I might as well own up to it and declare my solemn love for cleansing oils. We have moved past the crush stage and into a stable, long-term relationship. I love how gentle (yet effective!) they are—they leave my skin feeling delightfully clean without feeling hardcore stripped dry and sad. I also love how they’re crazy easy to make (melt, stir, done!) and customize. I’m on a bit of a green tea extract kick right now (lotion down, more goodies to come!), so I decided to whip up a fragrant, antioxidant packed cleansing lotion when I ran out of my last bottle.
So, what makes an oil a cleansing oil? Basically, it has some added oil-soluble emulsifiers. Emulsifiers are surfactants, but the ones we’re using here don’t lather up into the fluffy bubbles you might think of when you think about surfactants. These emulsifiers allow us to easily combine the oil cleanser with the water we’re washing our faces with. The oil and the oil-loving end of the emulsifiers will dissolve the gunk on our face, and the water-loving end of the emulsifiers will carry it all down the drain all nice and non-greasy like. This gives us an effective cleanser with a clean rinse-off—double win!
Since oil cleansers are water-activated at the point of use, we can do something neat we don’t usually do with anhydrous projects—we can include water soluble powders (the inclusion of a solid emulsifier helps keep them in suspension, too). These things would be gritty and unpleasant in something like a massage oil or a body butter, but since we add water to our cleansing oil at the instant of use they get a chance to dissolve before use, which I think it pretty lovely. This time around I chose silk (a wonderful humectant for the skin) and green tea extract (antioxidants, baby!).
If you don’t have green tea extract this is probably an ok project to try using something like matcha tea in as it won’t be exposed to water until the moment of use, so we aren’t worry about food tea rapidly oxidizing and becoming effectively useless. This is mostly hypothesis, though—I’m not sure how I’d go about measuring the oxidization rate to know for sure!
I’ve been trying some Asian beauty principles over the last couple months, and one of them is double cleansing. That is, you wash your face once with an oil cleanser, and then again with a gentle foaming cleanser. Many parts of an Asian beauty skin care routine are pretty inaccessible to the home DIYer (snail slime, anyone!?), but these first two steps are definitely very DIY-able. And best of all, my skin loves them! I’ve noticed some utterly amazeballs improvements to my skin in the last few months, and while double cleansing isn’t the only change I’ve made, it’s definitely a positive one I won’t be moving away from anytime soon (yes, I will share those other things soon—when I know what’s worth sharing!). I’d really encourage you to give it a try! I’ll be sharing a matching green tea foaming facial cleanser in the next couple weeks, but in the meantime, this one is also lovely.
So, a quick recap: gentle facial cleanser that’s a snap to make, and works like a dream. Sounds like you should make some, eh? 😉
Green Tea Cleansing Oil
10g | 0.35oz BTMS-50 (USA / Canada) or other complete emulsifying wax (not beeswax!)
20g | 0.7oz Olivem 300 (USA / Canada) or Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada) (NOT olivem1000!)
52g | 1.83oz grapeseed oil
15g | 0.53oz castor oil (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 5 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)1g | 0.03oz hydrolyzed silk (USA / Canada) (wondering about substitutions?)
1g | 0.03oz powdered green tea extract5 drops palmarosa essential oil
5 drops litsea cubeba essential oil
2 drops geranium essential oil
2 drops frankincense essential oilPrepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a small saucepan.
Weigh the BTMS-50, olivem300, grapeseed oil, castor oil, and vitamin E into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
While the oils melt together, stir the silk and green tea extract together in a small dish.
Once everything has melted, remove the measuring cup from the heat and dry the outside of it off with a dish towel. Set the measuring cup on a towel or hot pad to insulate it from the counter and stir the mixture with a flexible silicone spatula to combine everything. Pour a small amount (~15mL/1 tbsp or less) of the liquid mixture into the silk/green tea mixture and stir to combine. I find doing this results in less clumps. Once you’ve got a relatively uniform mixture, add that back to the rest of the oils and stir to combine.
Leave the melted mixture to cool for 20–30 minutes before stirring in the essential oils, and then decant into a 120mL/4oz plastic pump-top bottle or a 120ml/4oz squeeze bottle. That’s it!
To use, take a nickel-sized amount of the cleanser into your palm and combine it with a bit of warm water. Massage it into your face and wipe it off with a damp cloth. Follow up with the rest of your skincare routine.
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this cleanser does not contain any water, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Be sure to keep it dry to ensure it lasts as long as possible—don’t let any water get into the container and it should easily last a year.
If you have liquid green tea extract instead of powdered you can use it, but you will need to add a broad-spectrum preservative like Liquid Germall Plus to the entire cleanser formula as liquid extracts contain water. Drop 0.5g from the grapeseed oil to make room for the Liquid Germall Plus at the recommended 0.5% usage rate.
My green tea extract is oil soluble (from Brambleberry) so I’m assuming no preservative is needed!?!? I think the usage rate is 0.5-2% so I’m planning on using the full 2% as it’s not as concentrated as the powder extract (it’s diluted is fractionated coconut oil.) Making this as soon as I can! Thanks and happy Thursday!
Lucky you! Enjoy 😀
Yay for more green tea goodies! I’m going to make a set of all these lovelies for me and my daughters-in-law and granddaughter! And……so far, I have all the ingredients!
Meanwhile, I’m over here waiting to see what other green tea goodness is coming our way……
Thank you for all these fun, usable, treasures.
Yay! I’m glad you’re enjoying this tea-soaked ride 🙂 I’m thinking I may do more themed batches of recipes ’cause they’re so much fun!
I love themes! Like a lot!
Anyway, I finally got around to making this and the green tea face cream! I love both! Like a lot! Thank you so much and I can’t wait for more Green Tea unveiling.
Tomorrow’s the last of ’em 😉
Hi! I tried making this but after cooling for awhile, it separates into a bilayer type of look whereby the top is a clear oil layer and the bottom a milky layer. When I shake it it becomes uniform, but milky and not clear/translucent. I am assuming this milky layer is from the e-wax, but I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong!
It could just be as simple as the ambient temperature being a bit cool—don’t worry about it, just shake + go 🙂 In the future, you might prefer a formulation like this one, which doesn’t contain anything solid + shouldn’t do that in any temperature.
this sounds just lovely! A couple questions? 🙂 Can a person use another oil other than grapeseed, like maybe argan or maracuja oil? And are the essential oils just for fragrance, or are they active ingredients also?
Thank you SO much for this recipe – I am really eager to try this one out, since I love cleansing oils, but not really keen on the cost of them! 😀
Yes! I looked at the recipe now.
You can switch up the oils, but why would you want to use argan or another expensive oil in a wash off?
Because I have it and don’t have grapeseed oil, and unless you pay for Josie Marans brand it’s not that expensive. Also grapeseed oil is more astringent than argan, and since I don’t have oily skin, I’d prefer to use something more suited to my skin type.
Hey! You definitely can use another oil, but keep it cheap! Something like olive, sunflower, safflower, sweet almond, canola, etc. No need to pour an oil that 15x the cost of grapeseed down the drain just because you already have it… that’s sort of like painting in your formal wear rather than getting some cheap painting clothes because you already have the formal wear! You can also switch up the EOs.
Hahahaha!! That’s funny. 🙂 Thanks – I do have some cheaper oils and I’ll try those out rather than wash my argan oil down the tube….
All that really matters here is that it’s a lipid, so choose something cheap—I often use cleansing oils as a way to motor through inexpensive oils that are reaching the end of their shelf lives!
Is it possible to use macha green tea as a replacement for green tea extract?
If you don’t have green tea extract this is probably an ok project to try using something like matcha tea in as it won’t be exposed to water until the moment of use, so we aren’t worry about food tea rapidly oxidizing and becoming effectively useless. This is mostly hypothesis, though—I’m not sure how I’d go about measuring the oxidization rate to know for sure!
Oh sweet lord!!!! You mean you can actually tell me what snail slime is all about???? I have seen it for years on Taobao with pictures of snails and slime going on but just gave it a wide birth as snails??? Oh and then there is quite literally a snake oil I am told I must try. Thank you for the Asian Beauty link! I shall be looking into it!
I have to admit, I haven’t looked at the recipe yet!
Well, I don’t think I can, per say, but you should check out /r/AsianBeauty. They love the stuff over there! I think it’s soothing? Or magical? Or perhaps an excellent badge of bravery?
Well, next time someone is going straight into Canada, I’ll be sure to send you some for the snail stuff. They also have snake oil. At first I thought it was a joke you know, those old tinkering salesmen selling random cures turned out only to be snake oil or something like that? Snake oil it seems to be pretty popular here too!
Ooooh! So… I ordered two things of finished skin care whatsits with snail slime in it to see. For testing/science. Or at least that’s what I’ll tell my accountant when I file it as a business expense LOL I shall report back! I have not seen anything with snake oil, but I’m intrigued!
Regarding the snail stuff: I would be keen to know how it works! If I find no one heading to Canada direct, when I’m in Europe in the Fall I’ll send it from there. Mucho cheapero!
Ok, my stuff arrived. I got this and this. Haven’t tried either yet, but I’m excited to wash my face tonight and get into ’em!
Hi! Do you have a post on shelf life/stability testing? How does one do this if they’re looking to sell their products? Wondering if you had any info on this. Thank you!!
I don’t, but generally I’d say step 1 would be make it and leave it for at least a year, and seeing how that does, and step 2 would be hiring a lab to further abuse that formula 🙂
There are a few labs that do stability testing in the EU. One of the safety assessors was telling me it will cost approximately 120(I cannot find the Euros button on my keyboard), for one water based product to go through it’s full battery of tests if you’ve made your own product. The price is much cheaper if you use a premade lotion from a supplier (if you go through their assessor).
There are a few facebook groups that are EU specific that discuss this topic, if you are interested.
Hopefully this will help a little too!
I will definitely be making this. I made the last one you posted with lime and mint and I absolutely love it. I haven’t found the need to wash with something sudsy after, as my skin tends to be fairly dry, but I was wondering about turning part of a batch into something with with a mild exfoliant in it.
Hmm… you definitely could add an exfoliant, but my concern would be it settling out, so you’d likely need to tip the balance of the emulsifier more towards the e-wax, and perhaps incorporate some cetyl alcohol or stearic acid to thicken things up. Hmmmm.
I have to say its been awhile since I’ve been on your blog but i want to say how proud I am to see you growing your website keep up the hard work!!! I can’t wait to see what you do next!
Thanks, Brooke! How’s that bread going? 🙂
Thank you Marie as always! Just a quick question regarding swapping oils. Do any lipids do same degree of cleansing when it comes to removing make-ups and etc? Or, are there some lipids which do better job at removing dirt on our face? Hope my question makes sense! 🙂
And, another question about liquid green tea extract. When I got my order, I found out it is in liquid form. Can I use same 1g for liquid green tea extract? I don’t see any label about concentration…etc. Also, since the liquid one already contains water when manufacturing, wouldn’t it also contain some form of preservative in it? And, if there is no extra water added (other than the water already in the extract bottle), do we still need extra preservative?
Thank you.
Hey Grace! All we’re really concerned about is the fact that it’s a lipid—even mineral oil will work. Like dissolves like, so the lipids in the oil dissolve the lipids on our faces. Just choose something cheap that your skin likes ’cause it may not work as well if you are crying every time you was $4 of cleansing oil down the drain
You can use that extract, but you will still need more preservative. Once there’s water in there it isn’t about how much water, but the size of the batch overall. That preservative is designed to work at a certain percentage, and you’ll be diluting that about 100x, rendering it completely useless.
Happy making!
Snail stuff….
Once things have settled here, I shall be buying the 10mL of snail goo in my cart. Because no snails were hurt in the making of said gooeness, is this vegan? Vegetarian? Is my skin a carnivore? Is your skin now carnivorous? This just raises way too many questions.
From what I understand they acquire the snail goo via a sort of snail spa, so I guess I’d call it vegetarian, sort of like wool? Nobody died, but it’s still an animal product? So far I think my skin likes it, but it’s been two days, so I can’t really say anything for sure.
Snort! Snail spa!!!! Once I get mine, I’ll start a thread with pictures in The Hive. I’m not allowed to make any fun orders until the end of the month. So sad.
Ahahahaha I look forward to it!
gahhh,, after a week the oils separated 🙁 Why? its now a thick goop with an oil slick on top.
The ingredients have different densities, and if you live somewhere warmer than I do (very likely), the mixture will thin, meaning things will start to settle. It’s not a failure my any means—just shake before use!
Mine too, less than hour. I use liquid green tea extract. And yes, I live in warmer, even hot place. I hope there is solution for this case because I love the feeling when this cleansing oil touched my skin. Thank you, Marie
Found the solution of this. I mixed the cooled down phase under 40 celcius degrees. No more seperation. But, I found new problem. I’ve made 3 recipe but I lost about 20% weight at final result. How could this happen?
20% is a pretty large margin of error; is it possible this is a taring mistake? It’s not like you can lose anything to evaporation here.
Separation isn’t an indication of failure or it being unsafe to use in this case—simply shake before use 🙂
So first of all this kicks blackhead butt!!!!!! Second of all, This is the best brush cleaner I have ever come across!
So cool! I’ve been using my assorted foaming facial cleansers to clean my brushes lately, but I should give a cleansing oil a try, too!
I don’t have available Olivem 300 is Polysorbate 80 100% safe for facial products? Polysorbate 80’s MSDS lists eye irritation as a hazard. Is there a more friendly substitution?
Anything (excepting carefully formulated baby products) that cleanses your face effectively will not feel good in your eyes—think about soap, shampoo, a scrub—not eyeball friendly! It doesn’t make them unsafe, just keep it out of your eyes as you would with any kind of cleanser. It’s also worth keeping in mind that MSDS sheets are always talking about ingredients in their pure forms, and we’re only using it at about 20% here.
Hi Marie,
How come my silk and green tea powder don’t mix with the oil? they sink to the bottom after i add them in.
I think I got it!! I use a hand held blander to bland it after about half an hour. It looks milky but even.
Thank Marie for this wonderful recipe!! XO
I’m going to try using it now!!
Serina 🙂
Whoohoo! Happy making 🙂
Because they are not oil soluble, they’re water soluble. This is covered a bit in the third paragraph 🙂
Can’t wait to try this! Could I substitute BTMS 25 instead of the 50?
Yup, that should work here 🙂
Any idea whether the film BTMS creates is occlusive? My rosacea flares at ingredients that are too occlusive, like dimethicone, petrolatum etc. I’m trying to keep to oils safe for seb derm, but I’m allergic to MCT and squalane is too precious to wash down the drain! So, I want to create a cleansing oil with mineral oil––I feel like water (even with a microfiber “miracle blah blah” cloth) is not removing makeup well enough. Do you think the BTMS or other complete emulsifying wax plus the polysorbate 80 will be enough micellar action to wash away mineral oil? Because, of course, it’s a little occlusive for my whiny snowflake of a face!And… I’m guessing the polysorbate will wash off enough not to contribute to the seb derm? Aaagggghhhhhh! Sorry for so many questions!
I don’t believe BTMS it is considered to be occlusive, but it is one of those things I wouldn’t put in a cleansing oil if I had a different e-wax as it’s one of the pricier ones. Mineral oil + polysorbate 80 alone should do the trick if you’re worried about e-waxes—I’d probably start with 10% poly 80 and see how that goes 🙂
Thank you!
Hi Marie, your work is awesome!
I’m trying to create a cleansing oil with ingridients I have at home.
I do not want to use Polysorbate 80.
Instead of the BTMS-50 and the Olivem 300, can i use just one emulsifier?
I have Prolix.
It is made out of vegetable glycerin and fatty acids from rice bran oil.
Thank you!
I’ve never used PROLIX®RB; it looks like it should work, but I can’t say for sure without having tried it 🙂
I made this for my daughter who suffers from acne. She has sensitive skin that is sometimes dry. She was skeptical at first about using all oils on her face. Once she tried she reported to me that she absolutely loves it. She also loves the Houdini anti acne cream that I made for her. Thank you . I hope that it works for her.
Hi Marie, love your blog, I just have a question can I add some wild turmeric as well as the powdered green tea extract to this formula?
Thanks
You can try it if they’re completely dry, but they will almost certainly settle out over time. Please read this for more info 🙂 Happy making!
Hello Marie!
I wanted to tell you I just made this face wash, and it’s amazing! So soft, and I just love how it turns creamy with a small amount of water in the palm of your hand. I didn’t have any silk, and read it didn’t really matter, so I used 2g of the green tea powder extract. It’s sort of thick, but pumps out fine. I’m slowly making all my own face stuff, and I want to thanks you for all your hard work. Your recipes are super fantastic