Make your own hand cream: Recipe ideas with natural ingredients

It is not only in the cold season that the skin on our hands often suffers. The cold, air conditioning, frequent hand washing and external environmental influences quickly make it brittle and dry. A hand cream contains specific ingredients that give the skin the moisture and strength it needs. There are countless different types on the market, but drugstore products often contain a lot of chemical ingredients that you can no longer understand. A natural and inexpensive alternative is to make your own hand cream.

via Sabrina

02/04/2020, 17:29

Handcreme selber machen ist einfach und Sie können natürliche Zutaten verwenden — Hand cream is very easy to make yourself - with completely natural ingredients.

Recipes for soft and firm hand cream

The preparation of soft and firm hand creams differs from each other. For a soft hand cream, you need the following ingredients to make 50 ml:

- 10 g shea butter
- 20 g cocoa butter
- 12 ml almond oil
- 10 drops of essential oil
- 12 ml jojoba oil

Instead of almond oil, you can also use apricot kernel oil, depending on which scent you prefer. First, put the shea butter, cocoa butter and oil in a bowl and heat the ingredients. You should do this using a water bath so that the melting process is as slow as possible. Once you have stirred the melted ingredients together to make your own hand cream, leave to cool and stir again from time to time. After 10 minutes, the mixture should have cooled down enough for you to add the essential oils. If the mixture is still too warm, the fragrances will dissolve. The homemade hand cream can now be poured into a suitable container.

In the recipe for the solid homemade hand cream, beeswax is added as a new ingredient. This ensures that the cream solidifies and can therefore be poured into small portions. You can easily take these with you on the go and the cream cannot leak. For the recipe, you need these ingredients for 50 ml:

- 20 g shea butter
- 10 g cocoa butter
- 10 ml almond oil
- 10 drops of essential oil
- 7 g beeswax

As before, you can also use a different oil here. Melt the shea butter, cocoa butter and beeswax in a bain-marie and mix well. Stir for a few minutes until the temperature drops and a creamy consistency forms. Only now should you add the essential oil and divide the finished mixture into small molds, such as an ice cube mold. The resulting individual pieces of homemade hand cream can be stored in a large container in the fridge.

What you should bear in mind

When making hand creams, it is very important to ensure that the bowls, spoons and other items required are clean. Contamination can reduce the shelf life of homemade hand cream. You are therefore on the safe side if you disinfect all utensils beforehand, preferably with alcohol. Make sure that you do not place the spoon for stirring anywhere where food is normally placed so that it does not become contaminated.

You should also be aware that a soft homemade hand cream does not last as long as a solid one. This is mainly due to the beeswax used, which gives the cream its firmness. You should therefore only plan to make smaller portions of the recipe for a soft homemade hand cream so that you can use it up more quickly.

The essential oils used, on the other hand, can be selected entirely according to your preferences. There are hundreds of fragrances, ranging from floral to fruity to tart. This means you can give each of your homemade hand creams a completely unique touch. In general, make sure that you give your homemade hand cream the time it needs to absorb into the skin. Furthermore, the homemade hand cream will not be fully effective if it is not absorbed in sufficient quantity.