If you love body-butter-esque creams, this one is for you. This Rosé Moisturizing Body Cream has a consistency that makes me want to dollop it on a big slice of pie, or perhaps eat it out of an artisanal waffle cone. It smells fantastic and is loaded with ingredients to hydrate, soothe, and keep skin moisturized for hours. My skin loves it. I can’t vouch for how it tastes, though.
Our water phase is mostly distilled water and fragrant rose hydrosol. This time I’m using the Bulgarian rose hydrosol from Plant’s Power; I love its rich, sweet, and slightly astringent/powdery scent. It pairs wonderfully with the other notes in our scent blend for that wonderful rosé-inspired scent blend. Up next, we’ve got some soothing and moisturizing panthenol, and propanediol for some fabulous humectant-y goodness.
I wanted this cream to be on the richer, thicker side, so our internal phase (the oil phase) is on the larger side at 25%. Combined with a good dose of soft-solid cupuacu butter and thickening cetearyl alcohol we’ve got a cream that dollops up like stiff whipped cream. Swoon. While it does leave the skin feeling richly moisturized and velvety, I don’t find it to be greasy. This will be partly because both camellia seed oil and cupuacu butter don’t have greasy skin feels, and partly because the Lipomoist™ 2036 helps products absorb faster.
Speaking of Lipomoist™ 2036 molecular film—it’s a new to me ingredient that Windy Point here in Calgary recently started carrying, so I picked up a small jar of it the last time I was in the store. It’s a slightly yellowish gelatinous blobby kind of substance with this INCI: Water, Xanthan Gum, Caprylyl Glycol, Phenoxyethanol, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Pectin, Proline, Serine, Arginine, Glucose, Butylene Glycol, Chondrus Crispus (Carrageenan) Extract, Ethylhexylglycerin. There are film-forming polysaccharides, amino acids & hydrolyzed proteins, and compounds with tightening/tensing/firming properties. It is said to help reduce trans epidermal water loss (TEWL), improve moisturization, and promote collagen production. According to data supplied by the manufacturer, Lipotec S.A.U., Lipomoist™ 2036 moisturizes marginally better than hyaluronic acid, and “the moisturizing effects of Lipomoist™ 2036 emulsions lasted for more than 6 hours.” It seemed like a fabulous addition to a rich, moisturizing body cream! Please refer to the substitutions list at the end of the formula if you don’t have it.
The resulting cream has a fabulously decadent texture; rich and whippy, reminiscent of body butter, but much lighter. It smells incredible and leaves skin feeling soft and hydrated for hours on end. I love slathering some on before bed, after taking a bath or shower—I always wake up with awesome feeling skin!
Rosé Moisturizing Body Cream
Heated water phase
26.375g | 26.38% distilled water
35g | 35% rose hydrosol
2g | 2% panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
3g | 3% Propanediol 1,3 (USA / Canada)Heated oil phase
6g | 6% Polawax (USA / Canada)
9g | 9% camellia seed oil
7g | 7% cupuacu butter (USA / Canada)
3g | 3% cetearyl alcohol (USA / Canada)Cool-down phase
7g | 7% Lipomoist™ 2036 (USA / Canada)
0.6g | 0.6% green cognac essential oil
0.4g | 0.4% lemon slices fragrance oil
0.125g | 0.13% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (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.
Weigh the heated water phase into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Weigh the entire lot (measuring cup + ingredients) and note that weight for use later. Weigh the heated oil phase 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 weigh it. Add enough hot distilled water to bring the weight back up to what it was before heating, and then pour the water part into the oil part. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.
Grab your immersion blender and begin blending the cream, starting with short bursts so the still-very-liquid cream 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 cream is thick and creamy.
When the cream is cool it’s time to incorporate our cool down ingredients. Because cool down ingredients are typically present at very low amounts you’ll need to use an accurate scale—preferably one accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights you won’t be able to put the entire batch of cream on that scale without blowing it out. So—grab a smaller dish. Add a scoop or two of cream, and then weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then stir all of that back into the master batch of cream. Doing it this way minimizes the amount of cool down ingredients lost to the secondary container.
With the cool down phase incorporated, you’re all done! Transfer the cream to your container; I used a 100mL (3.3fl oz) screw-top plastic jar from Yellow Bee. This cream is too thick for a pump-top bottle, but I think it would probably be ok in a squeeze tube and possibly an airless bottle that has a push-up bottom rather than a tube. To use, smooth over dry skin that could use a bit of extra love!
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.
- As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 100g.
- To learn more about the ingredients used in this recipe, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
- Read the encyclopedia entry for panthenol for substitution suggestions.
- You can use a different humectant instead of propanediol. You can try sodium lactate or vegetable glycerin, though you may find it to be a bit sticky. Sodium PCA would also be a good choice.
- You could replace the rose hydrosol with more water and use a bit of rose fragrance or essential oil for the rose note. I’d probably use 34.5% distilled water and 0.5% rose fragrance oil. If you want to use rose essential oil instead of the rose hydrosol, please keep in mind that the maximum usage rate for rose otto is 0.02%.
- You can use whatever lightweight, fast-absorbing carrier oils you have in place of the camellia seed oil.
- Another soft butter, like shea butter or mango butter, would work instead of cupuacu butter.
- You could try cetyl alcohol or stearic acid instead of cetearyl alcohol.
- To replace the Lipomoist™ 2036 I’d recommend trying a blend of hydrolyzed proteins, humectants, and xanthan gum to start with—probably 4% hydrolyzed rice protein, 2.9% humectant of choice, and 0.1% xanthan gum to total the 7% Lipomoist™ 2036 used in this formulation. If you have hyaluronic acid you could include that at 0.2% as part of the humectants. If you’ve made a 1% solution that will mean 20% of this formulation will be that 1% solution, with 19.8% coming out of the distilled water and 0.2% coming out of the humectants.
- You can use a different scent blend.
- If you’re like to use a different preservative, please review this page.
Gifting Disclosure
The cognac essential oil and rose hydrosol were gifted by Plant’s Power. The plastic jar was gifted by YellowBee.
I am just super stoked (happy dance) I can get the Lipomoist. If I were to use an essential oil like Lemon for the scent blend at what percentage would you recommend?
Woohoo! Pressed lemon essential oil is limited at 2%, so no more than that—I’d probably start at a straight swap for the lemon slices fragrance oil 🙂 Happy making!
Hi, this sounds fabulous! Seems I am always missing something, (and my cart of goodies is overflowing!) I don’t have the Lipomoist, and don’t have the Xanthan Gum, or even Hydroxyethylcellulose which is listed as a Gum substitute. Do you think I could just add some humectant and rice protein and add a little more cetearyl alcohol and be ok? I also have stearic acid and cetyl alcohol if either of those offer something more similar. Or other ideas?
I have a friend who loves anything rose, and I think this would make a lovely gift for her
Thank-you!
That should work, as long as you keep the phases and overall % in balance 🙂 It won’t be identical, of course, but as long as you’re aiming to replace moisturizer/humectant with more moisturizer/humectant and you’re following maximum/recommended usage rates, you should be pretty good 😀 Happy making!
Okay I think I am in total love with this. I just can’t stop sniffing my arm. Weird I know! This I think will be used up super fast. Soaks in like a dream, non greasy and deliciously creamy. Winner! ❤️ Going to experiment with some other scent combos.
Oh my goodness, yay! I’m so thrilled you’re loving it 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making!
I know that this is a thicker cream. But I’m wondering , can the oil phase be greater than the water phase please ? For instance. If the water phase is 70% and oil 30%, can it be oil let’s say 60% and water 40%?
You’d have to completely re-develop the formulation if you want to make a change that substantial 🙂
I have a question about Polawax. It works reliably at 20–25% of your oil phase.
Do you calculate only oils in oil phase: 9% camellia seed oil +7% cupuacu butter = 16 (so can I use 4 % Polawax to be 25% of my oil phase)
or with thickener: 9% camellia seed oil + 7% cupuacu butter+ 3% cetearyl alcohol =19% to (use 4,75 % Polawax to work at 25%)?
Thank you
Cetearyl alcohol and other fatty thickeners/emollients are part of the oil phase, so option #2 🙂
Hi Marie:
This looks like a lovely formula.
I have a question on the substitution of Lipomoist….I understand the first part, which adds up to the 7% of Lipomoist:
“To replace the Lipomoist™ 2036 I’d recommend trying a blend of hydrolyzed proteins, humectants, and xanthan gum to start with—probably 4% hydrolyzed rice protein, 2.5% humectant of choice, and 0.5% xanthan gum to total the 7% Lipomoist™ 2036 used in this formulation.”
I have a 1% solution of hyaluronic acid and I would love to use it for part of the 2.5% humectant, but I don’t understand the second part of the substitution, as it sounds like most of the water is being replaced:
“If you have hyaluronic acid you could include that at 0.2% as part of the humectants. If you’ve made a 1% solution that will mean 20% of this formulation will be that 1% solution, with 19.8% coming out of the distilled water and 0.2% coming out of the humectants.”
Can you clarify this for my little brain?
Thank you so much!
I don’t follow the substitution for using 1% hyaluronic acid solution either. Can you clarify?
Hi Sly,
From what I see from LotionCrafters website on Lipomoist, it is a gel type product based on the INCI. Most hydrolysed proteins are a straight up liquid. So to get the same consistency in your final product, you’d have to make these liquid proteins thicker. If you are making your own hyaluronic acid , you’ve made a 1% hyaluronic acid solution as usually making anything more than this results in a tacky and pilly product.
Does that explain it better?
Barb
Hello Barb and Marie,
As good as you explained for Sly, my mind is still confused considering the final substitution for Lipomoist (I don’t have this ingredient available to buy anywhere close to me).
From what I understood, I can replace 7g of Lipomoist with 4g silk protein ( INCI aqua and silk amino acids – the only i can get my hands on), 0.5g xanthan gum and 2.5g humectant.
The 2.5g humectants could be – 0.2g 1% Hyaluronic acid solution + 1.3g Betaine+ 1g Urea (for example) ?
Or
I can replace the 2.5g humectant with 2.5g 1% Hyaluronic acid solution, and that’s all?
I am a bit confused and would love to understand the idea,
Thank you,
Lavinia
Hello Marie
Thanks for all your hard work – appreciated 🙂
Can you pls tell me why u added water to oil, when this is O/W emulsion (if looking at the formula percentages)?
Just trying to understand…
tx
You’re operating on two incorrect assumptions here—this blog post will help clear things up 🙂 Happy making!
Hi Marie!
I made the Lipomoist substitution as listed at the end of the recipe as follows:
4% hydrolyzed rice protein – used 4% silk peptides
2.5% humectant of choice – used 2.5% glycerin
0.5% xanthan gum – used xanthan gum.
However, when mixed into the base mixture the consistency got really…snotty. Should I have mixed the xanthan gum into the water phase? Or if you mix the xanthan gum too much is this just a thing that can happen and you have to be careful? To be clear, this is my first time using xanthan gum in a bath and body recipe. Before this I’ve only used it in gluten free baked goods and stir fry as a low-carb cornstarch substitute. 😀
That sounds like too much xanthan gum—I know it’s what I suggested, but I don’t (and can’t) try all the different variations/suggestions/substitutions—I can really only vouch for as-made. I’d probably try 0.1% or 0.2% xanthan rather than 0.5% in the future given your experience 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making!
Thank you! Next time I make it I will try the lower percentage of xanthan gum. The first time I made it I subbed that 7% Lipomoist for straight up from the bottle aloe vera gel (the kind sold for sunburn relief) and attempt at making a hybrid version of your rose aloe cream. It came out pretty well, but a bit tacky. Made a good nighttime hand cream or back-of-the-hands-only hand cream during the day. 😉
I have to agree with the person asking about the 1% hyaluronic acid solution is 20% of the water. I am stuck also and just have to see the math at each step. When I use the 1% solution in my formula, I use it at 20%. I don’t know if that is right or not. And, I am making sure the final percentages all add up to 100%.
I don’t know if that made any sense. I just can’t do the math of how it’s 20% of your formula. Thanks!