Formulating Facial Oils Part 1; Choosing your Ingredients & percentages - Formulating for Beginners

Today we will be explaining the difference between facial oils and body oils. Discussing what the benefits of a facial oil is and what ingredients are found in facial oils.

In order to fully understand this blog you must read the past two blogs in the "formulating for beginners" series - Formulating Body Oils Part 1 & Formulating Body Oils Part 2. I won't be going over everything I discussed in those past two blogs, so if something seems confusing it's because I explained it in one of the past two blogs.

What is a facial oil?

Facial oils are anhydrous products. They are made up of only oil soluble ingredients. Facial oils can be used for many reason. Facial oils can help moisturize the skin, they can actually help balance your skin's oil production to get rid of excess oil, and you can use them on top of your moisturizer to lock in active ingredients and protect your skin. You may also want to use a facial oil to help reduce wrinkles, minimize pores, soothe inflammation, or even fight acne. Some people even like using facial oils as a primer before applying their makeup. There are many reasons why you may want to use a facial oil. It really just depends on your skin type and what you are looking for.

What is found in a facial oil?

Obviously you can use oils in a facial oils, but they can contain much more than that. Basically anything that is oil soluble can go into a facial oil. For example, Carrier oils, vitamin e oil, silicones (& silicone alternatives), emollient esters, oil soluble extracts, etc. (Note: If you are using oil soluble extract in a facial oil please use a preservative. I will be formulating a facial oil with oil soluble extracts at some point during this series) Also, you might want to stay away from hard oils like coconut oil or palm oil when making facial oils as these oils are solid at room temperature.

Difference between facial oil & body oil

Body oils typically contain less expensive ingredients compared to facial oils. The skin on our face is much more sensitive, it's exposed to the sun more, and typically we have a lot more "issues" with the skin on our face compared to the body. You will notice, we are normally trying to solve skin problems on the face much more often than on the body. For the most part, body oils are just used to moisturize the skin. Of course you can make a body oil with lots of lovely ingredients, just like a facial oil, but since the surface area of the skin on our body is much more large we typically save our more expensive ingredients or products for the face. Facial oils are also formulated to target specific skin types, unlike body oils. But again, body oils can be formulated for specific skin types as well. You will just see this done more often in facial oils.

How to begin formulating a facial oil

First you need to figure out what skin type you are formulating for. What would you like the facial oil to do? Of course it will be moisturizing the face, but do you want it to help reduce wrinkles, fight acne, reduce pore size, balance oil production? Figure out what you want your facial oil to do for your skin. I'll give some examples of ingredients that can help with certain skin issues.

Anti aging - baobab oil, camellia seed oil, tamanu oil, Carrot Seed Oil, argan oil, chai seed oil, jojoba oil, blackberry seed oil, evening primrose oil

Balancing oil production - squalane, jojoba oil, macadamia oil, neem oil

Fight Acne - safflower oil, neem oil, hempseed oil, grapeseed oil, black cummin seed oil

Soothe - broccoli seed oil, almond oil, macadamia oil, hazelnut oil, argan oil, chai seed oil

Brighten - cucumber seed oil, carrot seed oil

this is just a general guideline. Just because the oil is said to help with an issue, doesn't mean it necessarily will. You need to test it out yourself and see how your skin reacts.

Note: Oils contain linoleic and oleic acids. Some contain more linoleic and some contain more oleic. Oily skin likes linoleic acid and dry aging skin likes oleic acid. It's a good idea to find the perfect balance between the two for your skin. If you use to much oleic acid it could clog your pores, so really keep note of this if you suffer from acne. Oils also contain different vitamins and minerals. So if you are looking for something specific, look for an oil that contains that vitamin or mineral.

How much of each ingredient do I use?

I went into detail over this topic in my last 2 blogs, but I want to talk about it briefly here as well. You want to follow the recommend, suggested, or typical usage rate that is provided by the supplier. You can use most oils at 100%, but you might not want to use every oil at 100%. Neem oil stinks so you only want to use a little bit of this oil and dilute it with another oil. Sea buckthorn oil and carrot seed oil can stain your skin orange, so you definitely don't want to use that at 100%. Some oils are really expensive, so for cost value reasons you might want to dilute it. You also want to find the perfect blend of oils that feel nice on the skin. Evening primrose oil has lovely benefits, but it is very slow absorbing, so mix it with a quick absorbing oil. There are many reason why you don't want to use an oil at 100%, but of course you are free to do as you please, but blending oils is so much fun and you can really experiment to find the perfect blend your skin loves. One more thing, don't just mix a whole bunch of different oils to where you are only using like 5% of each. Stick with just a few different oils. If you use just a little bit of each oil how is your skin suppose to benefit from all of them when there is just a little bit of each oil present on the skin. The more baobab oil you use then that means there are more vitamins or minerals from the baobab oil present to potentially by absorbed into the skin.

Why use silicones or silicone alternatives?

As I mentioned above you may find silicones or silicone alternatives in facial oils. The reason you may want to use these types of ingredients is to create a more dry feeling product. Oils can be greasy, and maybe you really can't stand the feeling, no matter how many oils you have tried blending together. This is when silicones and silicone alternatives will save the day. I've never personally used silicones in facial or body oils, but I have used silicone alternatives. My 3 favorite silicone alternatives are Coco caprylate, NatraSil, and Neossance Hemisqualane. These are all ecocert and considered "natural" and green friendly. These 3 ingredients can really help make a facial oil feel more pleasant.

Why use Emollient Esters?

Caprylic/Capric Triglycerides is an emollient ester, mistakingly referred to as fractionated coconut oil. It’s made from combining coconut oil with glycerin that has gone through an extraction method called Esterification. I used it as my primary oil in my advance body oil I made in the last blog post. Some say that fractionated coconut oil and caprylic/capric triglyceride are the same thing and some say they are two different things. Let me know if you have any insight on this because I would really like to know if they are the same thing or not. I've tried to do research and I find a lot of information saying they are two different things, but what is weird, is that I can't even find fractionated coconut oil anywhere. When I do find it from a supplier the INCI is Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride. So I don't really know what's going on with this ingredient. Does fractionated coconut oil even exist? because I'm only finding caprylic/capric triglyceride. Anyways, caprylic/capric triglycerides is another great ingredient to add to a facial oil to reduce greasiness. Caprylic/Capric Triglycerides is also ecocert. I've use caprylic/capric triglyceride in lots of products and I really like it. There is also C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate which again is used to reduce greasiness. I've never used it, so I have no opinion on it, but I recently had a viewer say she loves it. There is also IPM (Isopropyl Myristate) which you may remember me using in the last blog post. So I won't say anything more about it as I've already discussed it prior to this blog.

Why would I use extracts?

You really can only use oil soluble extracts in facial oils. You could do a water in oil emulsion in order to add in water soluble extracts, but that is a little to advanced, so we will leave that for a later day. Remember we are trying to formulate without preservatives. Which is also why we won't be making a facial oil using oil soluble extract. If we add in an oil soluble extract you would need a preservatives, as extracts are very sensitive to going bad. So even though we won't be formulating a facial oil with extracts I just wanted to make this information known as I get a lot of questions over this and I know I would get a lot once I post this blog. I have seen formulas using oil soluble extracts in anhydrous recipes with out a preservative, but I can't say for sure if this is good manufacturing practice, so I advise to add a preservative just to be safe. I'll leave it for you to decide what is best. The reason you may want to use extracts in facial oils is because extracts have a lot of lovely benefits from botanicals, and not every botanical has an oil for you to use.

Other ingredients

The only other ingredient I can think of that is oil soluble that doesn't go under any of these categories is Coenzyme Q10 Pure Powder. This is a bright orange powder that is oil soluble. Coenzyme Q10 is a coenzyme vital to production of energy within cells. It is also a very powerful antioxidant or free radical scavenger. The issue with this ingredient is that it's solubility is relatively low. To incorporate it into an oil, the oil should be gently heated to about 120°F (49°C) and the powder stirred into it, wherein it will readily dissolve. Due to its low solubility, it can precipitate out of solution in an oil over time. If this occurs, gently warm the oil and shake to redistribute the CoQ10 throughout the oil before formulating with it. Honestly I wouldn't really recommend adding this into a facial oil since the coenzyme q10 will just end up settled to the bottom of the bottle and you will have to reheat it every time you go to use it. I think this ingredient is best used in a lotion since it will stay evenly distributed through out your lotion and you won't have to worry about it settling to the bottom. If you do want to use Coenzyme Q10 in a facial serum I recommend this one Coenzyme Q10 - Q-MAX This is coenzyme q10 that has been pre dissolved in an ester so it won't separate.

& this is the foundation of what you need to know before you start formulating a facial oil. In the next blog we will be writing the formula for two different facial oils and making them together. I will be formulating one for mature skin and one for oily skin types. Talk to you then!

Formulating Facial Oils Part 1; Choosing your Ingredients & percentages - Formulating for.

Download • 61KB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crlu_eN9wAY