I’ve had quite a few requests for this popular rose serum over the years. I think Karen’s was the first, back in 2014, but it certainly hasn’t been the last. The original looks utterly lovely; a blend of fantastic carrier oils like pomegranate and baobab, with rose, lavender, and chamomile. All excellent things. But… I can never leave well enough alone, and with a brand new bottle of moringa oil burning a hole in my pantry, I (unsurprisingly) veered off on my own.
My moringa experience started earlier this year with a bag of moringa powder and a face mask, and I was finally able to try some of the oil when I found it at Swanson’s. Moringa oil is pressed from the the kernel of the moringa seed. It’s rich in antioxidants and vitamins A, C, and E (ace!), and it feels wonderfully rich and smooth on the skin, absorbing quickly to leave your skin feeling silky smooth. It has a lovely sweet nutty scent that’s reminiscent of almond butter—I love it. It would be a great addition to anything that you want to smell nutty, and without actually including any nut products!
Out next awesome-for-skin oil is sea buckthorn seed oil. You can purchase sea buckthorn seed oil that’s been pressed from the seeds and from the fruit, and while they are fairly similar, there are a few differences. The most obvious one is that the seed variety is significantly less orange than the fruit stuff, greatly reducing the oompa-loompa effect of everything it’s used in (a definite bonus in my opinion).
The seed oil is rich in linoleic and alpha linoleic fatty acids, which are great for troublesome skin (acne & eczema in particular) and help boost healing and cell repair. The fruit oil is rich(er) in carotene (hence it’s very vibrant oompa-loompa hue), and is also beneficial for acne-prone skin, helping boost healing and hydration. Both are great for the skin, but with the pylon-like effect of the fruit oil, if you want to use as much of it in a serum as we are here… you’re going to want the seed oil. If you’ve already got the fruit oil you can use it, but I would halve the amount and make it up with more jojoba oil (USA / Canada) to avoid dying yourself orange. (Psst… you can also enter to win some sea buckthorn seed and moringa oils!)
I included jojoba for its excellent hydration abilities (it closely mimics the sebum our skin produces), and so we had an oil in the mix that doesn’t smell like much. Both moringa and sea buckthorn seed oil have fairly strong, nutty scents, so I wanted to dial that back with a milder oil. A touch of fragrant rose wax brings the rose scent—make sure you keep yours well sealed! I found mine had lost its scent from a hole in the bag, so I had to move onto my backup batch. Some soothing chamomile, calming lavender, and bright cardamom round out the scent blend.
And all in all, this lovely selection of precious oils gives us a fantastic serum. It’s a bit cloudy in the bottle, and smells wonderful. A few drops glide over the skin beautifully, leaving my skin feeling fantastic. After a day or two or use I noticed some stubborn blemishes were quickly fading into the sunset. I’m really enjoying this Moringa Rose Serum as autumn sets in, and I think you will, too.
Moringa Rose Serum
9g | 0.32oz moringa oil
6g | 0.21oz sea buckthorn seed oil
5g | 0.17oz jojoba oil (USA / Canada)
1g rose wax or 20 drops diluted rose absolute
6 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)8 drops chamomile essential oil
12 drops lavender essential oil
20 drops cardamom essential oilPrepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer in a small saucepan. The water should just be steaming hot, with a few small bubbles; it shouldn’t be jumping around at all.
Weigh the moringa oil, jojoba oil (USA / Canada), sea buckthorn seed oil, rose wax, and Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada) out into a 30mL/1oz glass bottle that has a dropper top. Cap the bottle and place it in the water bath. Check it every five minutes or so, turning the bottle to stir everything around, until you can see that the rose wax has melted (hold the bottle up to a light source to see if you can still see any solid bits).
Once the rose wax has melted, remove the bottle from the heat, dry it off, and leave it to cool.
When the serum has cooled to room temperature, add the rest of the essential oils.
If you’re using rose absolute you can skip the water bath step—just combine everything in the bottle, cap, shake, and you’re done!
Finally I have all the ingredients to make this as I patiently wait for Kaolin Clay to arrive :). I am wondering what you would recommend if I don’t have the chamomile oil. I don’t particularly want to buy it as I have a plethora of other oils to choose from. My nose isn’t the smartest for figuring out what goes together. Thanks 🙂
Hmm. Well, this one smells pretty nutty from the blends of essential oils, so benzoin would probably be nice in a sort of nutty-vanilla kind of way 🙂
So I tried helichrysum and geranium, 4 drops of each. I have set it aside to meld, I’ll have to let you know what I think when I use it 🙂 I put this note here more for my own reference for next time 😉
Ooh, lovely! I look forward to hearing what you think 🙂
Hi Marie
Do you think swapping jojoba oil for plant derived squalane (The Ordinary) will work?
Yup, though I would source a less expensive version 🙂
Hi Marie
Do you think this serum would be good with the sea buckthorn and jojoba oils being replaced entirely with moringa oil?
I also posted this comment at your other moringa recipe …
I have pressed my own moringa oil so have loads of this lovely stuff! I would really like to make a rich night cream and a light body lotion with it. Can you recommend recipes (or make us some new ones!) that will work with moringa as the primary oil please.
And also, please can you add it to your extremely useful charts of what can be substituted for what.
Many thanks and best regards
Lynn
Well, that sort of defeats the point lol. That’s like making a BLT and replacing the lettuce and tomato with more bacon haha. You’d just be putting straight moringa oil on your face, which is fine, but you aren’t making this recipe anymore.
Also, no need to double submit questions—I get them all at pretty much the same time and I have a stack of your moringa question in the back end, sitting on top of each other 😛
Could you please explain how to break these weights down into the percentages for this formulation? I’m having a hard time finding information on how to do this.
I’ve got a whole post on that here 🙂
HI Marie, I found that rose wax is not soluble in oil, it will separate. I had better luck diluting with polysorbate and/or using an emulsifier.
Hmm—where is yours from? I’ve worked with rose wax from two different suppliers and I’ve never had any issues with it blending with oils.
We have many organic rose bushes on our property and also climbing all over the farm house. I harvest thousands upon thousands of rose petals. I made some rose wax with a grain solvent. I used hundreds of roses for the process and made one tablespoon of very potent, thick rose wax. I tried to dilute it with Jojoba oil and it separated. It does dilute when I use an emulsifier or with Candelilla wax. I also make rose petal powder I use in soap, whipped soap, scrubs and clay masks. Smells so heavenly. Hmmm, I wonder if my rose wax would be considered Rose concrete?
That is so cool! I’m afraid I really don’t know enough about plant extracts to say, but I bet LisaLise would! I know she’s also a rose fanatic 😀
Hi which rose wax suppliers have you used and which did you prefer?
I’ve only purchased rose wax from two places over the years; the stuff I have is currently from Dr Adorable and I quite like it! I would not recommend the other supplier I tried.
Hi I purchased some rose wax from Dr adorable. I heated it up as instructed but once it cooled down the mixture is cloudy. Do you have any ideas why and how I can fix this. Otherwise, I had no issues with the formula itself it’s great!
Moringa oil is pretty prone to going cloudy and dropping sediment—I just checked my bottle and it has probably 7mm of sediment at the bottom of the 100mL (3.3fl oz) bottle (I haven’t used it or agitated it in several months). Storing it somewhere warmer will help reduce this, but I suspect you’d see some degree of clouding/settling under most “room temperature” type conditions. You didn’t do anything wrong at all 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making!
Hey! Can we replace the Sea Bucthorn with Carrot Seed Oil?
Technically yes, but watch for the smell of carrot seed oil. I find it to be really strong and likely wouldn’t use a product that uses that much of it close to my nose!
Can I make this in a clear glass dropper bottle , or should it be blue or the brown dropper bottles ?
The darker the glass, the slower it will oxidize. You can use any colour of glass you want, but keep that in mind 🙂
Is there an alternative to rose wax? Beeswax?
The base oil blend alone smells lovely – slightly sweet and nutty with a hint of rose, and it feels wonderful on my face! Afraid I might not love it as much after adding the additional oils, I blended them separately to test the fragrance. I didn’t care for the scent so I left them out. I might reconsider using just the lavender and cardamom at a much lower usage rate, but they’re really not needed.