I finally ran out of face cream, so I had to make some. I used this website for the recipe, as the last night face cream I made wasn’t that great. I just finished it, so I don’t know how I’ll like it – but I will report back after trying it for a while. This time I didn’t use any preservatives, so I’m keeping it in the fridge for now. That said, I’m going to Mexico soon, and if I take it it’ll be warm most of the time. Hmmm…
I changed the recipe in a few ways: by using water instead of rose water and orange essential oil instead of chamomile or lavender oil. More fundamentally, I used lanolin instead of lecithin – I misread the recipe. I’m pretty amazed it came out anyway, I hope it won’t separate.
The results were a very creamy and quite oily cream, pretty heavy and not terribly easy to spread. Still, it’s just for night use so I’m not concerned. Let’s see how it leaves my face after a few weeks.
*Later Note* Well, it did separate. So I added 1 tsp. melted emulsifying wax (I don’t have any lecithin), and re-whisked it. The results were a lighter, creamier cream – but I think that may have been from the extra whisking.
Thick Night Facial Cream
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. shea butter
2 tsp. beeswax pellets
1 tsp. emulsifying wax pellets
1/4 tsp. vitamin E oil
1/4 tsp. lanolin
1 Tbsp. distilled water
1 Tbsp. aloe vera gel
3-5 drops essential oil of your choice
Heat the olive oil, shea butter and waxes over boiling water, until they melt. Add the vitamin E oil and mix. Add the lanolin and mix.
Separately mix the water and aloe vera. Add to the oil mixture and whisk until it’s emulsified and it’s nice and creamy. Let cool and whisk in the essential oils.

I have a lot of roses. A LOT. Too many. And while I’m not particularly fond of roses, I thought I could at least use them to make rose essential oil. The real recipes for it require distillation or something like that, so I took the “cheater” way and simply mixed in the bruised petals from one rose with 1/4 cup sunflower oil. I put it in a tightly lidded jar and rested it in a dark place for a week. Then I added another rose, and so forth for two more weeks. Finally, I squeezed the oil from the petals into a strainer and discarded the petals.
The results are not too great. What I have left is not rose oil, but a mixture of oil, solids (so fine that I cannot filter them out) and water (the moisture from the rose petals, I assume); it’s not completely emulsified. Most worryingly, the perfume barely smells of roses (or plants, I can’t quite tell). Now, the fault may be with my roses. Even though it looks like the rose bush next to our house threw up, the resulting roses are not very aromatic.
Oh well, I planted some lavender and perhaps next year I’ll have enough to attempt lavender oil.