio and the inclusion of some oh-so-amazing Penstia™ powder. I’ve added some great humectants and soothing aloe vera to help keep skin plump and hydrated. In addition to being a humectant, hydrolyzed silk contributes a subtle glow and some film forming, helping maintain moisture and keep your complexion happy as the mercury drops (and the humidity with it).
This lotion uses a larger water part than many of my other lotions to create a lighter final product, with some concentrated cetyl alcohol contributing some lightweight, silky body without bloating the oil portion. For oils I paired heavy, gamma linoleic acid rich evening primrose oil with lightweight, dry-finish mango butter. The lightness of the mango butter isn’t necessary to counter the oiliness of the evening primrose oil in a lotion this light, but I happen to like the pairing regardless.
A handsome pairing—Forest Facial Lotion and Forest Cleansing Balm!
For a touch of magic I simply had to include some Penstia™ powder. Pensita™ powder is a polymer that “imparts a silky, creamy, cushiony feel to cosmetic formulations“. It’s optional (see the substitutions list at the bottom of the recipe), but wonderful. It contributes the most amazing, luxurious slip to the lotion, creating something that feels beyond decadent—like the sort of thing that would sell for a small fortune at the beauty counter. The powder itself is very inexpensive and according to Lotion Crafter, it’s super versatile—I can’t wait to incorporate it into some cosmetics!
We’ll wrap the recipe up with the forest blend of essential oils; deep, mysterious, can’t-pin-it-down oak moss is our base note. There’s nothing quite like it, but benzoin has a similar warmth and depth that would make for an acceptable alternative. Fir and spruce pop out and then mellow down to create a wonderful foresty blend, with a dancing top note of sweet, spicy cardamom. It’s divine. And with that, let’s go make some Forest Facial Lotion!
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Forest Facial Lotion
79g | 2.76oz distilled water
1g | 0.04oz vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)
1g | 0.04oz sodium lactate
2g | 0.07oz panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 0.017oz aloe vera 200x concentrate powder
1g | 0.04oz hydrolyzed silk (USA / Canada) (wondering about substitutions?)4g | 0.14ozoz complete emulsifying wax (not beeswax!)
8g | 0.28oz evening primrose oil
4g | 0.14oz mango butter (USA / Canada)
3g | 0.11oz cetyl alcohol (USA / Canada)
3g | 0.11oz Penstia™ powder (optional)10 drops spruce essential oil
20 drops fir essential oil
3 drops oak moss absolute
4 drops cardamom essential oil0.5g | 0.017oz Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada) (or other broad spectrum preservative of choice at recommended usage rate [why?])
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.
Weigh the water, glycerin, sodium lactate, panthenol, aloe, and silk into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Weigh the emulsifying wax, evening primrose oil, mango butter, cetyl alcohol, and Penstia™ powder into a second heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place both measuring cups in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
After about 20–30 minutes the oil part should be completely melted and the water part should be thoroughly dissolved. Remove the water bath from the heat, and pour the water part into the oil part. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.
Grab your immersion blender and begin blending the lotion, starting with short bursts so the still-very-liquid lotion doesn’t whirl up and spray everywhere. Blend for about a minute, leave to cool for ten, blend for another minute or two, and repeat this blend-cool-blend cycle until the outside of the glass measuring cup is barely warm to the touch and the lotion is thick and creamy.
Once the lotion is cool, stir in the essential oils, and preservatives, and decant into your container. I used one of these great screw-top 100mL plastic tubs from YellowBee, but this cream is thin enough to be used in a pump bottle, too. Enjoy!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this cream 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.
Substitutions
As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.
- If you don’t have both vegetable glycerin and sodium lactate, just use 2g of whichever one you do have. If you drop the sodium lactate please add 0.01g vitamin E to the oil phase to replace the lost antioxidant capacity, dropping that weight from the evening primrose oil.
- If you don’t have panthenol you can replace it with distilled water
- For the 200x concentrated aloe:
- If you have 100x concentrated powder instead, use 1g of that and 0.5g less distilled water
- If you have the juice instead, use 40g of that and 39g distilled water
- If you don’t have hydrolyzed silk you can use hydrolyzed oat protein or sea kelp bioferment instead, or just replace it with more distilled water
- I used Polawax as my complete emulsifying wax, but BTMS-50 and Emulsifying Wax NF will also work
- Feel free to use a different oil your face loves in place of the evening primrose oil. I’d recommend black currant seed oil or borage oil as good GLA-rich alternatives.
- You can use shea butter instead of the mango butter
- You can replace the cetyl alcohol with more mango butter
- You can replace the Penstia™ powder with more water (in the water phase, not the oil phase)
Hi, Marie. Looks like a wonderful recipe, as usual. I notice that you put the Penstia powder in the oil phase for this lotion, where you had it in the water phase previously. Does it dissolve better? I’ve never been able to get it to dissolve completely in water, though it seems to mix fine once I combine the oil and water and hit it with the immersion blender.
Love your stuff! Thanks.
You can add it to either phase; I thought I’d try the oil phase here to see if it reduced clumping. I didn’t notice any huge changes either way—the immersion blender made it all smoothy-smooth, which sounds like your experience as well 🙂 Happy making and thanks for reading!
Hi Marie,
One thing I love about your recipes is how thoroughly you research things! I try to emulate – but can’t find anything on Penstia’s safety ratings? Also, any idea if these are the kinds of “spheres” that are causing havoc in waterways? I can’t seem to find any research on it – hoping not because this sounds amazing!
You can review the MSDS for the pure ingredient here. The gist of it is that it’s not a carcinogen and there are no toxicity concerns, but you really don’t want the straight powder in your eyes. Keep in mind that MSDS sheets are for the pure ingredient, and we rarely use them that way 🙂 It is also not classified as a marine pollutant!
Thanks, Marie! Any chance you’ll be making a toner to round out the forest series??;)
Ooooh, great idea! I shall add it to my list 🙂
Hi Marie 🙂 I am new to working with silk but I bought the silk peptide powder from Amazon and it has a gross scent. I have read that could be normal? I also bought a liquid silk from Lotion Crafter (http://www.lotioncrafter.com/silk-amino-acids-pf.html). If using Lotion Crafter’s silk and following their usage rate by percent which would equal more than what your recipe calls for in grams, where in the recipe should I decrease to accommodate the increase in liquid silk? The water amount? Hope I make sense, thank you! 🙂
Yes, exactly that! In most cases you remove water soluble ingredients from the water, and oil soluble ingredients from one of the carrier oils 🙂
Hi Marie! I’ve been having an issue for a while now that my lotions weren’t thickening properly (including this one) and it was driving me crazy! I was following the recipes closely so I couldn’t figure out why everything I touched turned into a watery mess.
I’m glad to report that thanks to this article from Susan http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2017/08/using-100x-or-200x-aloe-vera-powder-in.html I finally traced it back to when I started using the 100x powder from lotion crafter! I’ve started rehydrating the powder and using it that way like Susan suggests (rather than using it straight at .5 or 1%) and it seems to have solved the issue. Phew!
I’ve noticed that you have been using the powder in many recipes with no problems, so clearly it can be done that way successfully, but I just wanted to mention my experience in case anyone else was having the same frustrations!
How interesting! And it definitely makes lots of sense. That does make me wonder why I’ve never had an issue with it… hmmmm. Perhaps I just haven’t made the right thing yet. *shrugs* Thanks so much for sharing, and happy making!
I love the fact that you are adding a formal substitutions section. It’s really helpful!
Thanks! I’m glad you are enjoying it 🙂
Hi Marie! I’d love to try this formulation out to feel its lightweightness (let’s just consider this a word :p) but play a little safer and start working on smaller amounts to see how my skin likes it.
However, I noticed the total percentage for this one exceeds 100%, is it for accounting the estimated water loss while heat-and-holding?
Also, how would you recommend I calculate my single ingredients if I want to start off with 1/3 the total weight of your original product?
Will dividing your measurements by 3 possibly end up in a different result?
Thank you! Love from Bali xx
That’s exactly it; I typically multiply my water part by 1.1 🙂 That little tidbit should help you calculate things in percentages and then just calculate a 30g batch 🙂
I love the feel of this lotion! I made one later that evening and ohhh it sinks into the skin soooo fast, perfect for tropical babes haha. My EPO is one of that kinda-fishy-smelling type but I’m getting used to it. My skin tolerates EPO fairly well but I’m gonna need a different supplier just so I don’t cringe every time I reach the moisturizing step of my routine. Or maybe I’ll experiment with argan oil and olive-derived squalane! Thank you!xx
YAY! I’m so glad 🙂 If you get a chance to sniff black currant seed oil or borage seed oil those might be worth a gander as an EPO alternative. They’ve got a similar fatty acid profile but you may find the scent less… salmon-y 😛
Is it important that the sodium lactate be a liquid? Wondering because LotionCrafter has a powder – would they work equally well? Thanks.
Planning on making this and chapstick to match for my uncle for Christmas. I asked family members to pick one or two from the list of the non-oraltoxic non-phototoxic essential oils that I have in my collection (I didn’t tell any of them the reason), and he picked spruce, so forest-y things, here I come. I might also use this recipe for some of the other gifts, just use different EOs (the other requests were rose, lavender, cedar, peppermint, myrrh, and rosemary).
The state doesn’t matter, just be sure to adjust the amount as required to keep it the same 🙂 The liquid stuff is 60% concentration compared to the 100% powder.
I love the idea of making a big batch and scenting them differently—super efficient but still customized 🙂
This sounds absolutely lovely and I’ll try making it today :)) IF I wanted this as a lotion in a pump bottle, could I just increase the water phase??
Kind of, but you’d want to re-balance the entire recipe; if you increase the water phase you need to decrease the oil phase to compensate for the difference.
Hey Marie,
Made this product and loved it. Only changes made were shea butter instead of mango, omitted essential oils, and omitted the fancy powder (that looks utterly magical, by the way, I definitely will pick it up eventually).
My problem with this lotion is that it does not readily absorb into my face. It kind of foams up first, sticks around like Halloween clown paint, and takes a lot of aggravated face-smooshing to eventually soak up and disappear. Not super ideal. I’m assuming this isn’t the case with your formulation… perhaps it was the shea butter instead of mango? Or the cetyl alcohol? Is there something that could have happened during the preparatory process to cause this that I can avoid next time?
Thanks
Samantha
Hey Samantha! Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
So, no, this didn’t happen to me, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such an experience with any lotion.
Could the foaming be an aggressive soaping effect? From my reading cetyl alcohol should decrease/eliminate the soaping effect, but I’ve definitely managed to have both (cetyl + soaping) with other formulas, though not to the extent you’re experiencing. You could try changing up your emulsifying wax—I know Olive1000 is pretty notorious for soaping. The inclusion of stearic acid is also said to exacerbate the effect; shea butter is 26-48% stearic acid, and mango butter is 30-45%, so I wouldn’t expect that swap to have any noticeable difference unless I had a super low stearic acid mango butter and you had a super high stearic acid shea butter… and even then, that might be a difference of 1% stearic acid in the end product.
I suspect the loss of the Penstia (which Windy Point now has—yay!) may have something to do with it as I’ve definitely found it helps make formulations feel less heavy.
I also wonder if all the film-forming humectants (aloe vera, silk, and panthenol) are contributing.
Anywho, I hope that semi-random spate of late hypothesizing was somewhat helpful, and sorry again for being so slow to get back to you!
Hi Marie!
Advice needed for the recipe. I made this with rose hip seed oil instead of evening primrose. Didn’t have penstia so I just increased the water per your instructions. This was for hubby he has dry, aging skin (we are old folks). When he used it initially he said it felt refreshing but then after about 10 minutes he said it felt plastic(y). Is there an adjustment I should make? Perhaps a different oil? Don’t have borage or black currant. But I do have a decent selection. Maybe switch out the butter. Got sal butter and babassu. LOL I’ve been learning from you for a while so I have a good inventory of different “stuff”.
Hmm, that is odd, and I can’t really think of anything that would make it feel plasticky, though perhaps your husband and I use that word differently? What e-wax did you use?
I made a 10X batch of this scented with rose absolute and gave it away as Christmas gifts. Everyone loves it! For me, after it dries, it has a really dry touch and is not greasy! I love it. Thanks for all your hard work developing this. Making lots of people happy and moisturized ;)!
Wow, now that’s a batch of lotion! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it and loved it so much you wanted to share 😀
I just made this! with some adjusting of course ~ but it’s so lovely. Thanks again for all your DIY-ing 😀
Yay, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me!
Hi Marie, Does the total amount of ingredients of this recipe add upto 106.5 grams as trying to work out how much preservative to use in your handy dandy caluator? thankyou
In my lotion recipes I increase the water part by 10% to account for loss in heat & hold; you’d be best off to weigh the end product before adding the preservative.
I made a slightly altered version of this based on my ingredients and I’m so far really liking it. I use it in the morning with a few drops of Winterlight Argan serum and then after all absorbs into my skin I apply a light application of my liquid foundation from the book. Set with a touch setting powder and it’s been just lovely! Great recipes and I can’t say enough how awesome you are! I’ve truly been having SO much fun!! 🙂 Thank you Marie!
Thanks so much Jamie, I’m so thrilled to hear it! Woo!
Hi Marie, thank you for the work you are doing here. I’m learning a lot through your videos and posts.
I made this lotion last night for it to be an aftershave for me and a face lotion for my wife. I didn’t use Panthenol, sodium lactate and Pentsia. I substituted these ingredients and used everything else as called in the recipe. I ended up with a nice, light lotion but noticed that it leaves a soft, silky, thin ‘film’ on your skin. You can continue to feel it after several minutes and the skin feels as if it was moist. Is this supposed to happen? Do you think it is due to the hydrolyzed silk? Thanks!
I suspect this may be a combination of the aloe vera and silk (both film forming humectants—panthenol is as well, but you didn’t use it) and the evening primrose oil (which is pretty heavy and slow to absorb). I can’t say I noticed it, but I do have a pretty detailed skin care routine with many steps, so my skin tends to feel pretty coated and moist post-routine anyways, so I’d assume that’s why. If you found it to be a bit odd I’d recommend saving this cream for nighttime wear 🙂 Hope that helps!
It does help. Through further tests I realized the silk peptides were mostly responsible for that (obviously) silky coat. Thanks for the input, Marie!
Interesting, thanks so much for sharing! I wonder what it is about this recipe that caused the silk to go into super film forming mode—at 1% they’re not used at a higher rate than I’d usually put in a lotion, but a couple people noticed the effect you did. Hmmmmmm.
So, I don’t know if this is a problem with just my cetyl alcohol or bad luck or what, but my cetyl alcohol (from Lotioncrafter) makes things so, so, thick, that it’s like, literally not rubbing in. Ditto with this one. Maybe it’s a, I dunno, scale problem, because I weighed too much out or something, but I’m feeling super confused and almost……scared about touching the cetyl alcohol, much less adding it into my lotion, now! Help!
I’d recommend doing the experiment I did here and seeing how your results line up with mine—that will give you an idea of what’s going on, and what sort of adjustments you might want to make 🙂
Okay, thanks! I will definitely look into that. Another thing- I think that I posted a similar question in your Lemon Chiffon hand and Body Lotion, so if you got that, no worries, and sorry!
Update: Okay, so, I’ve just finished the experiment you told me to do, and my results came out pretty similar to yours….what do I do now? Also, making lotion without cetyl alcohol has been very successful so far, so maybe I should just always leave it out? But…a lot of your recipes include cetyl alcohol, and I don’t want to constantly leave it out, especially since I do own cetyl alcohol. Arggh! ARRGHHHH! Maybe our cetyl alcohol suppliers are different (obviously, I live in California! ;)? So maybe I should include less cetyl alcohol, if at all? I’m just reeaaally wondering what to do here, and so far my solution- to just leave it out- is working fine but I don’t WANT TO LEAVE IT OUT ARRGHHH!!! *CALM DOWN CALM DOWN* *DEEP BREATH DEEEEEP BREATH*
okay, sorry for the rant. Love, Poppy!
Yay for experiments! Perhaps try halving the amount I use, replacing the other half with something else from the oil phase? Are you using Polawax or Emulsifying Wax NF as your e-wax? Olivem 1000 and Ritamulse SCG produce much thicker end products so if you’re using one of those it could be that instead. Hmm, weird!
OMG, that’s it! I am using Ritamulse SCG as my e-wax!!! Yahooo!! I’ll invest in some Polawax! Thanks so much/problem SOLVED!
I sure hope so! Keep me posted 🙂
Wait, one more question: Does BTMS-50 count as on the more ‘processed’ end of the spectrum, or the more ‘whole wheat’ end? Basically, will it produce a thicker end product?
I find BTMS-50 behaves more like Ritamulse in terms of thickening quickly even without high shear mixing, but it is not considered to be a natural product by most organizations that care about that sort of thing 🙂
Wow. Another question. Okay, so does Polawax generally take a long time to thicken uff or you? Meaning, does it take hours to thicken, or what? If so, are there any emulsifying waxes out there that A) are more at the processed end of the spectrum and provide thinner end products, and B) don’t take hours to emulsify?
If I don’t use high shear mixing, yes, it takes days to thicken up. It is emulsified, it just hasn’t thickened. The thickness of the end product is much more dependent on the formulation rather than the e-wax, though—I’ve used Polawax to create both thick and thin end products, but that viscosity is more a result of phase sizes and thickeners 🙂 I have a couple FAQ articles on making things thicker & thinner that I’d recommend reading for more information 🙂
Hi Marie,
Is it okay to substitute the hydrolyzed silk protein with hydrolyzed quinoa protein?
The quinoa protein is supposed to be added on pH 5-7, I was wondering if the recipe has the right pH for it….
That should work! I didn’t have a pH meter when I made this, but from experience, the pH should be in the range you need 🙂