If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember Ponds or Noxema Cold Cream, right?

Or maybe you remember Mom or Grandmother using it? Perhaps they are still using this well-known cleanser.

Unbeknownst to most people, “Cold Cream” is just a trade name for what was once a nourishing skincare tradition, cleansing the skin with oils and seed butter!

Unfortunately, “Cold Cream” is an entirely synthetic petroleum-based industrialized, mass-produced fabrication made in big factories and shipped all over the world in huge shipping vessels.

Once I learned that fake Cold Cream has roots in ancient Rome, I dug deeper and discovered that its basic form and function were actually rooted in a nourishing skincare tradition!

I was immediately inspired to take “cold cream” back to its roots and created this plant-derived creamy cleansing balm.

Use it every day to gently remove mineral sunscreen and makeup. My Cold Cream will not strip your skin, and even those with sensitive skin can use it. It really can help you support your skin’s moisture barrier (aka Acid Mantle), reveal a healthy, natural glow and soft, silky skin, and support healthy aging.

COLD CREAM STARS:

MANGO, SHEA AND KOKUM BUTTER

COLD WATER SEAWEED EXTRACT

PLANT PROTEINS

VITAMINS

RAW, COLD PRESSED VIRGIN SEED OILS

ANTIOXIDANTS

STEAM DISTILLED ROSE HYDROSOL

INFUSED WITH FRESH, LOCALLY HARVESTED WILD YARROW, ROSE AND SPRUCE

ESSENTIAL OILS

. . . . .

I craft my Cold Cream in tiny batches to ensure freshness and provide a “made by” and use by date” on the label.

I whip together silky Mango, Kokum, and Shea butter, nourishing oils infused with wild plants, steam-distilled hydrosol, vitamins, and aloe juice.

I blend in a smidge of a mild, plant-derived soapy ingredient that gently lifts and loosens debris so it can be easily rinsed and wiped away without the rather messy process of pure oil cleansing.

After you pat dry, you’ll feel fresh, clean, and dewy soft - no more tight, dry skin!

Ingredients: ¥Jojoba and *Meadowfoam Seed oil infused with wild ^rose, ^yarrow, ^spruce │ ¥Rosehip seed oil │ ¥Mango Butter │ ¥Grapeseed Oil │ ¥Hemp seed oil │ ¥Apricot Seed Oil │*¥Safflower Oil │ *¥Kokum Butter │ ¥Sunflower Oil │ ¥Sweet Almond Oil │ †ØDecyl Glucoside │ †ØLauryl Glucoside │ *Aloe glycerite │ Supercritical CO2 Extracted Sea Buckthorn Berry fruit oil │*Steam Distilled Rose Hydrosol Water │ *Vegetable Glycerin │ ^cold water seaweed extract │ *Oat Protein │ †Keratin Protein │ †Panthenol │ *Vitamin Complex: C, B3, B5, B6 │ §ØPropanediol │ *Rosemary Oleoresin │ §ØEthylhexylglycerin │ §ØPotassium Sorbate, │ Vitamin E │ 1% Therapeutic grade essential oils

*Organic, †Naturally Derived, ^wildcrafted, §biodegradable preservative, ‡garden grown organic + chemical free, ¥virgin + organic + unrefined + cold pressed, ØECOCERT.

Important note: 1) I continue to make small changes to the formula to reduce changes to consistency in temperatures above 80. 2) The 100% aluminum tubes are awesome, but the labels eventually peel off - in order to have the tube printed requires massive minimum orders which are not possible due to my tiny batch production.

HOW TO ENJOY COLD CREAM:

My Cold Cream can be your standalone daily cleanser. It gently and completely removes light to moderate amounts of sunscreen and makeup without stripping your skin. It’s safe to use every day.

*** Each tube comes with a soft bamboo washcloth and a tube key to squeeze out every last drop, along with detailed instructions ***

Always apply to dry skin with dry fingers:

• Wash and dry your hands and remove eye makeup with your prefered method and product.

• Apply about an almond-sized amount of Cold Cream to DRY SKIN with DRY FINGERS. This allows the cleanser to penetrate, if your skin is wet it won’t penetrate as well. The cream melts on contact with the skin.

• Gently massage into the skin without tugging for 20-60 seconds. As you massage, it soaks deeply into the skin.

• ALWAYS REMOVE THIS CLEANSER, it is not a mask and can cause irritation if left on the skin for too long ….

  • Leave on your skin for about 3-4 minutes before removing. Let it sit there while you brush your teeth. Leaving the balm on for a few minutes provides time to loosen and begin dissolving debris (like dissolves, like, the reason why oil cleansers and cleansing balms work their magic).

  • Washing your face at the sink: Once the cleanser has soaked in for a while, cup your hands and fill with warm water, then briskly wash your face gently with open palms. Then, splash with warm water repeatedly to remove (never hot), and then gently wipe with a warm, wet washcloth. Pat dry. The soap component of my Cold Cream is activated with warm water, turning a milky color and pulling the debris to the surface where it can be rinsed away.

  • Jump in the shower: If you shower at night, leave the Cold Cream on to soak in for 3 or 4 minutes before jumping into the shower. Rinse off the cleanser while bathing.

    Always finish removing the cleanser with a final wipe: Whether you’re in the shower or washing at the sink, use a warm washcloth to gently wipe. Your skin will feel slightly emollient after you pat dry.

If you are removing heavy sunscreen and/or makeup, consider a second cleanse:

• The second cleanse is applied to wet skin. After you have completed the first cleanse and wiped your skin with the warm, wet washcloth, apply a pea size amount of Cold Cream to wet skin and rub briskly but lightly with open palms. Splash to rinse and wipe with the washcloth again. Pat dry.

FINAL STEPS: TONE and MOISTURIZE; Don’t skip the toning step but choose your toner carefully.

HELPFUL TIP: How to increase skin hydration and strengthen our skin’s moisture barrier?

• Toning: Whenever our skin comes in contact with tap water, and especially after washing/scrubbing, ensuring we reset the pH to slightly acidic will help the skin instantly start rebuilding the Acid Mantle. THIS IS THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE OF A TONER and a foundation for healthy skin.

• Conventional toners are often a source of hidden, drying alcohol and synthetic fragrance (the number one skin irritant). So be 100% sure you're using 100% alcohol and synthetic fragrance-free toners.

• Or toss your conventional toner and instead ... Spritz with 100% steamed distilled hydrosol water. Hydrosols, aka steam distillates, make the perfect toner in their complex simplicity! They’re the collected condensation from a pot of boiling water in which plants are simmering. This process creates distilled “water’ with hundreds of plant compounds, a natural aroma, and always the perfect, skin-friendly pH. We can use any plant to make these. Mine hydrosol can be found here.

• To relieve skin which is more persistently dehydrated (the feeling of being tight and parched): Apply a second application of lotion or cream. As soon as the first application described above has soaked in a few minutes, apply another light application of lotion or cream. This time, do not spritz first.

• Apply your lotion, cream, and/or facial oils to damp skin. This provides more dermal moisture/hydration: Dampen with a spray of hydrosol or plain tap water. Massage your cream, lotion, and/or facial oil into damp skin and allow it to air dry. After that soaks in, if you tend to have more persistent tight, parched skin, apply more lotion or cream after the first application has soaked in, but this time without extra dampness.

• ONLY cleansing at the end of the day, after exposure to sunlight, is no longer possible: Scrubbing and exfoliating of the skin exposes immature skin cells to environmental stressors. Over time, by adhering to this practice, your skin will become stronger and more resilient; Fresh, new baby skin cells need time to mature, after a night of restorative sleep, the now mature skin cells are at their strongest and most resilient; better able to protect themselves from the stress of the day (exposure to solar rays, pollution, dust, allergens, makeup).

• Morning Freshen up and after workouts: Use pure raw honey to “wash” your face, That’s right, pure raw honey. Why does this work? Honey is a mild solvent, perfectly suited to the task of dissolving sebum, skin oils, and sweat while loosening dead skin cells so they can be rinsed away with warm water. LEARN HOW AND WHY HERE

Care to dig deeper? The History of Cold Cream

The developers of Pond's coined the name “cold cream” in the middle of the 1800s. There’s a good chance that your mom, grandmother, or great-grandma used either the Ponds or Noxzema version.

But these “cold cream” cleansers have a thousand year history.

Long ago, in ancient Rome, a cleansing balm was created by a renowned physician by blending together water, beeswax, and oil (olive or almond). Formulated exclusively for the elite, rich and nobility, these fine, essential oil enhanced balms remained a popular skin care tradition until the industrial revolution.

In the middle of the 1800’s, the “cleansing balm” began to change radically.

The original formulas were transformed by the industrial revolution, and the cleansing balm was transformed from a nourishing skin care tradition into an entirely synthetic creation. Expensive natural oils and beeswax were replaced with cheap, synthetic petroleum-based ingredients. Industrial production made Pond’s Cold Cream inexpensive and widely available, and the newly minted, cleansers became wildly popular with women everywhere for a long time!

I hope you’ll enjoy my version of this much loved classic!

RELEVANT PEER REVIEWS RESEARCH:

• Cleansing without compromise: the impact of cleansers on the skin barrier and the technology of mild cleansing

• Stratum corneum fatty acids: their critical role in preserving barrier integrity during cleansing

• Role of mild cleansing in the management of patient skin

• The immunological and structural epidermal barrier dysfunction and skin microbiome in atopic dermatitis-an update