History of the Recipe:

I created this cream for women between the ages of 30-45 who have normal or dry skin. It was important to me that the cream I made intensively moisturized, made skin look healthier while evening out its tone, and smoothed out small wrinkles. Let’s look at how I solved those problems:

1. The contents of the cream is perfect for normal and dry skin. Why did I pick out that type of skin specifically? Easy – it describes my own skin. And the majority of women I know between the ages of 30 and 45 also have to deal with the problem of dry skin. It’s quite the common problem. If your skin happens to be too oily, then I’m afraid my cream isn’t for you. However, even oily skin may have dry patches. They can and should be moisturized with gelled creams that have a light texture. My cream has a velvety texture that’s been infused with nourishing oils, meaning it’ll be a bit heavy for oily skin, but absolutely perfect for dry and normal skin.
2. Why did I choose to help women specifically ages 30-45? Today, practically every woman understands that skin changes with age – it demands newer and different care. And I completely support that point of view. However, everything is good in moderation. Someone who is thirty should not be concerned with anti-aging creams and systems. Your skin will quickly accustom to such hyper-care and stop sustaining itself when it could have done so with no problem. So, everyone must reasonably assess their own skincare needs and develop a skincare regimen that works for them.

The Cream’s Foundation:

Emulsifier:

For starters, we need to pick what will be the most important part of the cream. And by no means are those active ingredients, as many think, but His Majesty the Emulsifier. This is the skeleton on which the rest of the recipe is constructed.

He was underappreciated for the longest time. Not just by consumers and beauty-bloggers, but even by my cosmetologists, my own colleagues. Every thought that the emulsifier was just a complementary component which keeps the emulsion from falling apart, just a regular workhorse in the recipe.

Recent discoveries, however, have shown that the emulsifier plays the key role in any cream. If a chemist chooses the wrong emulsifier, then even the most expensive active ingredients can’t save the recipe. The emulsifier fundamentally changes the texture and the sensation of the cream and can even improve the skin’s sensation after it has been applied.

The emulsifier also changes the effectiveness of the active ingredient. So, my cream is further built on an artfully foundational emulsifier (complex sorbitan stearate and sorbitan laurate), which creates a liquid-crystallite structure in water. And in this way it produces a so-called “lamellar cream.”

In addition to that, this specific emulsifier is 100% natural and itself works as an active moisturizing component.

Oils:

Aside from the emulsifier, any cream base needs oil.

For my ideal cream, I chose emollients. Emollients allow creams to emulate any sensation when applied to the skin. In all honesty, all cosmetic chemists do this – they select a few oils for their recipes so that the skin absorbs them at different speeds. And so, people are absolutely sure in the sensation that their cream continually nourishes their skin.

I wanted a light, non-greasy “melting” cream, and my chosen emollients help me with that:

1. I used myristyl lactate to achieve a “melting” effect. At room temperature, this emollient is a wax (oil in a solid state), but upon contact with the skin, it melts into a liquid, making it easier to absorb.
2. For a dry and light sensation, I used triethylhexanoin.
3. Emollients can be used for more than just producing pleasant sensations, they can also double ass active ingredients. For instance, I used isostearyl isostearate – a richly nourishing emollient which, as a matter of fact, is a deeply moisturizing component.

Throughout my trial process, I wanted to slightly alter the cream’s texture and sensation, so I added just a few silicones. It worked like a wonder!

Thickener:

I expertly mixed oil and water-based thickeners to make sure that the cream wasn’t too watery and had a full body.

Preservative:

This is a very important subject! It is impossible to go without a preservative. Preservatives must effectively eliminate all types of bacteria and fungi for the entire length of a product’s shelf life. This is a very difficult task as it’s hard to imagine a less sterile product that a jar of cream constantly disrupted by people’s fingers. In general, it’s not worth it to fear preservatives. They simply need to be properly chosen and mixed.

There exist a great many cosmetic preservatives. Of course there are those preservatives which I always steer clear of. I decided to use a new preservative with proven low allergy rates: phenoxyethanol with ethylhexylglycerin. It is totally safe, legal to use world-wide, and has my total and utter confidence.

Active Ingredients:

Alright, so I’ve outlined the cream’s underlying foundation. I’ve created a modern, powerful base recipe which will greatly moisturize skin and is ready to, in and of itself, effectively convey active ingredients to the skin. Now let’s look at those active ingredients.

Sometimes you pick up another jar of cosmetic cream and start reading the ingredients and half an hour will go by before you finish it. It’s practically like swallowing bottles of a half-dozen different pills just for the common cold! Then dermatologists complain that they have patients whose skin contains a hellish cocktail of active components that will take a long time to heal simply to restore healthy skin function. Fortunately, cheap cosmetics usually contain a few ingredients as possible, just for marketing. They pose little threat – and even less help.

My opinion is that the ingredients and the recipe should be as maximally balanced as possible. It’s best to use a single active ingredient. It will show effect real results will a strong base that makes sure the active ingredient gets to the parts of the skin where it is most needed and will do the most good. That is surely better than 100 different extracts with rich literature behind their effects but with no proven clinical testing. Moderation – it’s the key to success and effectiveness.

Moisturizing:

Firstly, you need to moisturize. It’s simply a necessity of life. So, I decided that I would moisturize simultaneously using a few different methods. We can sidestep all the cucumbers and other wives-tales straight to the point.

It’s important to moisturize modernly:

1. Hyaluronic acid fragments:

Hyaluronic acid naturally occurs in our skin. It’s crucial purpose – to bind water. Even %1 hyaluronic acid turns water into a viscous gel. The key is that hyaluronic acid occurs in really, really large molecules, and it is usually used in cosmetics as a moisturizing agent, creating a film over the top layer of skin.

Hyaluronic acid can also be synthesized into small molecules which are meant to be absorbed and stimulate natural collagen creation – but it’s very expensive. Moreover, it still needs to be dragged into the skin with special chemicals as it naturally doesn’t absorb very well into the skin. Of course, you could insert it with needles, achieving a truly “dramatic effect.”

The takeaway is this: pure hyaluronic acid in cosmetics is simply a moisturizing film.

However, the acid’s fragments are a whole other deal – like glucuronic acid.

I’ve decided to use glucuronic acids, a mix of biologically natural oligosaccharides with a minute molecular mass, which are basically fragments of the very same hyaluronic acid.

Glucuronic acids effectively worked as stimulants to synthesize the natural production of hyaluronic acids in the skin. The results of tests on volunteers were impressive: 26 women, ages 33-45, with dry skin and wrinkles applied the cream or a placebo twice daily over the course of two months. The placebo was the exact same cream, except without the active ingredient. That is important because any base cream will somewhat moisturize skin as it is.

The result was great: volunteers with the cream with the active ingredient experienced excellent moisturizing, increased skin elasticity, and a marked decrease in visible wrinkles!

2. A mixture of isostearyl isostearate, potassium cetyl phosphate, cetyl behenate, and behenic acid, cetyl alcohol:

This is the second ingredient which helps achieve maximum effective moisturizing. It seems as though just the name presents a highly synthesized soup of different components, but despite the long name, its activating principle is very simple.

We all have a layer of lipids on top of our skin, and these lipids are packed in one of two ways. One of the ways is tightly-packed, and the other is loosely-packed. The more tightly-packed lipids are unfortunately less stable and work to redistribute themselves more evenly. Well, the magical “soup” above stabilized the tightly-packed lipids from breaking apart, thereby making it more difficult for water to evaporate from our skin. In short, usually, a thick and elegant layer of lipids is much healthier than a large and loose layer.

3. The third active ingredient is quite interesting. By international nomenclature used in cosmetics, it’s called – Albizia Julibrissin Bark Extract in glycerin. It’s an extract from the bark of the Persian silk tree.

This wonderful extract miraculously counteracts many sign of fatigued skin: it improves dull skin complexion and reduces dark circles and bags under the eyes.

This all happens through the restoration of protein structures, damaged by glycation processes and the activation of superficial antioxidant systems.

Your face will then gain a beautiful, rosy complexion, not a gray or dull one, as I sometimes have had through the course of my life.

4. Squalene

Of course I’ve added squalene into my cream in an appropriate amount. I greatly appreciate this ingredient because of its wondrous characteristic of alleviating many problems at once. It’s simultaneously an emollient that softens skin and a sensory modification which gives the cream’s texture a pleasant, velvety and luxurious characteristic. First and foremost, it’s an active ingredient.

What does it do? It softens dry skin, creates a sense of comfort, and also retains moisture in skin. That’s the kind of wondrous ingredient it is.

Interesting, squalene can be harvested either from olives or shark livers. I chose to use olive squalene as I prefer not to hurt sharks – moreover shark-harvested squalene is already banned in many European nations for ethical reasons as the squalene harvested from either olives or sharks is completely identical.

Squalene is even sold in its pure form in the form of a serum that is applied using a dropper; even a couple drops can greatly help with the driest of skin. I greatly respect the multi-functionality of squalene in all its forms.

Testing:

With the cream ready, it was necessary to test it. And, of course, our cream passed all of the tests it faced.

Namely:

1. Tests by the producers of the ingredients. Every respectable producer of ingredients (and I choose only such producers) diligently tests their products. There were safety tests and tests concerning the products’ effectiveness. And all of the ingredients used in my cream have all of the necessary checks and certifications.
2. Tests concerning shelf-life and stability. This test measured the stability and shelf-life of the cream in storage. For the purpose of this examination, the cream was rigorously tested under various extreme conditions. First, the cream was circulated using a centrifuge and then stored in a heat chamber for a month at a temperature of 45-55 degrees Celsius (113-131 degrees Fahrenheit). Moreover, the cream was repeatedly frozen and reheated.

After all that, the cream was supposed to remain as even and white as it was when first produced – no structural separation or changes in odor would have been acceptable. I can proudly say that even after lengthy and rigorous testing, the cream remains as it was produced – an absolutely fantastic result.

3. Clinical trials and tests on microbiological purity. All the necessary examinations were conducted in a university laboratory at the: State Scientific Dermatology and Cosmetics Center, Moscow.
4. Test concerning effectiveness. We had to know how well out cream worked for those people that we had made it.

I had a whole group of volunteer testers who – over the course of 2 months – applied the cream twice daily, and I honestly and diligently recorded the results. For the test, I gave due diligence to capturing a wide range of ages, skin types, and skincare habits.

From analysis of the data, I found the following overarching results:

– There were a few women under the age of 30 who had no wrinkles. The above routine maximally moisturized their skin fairly quickly (within two weeks). These results led me to then instruct them to apply the cream only overnight, and this was more than enough to get optimal skincare results.

– One young woman had become accustomed to entirely light-textured creams, and my cream turned out to be too thick for her (that’s why the cosmetics market has a variety of creams with a variety of textures). In the end, she did not apply the cream in the area around her eyes, and it was impossible to come to any conclusions about the cream’s effects on early wrinkles. However, in those areas where she did apply the cream regularly (around the cheeks), there was market improvement with respect to moisturized skin and reduced manifestations of fatigue within 2-3 weeks.

– One young woman was not helped by the cream at all. As with all cosmetics, such things happen, and it is completely normal. A single product cannot help 100% of people. Moreover, this happens more often with expensive creams than inexpensive ones because expensive creams tend to have exact concentrations of active ingredients. Through the development process, even my skin wasn’t always smooth – it wasn’t until I discovered the right recipe that my skin felt perfectly comfortable with the cream. If you have previously had difficulties with choosing cosmetic products because you’ve had unwanted side effects or reactions to cosmetics products, then I recommend you first acquire a small trial jar to test on your skin over the course of a week. That way you can figure out whether you like the cream’s texture and whether it’s for you.

– The main group of volunteer testers (88% of the whole trial group) showed exactly those results which I was aiming for. Their skin was markedly better moisturized and showed fewer signs of fatigue in 3 weeks. In 4-6 weeks, there was a marked smoothing of early wrinkles. In half of this group, their own, natural moisturizing mechanisms were so effectively stimulated that I recommended these women to halve the amount of cream they applied at any one time (thereby extending the length of time one jar of cream would last them). The collected and analyzed data allows me to confidently assert that the cream works exactly as it was intended to. And that is a fantastic result!

Here are some of the volunteers’ comments after testing:

“I have dry and tender skin as well as issues with the color of my skin – even the slightest bit of stress causes my cheeks to break out with red spots.

After applying the cream, I immediately felt more moisturized, and that feeling lasted all day – the regular feeling of tightness in my skin disappeared completely. But most of all I was happy that after 3 weeks of using the cream, I noticed that the color in my skin became very even, healthy, and well-rested. I had quite noticeable “crows’ feet” in the area around my eyes, and after a month of regular use they practically disappeared.”

“I really liked the cream. It feels great when you first put it on, absorbs quickly, and doesn’t leave a greasy shine. The results aren’t immediate; however, I discovered in three weeks that my mimic wrinkle was markedly less noticeable. I think that the cream will have a greater effect when combatting aging wrinkles. When using too much of the cream, your skin will get a little greasy – it happened on my forehead – but I applied less cream (just as regularly) and everything worked normally. I’m definitely going to recommend this cream to my friends and family.”

“My skin has a beautiful, fresh red tone – as if just after rest or sleep. The small wrinkles around my eyes all but disappeared, and my skin was moisturized all day long. My reflection in the mirror makes me quite happy, my general visage is much fresher. I really want to continue using this cream.”

Conclusion:

In the end, the result is simply magnificent! I created the ideal cream which I personally use every single day. And most importantly – it works extremely effectively for the majority of women!

Ekaterina