Homemade Hydrating Green Tea Face Serum

For skin that requires a little extra nourishment and moisture, green tea skin care formulations can offer gentle, yet stimulating, hydration support. This skin serum recipe infuses the benefits of green tea leaves into organic olive oil and brings in the goodness of select essential oils for a pampering and beautifully scented blend. This particular recipe is suitable for a wide range of folks, and many find it light enough to use on the face before bed, in the morning, or both. It is also generally friendly to mature or sensitive skin, as the essential oil ratio is quite low.

Moisturizing Green Tea Skin Serum Recipe

You'll notice that this recipe makes approximately one cup of serum, which is quite a bit! You can divide the batch up between friends if you plan to primarily use it on the face, or you can use it as a whole body oil during seasons or occasions when you're bothered by overall skin dryness. The recipe is also easy to reduce, if you’d like to make a smaller amount. The first step is to create an infused oil.

Green Tea-Infused Oil

Makes about 1 1/2 cups infused oil.

Ingredients

• 1 cup organic green tea
• ~1 2/3 cups organic olive oil

Directions

1. Pour loose green tea into a pint-sized canning or glass pantry jar with lid.
2. Top tea with olive oil until completely covered.
3. Allow to infuse 4 to 6 weeks, shaking regularly and making sure tea stays completely covered with oil (push tea down with clean spoon or add more oil, if needed).
4. Strain oil using a funnel strainer and/or cheesecloth. Discard tea into compost.

Green Tea Skin Serum

Makes about 1 cup.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup organic green tea-infused olive oil (recipe above)
• 1/4 cup organic avocado oil
• 1/4 cup organic jojoba oil
• 1/8 cup organic sunflower oil
• 12 drops organic rosemary essential oil
• 12 drops organic lavender essential oil
• 8 drops organic geranium essential oil
• 4 drops organic myrtle essential oil

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in glass jar with lid and shake well to combine.
2. Transfer serum into a dark amber or cobalt blue bottle to protect from light and store in a cool, dark place. This serum does not need to be refrigerated and should keep for several months if properly stored.

Serum Usage Pro Tips:

• A little skin serum goes a long way! Use an oil dropper or a low-volume pump to add a small amount of liquid to the palm of your hand, then gently spread serum over your face using non-dominant fingers (avoid using your pointer finger or thumb, as they put more pressure onto your skin).
• Any kind of high quality green tea will work well in this serum. I used sencha in this particular recipe, but I've also infused spring green tea or gunpowder green tea with great success!

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