Formulating Oil Serums for Beginners

Welcome to the world of DIY skincare! Making your own serums can be a rewarding experience. Let's look at the ingredients you've chosen and what else you might need for your oil serums.

1. Nighttime Moisturizing Oil Serum

Your chosen ingredients - Lavender Essential Oil, Squalane, and Evening Primrose Oil - are excellent choices for a moisturizing oil serum.

• Squalane and Evening Primrose Oil are fantastic for skin hydration and barrier support.
• Lavender Essential Oil can add a lovely scent and has calming properties, but remember to use it at a very low concentration (typically 0.5-1% of the total formula) as essential oils are potent.

What else to consider adding:

• Base Oil: You'll need a primary carrier oil to make up the bulk of your serum. Good options for facial serums include Jojoba Oil, Sweet Almond Oil, or Grapeseed Oil. These are lightweight and absorb well.
• Antioxidant: Adding an antioxidant like Vitamin E can help protect the oils from oxidation (going rancid) and provide additional skin benefits.

A simple formula structure could be: Base Oil (e.g., Jojoba Oil) + Squalane + Evening Primrose Oil + Vitamin E + Lavender Essential Oil (at a low percentage).

2. Acne Mark Reduction Serum

For reducing dark and red marks from acne, your chosen ingredients - Activated C, White Birch, and Peony Extract - target skin brightening and soothing.

• Activated C (like Activated Resorcinol) is known for its skin brightening properties.
• Peony Extract (such as ActiveRelease Paeonol) is often used for its soothing and potential brightening effects.

Important Consideration: Activated C (like Activated Resorcinol) is typically oil-soluble, while many plant extracts like Peony Extract (ActiveRelease Paeonol) are water-soluble. Mixing oil-soluble and water-soluble ingredients into a stable serum usually requires an emulsifier, creating an emulsion (like a lotion or cream), or making a biphasic product that needs shaking before use. For a beginner, creating stable emulsions can be challenging.

Suggestion for a Beginner-Friendly Oil Serum:

Given you're new to this, you might want to start with an oil-based serum focusing on oil-soluble ingredients. You could use Squalane and Evening Primrose Oil as your base, and incorporate an oil-soluble brightener like Activated Resorcinol. Adding Vitamin E would also be beneficial.

This oil-based approach would utilize ingredients you've already considered and keep the formulation simpler than trying to combine oil and water phases.

If you specifically want to use water-soluble extracts like Peony Extract or certain forms of White Birch extract, you would need to explore making a water-based serum or an emulsion, which involves different ingredients (water, gelling agents, preservatives) and techniques.

In summary, for your oil serums, consider adding a base oil and Vitamin E. For the acne serum, decide if you want to stick to oil-soluble ingredients for simplicity or explore more complex water-based or emulsion formulas to incorporate water-soluble extracts.