Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Rosewater, glycerin, and shea cream

Wow, I actually had time to do a little alchemy last night! It feels like it has been forever!

I've been itching to use some of the floral water I bought a few weeks ago, and since I have about a million trial batches of micellar water on the go I couldn't excuse making more of that (although it will be a future project), so I made a cream! I thought the rosewater would add a nice light fragrance without including a fragrance or essential oil.

I used a very similar recipe to the one I used for my mom's shea and avocado cream, but I swapped the avocado oil for sweet almond, and replaced half of the water with rosewater. I also used liquid Germall Plus to preserve it instead of sodium benzoate/potassium sorbate.

I used emulsifying wax NF to hold the phases together. It has quite a high oil content, with 10% shea butter and 15% sweet almond oil, so it is quite greasy going on, but it is all absorbed on my hands (the main area I plan to use it) within about 30 minutes and the after-feel is soft and a little powdery. I quite like it; I knew I would because I liked the stuff I made for my mom! It is actually quite nice on the feet; once the initial greasiness has absorbed, it doesn't leave me with that wet-foot feeling I get from a lot of lotions (looking at you, Body Shop body butter...).

The only change I think I would make in an ideal world would be to either use more rosewater, or use a refined, deodorized shea butter, because I would like it to smell a bit more rosy and a bit less like unrefined shea butter!

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