The cold, dry New England winter has left my skin dry, flakey and hurting, especially on my face. I’ve tried many face moisturizers and none of them seem to work as well as I would like. I hate not being able to try them before I get them home because when they make no big improvement on my skin I am still left with the whole bottle to use. My friend gave me this recipe for a do-it-yourself homemade face cream that works wonders. I will never go back to store bought face cream again.

To make this homemade face cream you are going to need: 25 ml of apricot kernel oil, 25 ml of jojoba oil, 15 g of beeswax, 70 ml bottled water, 2 tablespoons of rosewater, and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.

The process for making the face cream starts by using a double boiler with two cups of warm water in the bottom. Now, add the jojoba oil, apricot kernel oil and the beeswax and heat all three ingredients until the wax has completely melted.

Pour the hot liquid into a bowl and leave it alone while it cools.

Now, back to the double boiler. Add the bottled water, rosewater and lemon juice to the top. Heat these ingredients until they are warm. Now, turn off the heat and leave the double boiler on the burner so it doesn’t cool too fast.

Add the cooled mixture of jojoba oil, apricot kernel oil and beeswax to the water and lemon juice mixture.

Stir the mixture continuously until the ingredients become think and opaque. If they start to separate you can add a little heat to warm everything up and help it combine.

Once the mixture has thickened it’s ready to be used as a face cream. You can store the cream in a sealed container but it only lasts about six weeks so be sure to mark on the container when it was first made.

Not only is the recipe for homemade face cream amazing on its own, but you can add other ingredients to make it work better for your skin type. If you are breaking out add 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to the face cream. Dry skin will benefit from the addition of 2 teaspoons of evening primrose oil. The face cream works best for combination skin if you add 2 drops of tea tree oil, and oily skin benefits from 1 teaspoon of witch hazel water.