The base of the cleansing balm is cheap and readily available oils – coconut and castor. There is no need to buy expensive luxury oils for the production of cleansing balms, oils and similar preparations that meet the skin for only a few seconds before being flushed into the sink. All we want for an oil in a cleansing balm is for it to be an oil. :) That's why we always go for the cheaper ones or the ones that are about to expire and we know we won't be able to use them. We keep the more expensive or rare oils in the compositions, where they can really shine!
We conjure up an oil balm with the help of richly creamy stearic acid and unsurpassed cocoa butter with a delicate chocolate scent. The combination of emulsifying wax NF, i.e. a complete emulsifier (what is it?) and Polysorbate 80, a great solubilizer based on olive oil, ensures that the balm mixes easily and simply with water and is rinsed from the skin in a few seconds. Thanks to them, the needlessly lengthy washing off of the product is eliminated - and we all know that every second counts in the morning! In any case, you can play with the proportions of these two ingredients and adjust the consistency and abilities of the balm that your heart and skin desire (or you can use only one of them or replace them with the ingredients that you will find at the end of the article). With a smaller amount, the balm will be gentler and will wash off more slowly, with a larger amount, you will achieve a thicker, richer and stronger balm that will wash off faster.
Pink (or other) clay cleans the skin in a very gentle way, removing the "mess" accumulated overnight. In addition, pink clay has regenerative effects and is suitable for all skin types, even very sensitive skin prone to redness. gentle, rich in trace elements, beneficial to our skin, and silica and iron oxide.
Pink clay is enough "dye" for our balm, but if you like to play with colors, like us, you can embellish the balm with a little mica powder. We chose the shade Sangria, which reminds us of ripe cherries, blossoming trees and the joys of summer, and which goes well with the chocolate hint of cocoa butter and the cherry scent created by a drop of cherry cosmetic fragrance. You can completely omit the mica powder, as well as the cherry scent, or replace them with other colors and scents that you like better. Play it!
What does it take?
Warming up
- 12 grams of coconut oil
- 6 grams of cocoa butter
- 3 grams of castor oil
- 4 grams of stearic acid
- 2 grams of emulsifying wax NF
- 1.5 grams of Polysorbate 80
- 1 gram of pink clay
Cooling down
- 4 drops of cherry fragrance
- 1 drop of vitamin E
- A few drops of Cosgard preservative (can be omitted, but*)
- A pinch of Sangria mica powder (optional)
How to do it?
Let's prepare a water bath - pour about 3 cm of water into the pot and let it heat on a low flame.
We weigh all the ingredients that we will heat into a smaller heat-resistant bowl - emulsifying wax, Polysorbate 80, stearic acid, coconut and castor oil, cocoa butter and pink clay. Then we slide the bowl into the prepared water bath and let everything dissolve slowly.
In the meantime, prepare an ice bath - fill a larger bowl, which can easily fit a bowl with heated ingredients, about halfway with ice and cold water.
After about 10 to 20 minutes, all the heated ingredients should be nicely melted and combined. We remove the bowl with them from the water phase, dry it and mix its contents well.
Then we slide the bowl into the prepared ice bath and start to mix nicely with a spatula. The mixture will cool, thicken beautifully and become more viscous. After a while, when the mixture has cooled slightly, remove the bowl from the ice bath and add the remaining ingredients from the cooling phase – fragrance, vitamin E, preservative and optionally mica powder. Mix well, then put everything in the ice bath once more and rub well until a so-called "trace" appears - soap makers know, non-soap makers will wait until our wooden spoon or other stirrer starts to leave a faint trail behind - the mixture is just so stiff that after stirring in the mixture, a wooden spoon mark will be visible for a while. We are looking for a consistency similar to honey or condensed milk.
At this stage, we can start dosing the cream into a container with a volume of about 30 ml (or several smaller ones). The aluminum packaging is great, from which the balm is picked up perfectly, they look very elegant, and in addition, we can choose from several colors, types of lids and shapes, and thus have a cleansing balm according to our wishes. Put the balm already in the package into the refrigerator and let it harden and cool for a few hours.
*The balm itself does not contain any water, so a preservative is not necessary in the formulation, UNLESS we scoop it up with wet hands and keep it dry consistently. But if you know that water will get into the balm sooner or later, be sure to add a preservative.
How to use it?
Here we even have two options, depending on which balm ability we want to use! If we want gentle exfoliation of the skin, apply a little (about half a teaspoon) of the balm to dry skin, massage in and gently wipe the product off the face with a damp cloth. The second option is to apply a small amount of balm to an already moistened face (or mix the balm with a little water in the palms of your hands) and massage the divinely creamy product into the skin. Then we just rinse it off or wipe it with a damp cloth. In this way, we achieve less exfoliation of the skin, but higher creaminess and richness. Both methods are great, extremely pleasant and work perfectly. It depends on what we are feeling today! :)
I want to make it but I don't have all the ingredients!
As always, recipe changes and substitutions are possible, but keep in mind that if you change something, the final result will be (more or less) different from what we made.
If you follow the given proportions, you will make 30 grams of cleansing balm. If you already know you want more, simply multiply the amount of all the ingredients.
NF emulsifying wax should be well replaced by Olive 1000, BTMS or another complete emulsifying wax.
You can try replacing Polysorbate 80 with water-soluble jojoba oil, sulfated castor oil, or Polysorbate 20.
Another light liquid oil, such as almond, sunflower, macadamia, grapeseed, or apricot oil, will work just as well as castor and/or coconut oil.
By replacing the cocoa butter with another, you will lose the chocolate aroma. If you're making a different scented balm (and the chocolate flavor isn't for you), try another hard, dense butter, such as tucuma butter or kokum butter.
Change the pink clay to any other, for example, according to the color you want to achieve - take a look at white (kaolin), green, red, blue, purple, yellow or even black clay.
You can replace the scent with any other or leave it out completely.
