Self Preserving Botanical Cleansing Concoction - an Experiment

If I hadn't made this concoction myself, I would have sworn it was pumped up with added colorants and scents and such, but it isn't. The contents of this bottle is 100% natural. Not only does it smell fabulous and look delicious, it's behaving like an absolute darling to boot.

To be honest, I halfway expected to be blogging about this as a major fail, but so far, it hasn't turned out that way, so I decided to share the 'so-far' with you.


A Cleansing Concoction

The bottle up there is a facial cleanser that consists solely of a combination handcrafted botanical extracts using fresh, dried and semi dried ingredients - all made by yours truly. There are no emulsifiers, gelling agents, preservatives, fillers or anything. Basically, it's a bottle of pure botanical fabulousness.

This is (another) one of my purely experimental 'limit-testing formulas' and an idea I literally woke up with one morning late last year.

You know how you sometimes dream about stuff you have been pondering about and a solution (or idea) sort of presents itself as you wake up? This is one of those times. I literally sat up and started jotting things down.

Pictured above is the bottle before shaking. And below, what it looked like after a bit of agitation.

It would have been just a little awesome if it kept that duo-color thing, but I knew that wasn't going to happen and decided to snap a pre-shaking photo - purely for aesthetic eye-candy purposes (and to document the colors from production date).

Testing

As this is the kind of product I wouldn't dream of ask anyone else to test (yet), the entire test team to date has consisted of skin type: mature and ridiculously sensitive. (Yup. you guessed it. It's me).

As a cleanser, it both goes on and rinses off beautifully and leaves my skin soft and gently cleansed. Don't ask me if it removes heavy make-up because I have never been able to get busy with heavy make-up at all. But it effectively removes the very light layer of foundation and blush I might have on.

I am in love with the scent which has remained steady. It's a titch more fragrant than I am used to, but has the most wonderfully light, summery floral/fruity scent that I find myself taking deep sniffs of the mixture before applying it.

From January to June

As the months have passed, the color has faded only minimally.
pH: steady at 5.0

Checking my notes to trace the origins of every included extract revealed that one of the them was made in October 2017.

Some of the included botanicals
strawberry
chamomile
rose

If this concept and idea continues to perform and remain stable, I may have to make a series of these babies.

Stay tuned for updates!

Do Tell

Have you ever struggled with solving a problem and thought so much about it, it invaded your dreams and decided to solve itself while you were sleeping?

More Stuff 

If you're interested in reading a bit more about this on this blog, click the tag: Hurdle Technology for more posts (and links to additional info) about self preserving and preservative free cosmetics

Psst! 

There's still time to join the webinar! 
Sign up for your spot at the free webinar at Tisserand Institute tomorrow RIGHT HERE (you'll get a special invite and link to the webinar straight to your inbox when it's ready to go live).

Comments

Alana said…
This look super cool and jelly like. I love jelly like products and the dual tone color looks so unique and pretty. Have you thought of making it a gentle cleansing scrub with some jojoba wax beads or some other face exfoliant?
LisaLise said…
HI Alana - Thanks for your comment. It is not very jelly like but could quickly become so. I worked with jojoba exfoliating beads some years ago and quite liked them. Thanks for the inspiration!
Alana said…
I just reread the post and realized you said there were no emulsifiers or gelling agents, so the jelly like comment was completely off. I must have missed it.
LisaLise said…
Hi Alana - no worries :)
Anonymous said…
Hi when you are working with pure plant extracts you are dealing with highly concentrated natural chemistry most of which are also antibacterial (antimicribial/same same mostly ).
Study up on the phytochemistry of plant oils or aka aromatherapy to understand this.
The Tissererand books are the modern bibles of this study.
Be sure to use only organic/biodynamic plants that hopefully have learned to grow on the most natural unpolluted soil you can find.
Put some magnatite into it and just watch what happens.
This is a great formula and yes...if you ask your plants to teach you how to use them they will tell you in your dreams.
It happens.
All the best everyone
Tara
LisaLise said…
Thank you Tara - I especially love the plants teaching part--I find this to be true. :D