CE and ferulic serum

Hey look, I'm like officially a "natural beauty" blogger now that I have a DIY vitamin C serum post! Ew, I feel so dirty even typing that.

<misanthropic rant>For the love of dog, please do not follow the vast majority of DIY vitamin C serum recipes out there. I'm pretty sure this one (No! Adding vitamin E will NOT adjust the pH of your serum! It just makes my skin crawl... and the many others like it...) is why this "why not to DIY vitamin C serum" blog post also exists. The why-not-to article has salient points. Lots of them. And considering the intelligence of the average person, and the fact that a full 50% of all people are even stupider than that, probably most people shouldn't DIY a vitamin C serum... or anything else for that matter, except maybe feeding and dressing themselves... and we all know how well they do that...</misanthropic rant>

Here's a good DIY tutorial, for those of you who have at least half a brain, understand concepts like solubility, pH, the need for preservatives, and sanitary manufacturing processes. I used her simpler 8-ingredient recipe, due to not having much of the stuff needed for the complicated one.

I will admit I substituted tocopheryl acetate for tocopherol as the vitamin E because that is what I have. I know full well that tocopheryl acetate is not as good an antioxidant as tocopherol, but I also know that it is a good moisturizer, that the ferulic acid will help stabilize the vitamin C too, and that when the serum turns orange it is time to throw it out because it has oxidized and is no longer effective. I also substituted liquid Germall Plus for the Optiphen Holy Snails recommends (and adjusted the water accordingly), since my face doesn't like Optiphen.

The instructions for putting it all together are in Part 2 of the tutorial; there are links at the top of the post.

Anyway, I had to warm it a bit to get the polysorbate-80 to dissolve, in addition to warming the propylene glycol and ferulic acid to get the FA to dissolve. My pH tested at about 3.5, which is fine.

Frankly, I don't like how it came out. It is mad sticky. It also itches and tingles like crazy on my skin to the point where I had to wash it off. Bear in mind that I have quite sensitive skin, but geez, no one would want that sticky, shiny mess on their face. Maybe that is another reason not to DIY vitamin C serums. I may try this again with PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil as the solubilizer for the vitamin E in the hopes that it will be less sticky, and less L-ascorbic acid to hopefully rein in the itch-and-tingle, but we'll see.