DIY Hydrating Eye Cream for Sensitive Skin with Birch Sap

This DIY hydrating eye cream for sensitive skin feels velvety and is perfect to care for the skin around the eyes. Learn how to make homemade eye cream in just 30 minutes, with all-natural materials.

The ingredients in this lightweight eye moisturizer recipe include birch sap, berry fruit wax and mix of nourishing oils. The step-by-step tutorial comes with free printable labels for packaging.

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DIY hydrating eye cream for sensitive skin

This DIY hydrating eye cream for sensitive skin is an all-natural eye moisturizer that will hydrate and nourish your skin. From start to finish, this homemade eye cream takes less than 30 minutes. And making this DIY beauty product isn’t difficult either.

This eye cream for dry eyelids is also very nourishing – it’s made with birch sap, berry fruit wax, and a moisturizing blend of squalane, jojoba, castor, and cranberry seed oil. The texture feels soft, creamy, luxurious, and lightweight all at the same time – just like the expensive eye creams you find at the store.

Homemade moisturizing eye cream

Whether you’re looking for an eye cream for the 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s – my DIY eye cream is a skincare treat no matter your age. Make this eye cream part of your at-home beauty routine. It can be applied in the morning and to moisturize your skin throughout the day. You can also use it as an overnight treatment whenever your eyes need a little extra TLC.

While this DIY eye cream is wonderful to moisturize the dry skin around the eyes any time of year, I especially love using it during the winter months. Freezing temperatures, cold winter air and radiator heat can lead to super dry skin around eyes.

Before learning how to make eye cream at home, let’s talk about the ingredients.

Birch sap

I’m excited to introduce you to a new beauty ingredient for this DIY hydrating eye cream: birch sap! Read on to learn more about this fascinating product and its potential benefits for anti-aging and skincare.

What is birch sap?

Birch sap, also called birch water or birch juice, is the sap tapped from birch trees. Birch water is colourless, has no odour, tastes faintly sweet, and is often consumed as a beverage. Harvesting birch sap is similar to the extraction of maple sap: a hole is drilled into the tree trunk, and the sap is collected in a container. Tapping birch trees only happens in early spring.

What are possible skincare benefits of birch sap?

Birch water boasts a number of health benefits. The sap contains over 15 amino acids, enzymes, minerals (especially calcium, magnesium and phosphorus), and vitamins (mostly C and Bs). The liquid is high in antioxidants (polyphenol and superoxide dismutase), which help to protect cells from free radicals and oxidative damage.

The hydrating and antioxidant properties make birch sap an excellent ingredient for skincare products.  Furthermore, vitamin C offers some protection against harmful UV rays and boosts the production of collagen. Although more scientific research is needed, it seems that birch sap can do a lot for skin hydration and rejuvenation.

Where can I buy birch sap?

Nowadays, many supermarkets sell birch sap. It can be usually found in the healthy drinks aisle, next to coconut water. You can also order birch sap online, which is very convenient if you can’t find birch sap locally.

What can I use instead of birch sap?

As I mentioned, this eye cream water is a water-oil-emulsion, and some sort of liquid is needed. Instead of birch sap, this eye cream recipe can also be made with a hydrosol, for example, rose or mint, or filtered tap water.

If you react allergic to birch pollen, I recommend to avoid birch water just to be safe and choose one of the above options.

Other ingredients for DIY eye cream

Now that we know about the most exciting ingredients in this moisturizing eye cream, let’s briefly look at the other materials need for making a repairing eye cream.

Berry fruit wax

Berry fruit wax (Rhus Verniciflua Peel Cera) is a vegan wax made from the berries of the Chinese lacquer tree. The wax gives the hydrating eye cream a soft consistency and is considerably lighter than beeswax. To learn more about this ingredient, have a look at my DIY lip repair balm recipe.

Note: Berry fruit wax is easily available in the UK, but I didn’t realise that this plant-based wax is very difficult to find in North America when I made this eye cream recipe. Alternatively, use 1 tbsp beeswax or 1/2 tbsp candelilla wax if vegan.

Oils

• squalene oil – Squalane is a lightweight oil derived from olives. It’s an excellent non-greasy moisturizer, absorbs quickly into the skin and has excellent anti-ageing properties.
• jojoba oil – Noncomedogenic jojoba oil is similar to the sebum of human skin, and a humectant ingredient meaning it creates a protective barrier that locks moisture in the skin.
• castor oil* – Castor seed oil has anti-inflammatory properties and a high content of ricinoleic acid, which conditions and helps the skin to retain moisture.
• cranberry seed oil* – Antioxidant-rich cranberry seed oil absorbs quickly into the skin, gives excellent hydration, as well as strengthening and tightening the skin.

*If you’re following a strict low-PUFA skin care regimen, replace the castor and cranberry seed oil either with babassu oil, fractionated coconut oil, or increase the amount of squalane and jojoba oil.

Other ingredients

• vitamin E – Vitamin E from vitamin E capsules is used to further the anti-oxidant qualities of the other ingredients.
• Optiphen Plus – Since this eye cream contains water, a preservative has to be used to avoid mould and bacteria growth. Optiphen Plus is a paraben-free preservative and will prolong the shelf life of the eyelid moisturizer.

Eye cream for sensitive skin

Looking at the DIY hydrating eye cream ingredients, you might be wondering why no essential oils are included in this homemade skin care recipe. I love essential oils in natural skincare, but I really wanted to create an eye cream for sensitive skin that even someone with extremely sensitive skin could use.

The skin around the eyes is thinner and more delicate than the rest of the face. And when using a product with essential oils close to the eyes, you always risk getting product into your eyes

I hope now you understand why this is a DIY eye cream without essential oils. By the way, this also a great DIY eye cream for men.

Tools and supplies to make a hydrating eye cream

Preparing homemade eye cream is made easy with the use of the following tools and supplies:

Glass jar

We are working with small amounts and have to melt, mix, and freeze the ingredients. I like to use a 16-oz wide mouth mason jar for this purpose, since it’s non-metallic, heat- and freezer-resistant and has just the perfect size to whip the eye cream.

Milk frother

The other tool I recommend is an electric milk frother. A milk frother operates at a speed high enough to blend the ingredients to a homogeneous cream. You could use a hand-held immersion mixer/ rod, too, but it’s more difficult to mix everything in from the bottom edges of the jar.

Cosmetic jars

The recipe makes enough to fill 3 1-oz/30 ml cosmetic jars. I prefer glass jars over plastic because some additives in plastic are fat-soluble and can leach out into the eye cream.  Plus, the frosted glass looks very elegant, I also like this version with wood-grain lids.

Laser thermometer

A laser thermometer is the perfect tool to take temperatures easily and mess-free.

How do you make a homemade eye cream?

You’ll love two things about this homemade beauty recipe: it’s very moisturising AND so easy to make! Let me show you how to make this eye cream for sensitive skin in no time at all.

Warm the birch water

Fill the birch water into a heat-proof measuring cup or pitcher and warm in a water bath to 120°F / 50°C. You don’t have to use a thermometer, just make sure the birch sap doesn’t boil or steam. Once the sap is warm, take out of the water bath, add the Optiphen Plus and set aside.

Melt the wax and oils

Add the oils and berry wax into a heat-resistant glass jar or measuring cup. Then melt warm the ingredients in the water bath at a low temperature until the berry wax has melted. Don’t overheat, the lower the temperature, the better.

Let the oil mixture cool to 100°F / 37°C. The mixture will look golden yellow at this point.

Mix the emulsion

Cut open three vitamin E capsules with the tip of a small pairing knife. Squeeze the liquid from the capsules into the oil-wax-mixture. Whisk with a coffee creamer to combine.

Keep whisking and slowly pour the warm birch water to the oil-wax mixture. Whisk the emulsion for 5 minutes. The mixture should be pale yellow now.

Freeze and finish the eye cream

Then place the eye cream into the freezer for 5 minutes.

After taking the jar out of the freezer, whip for another 5 minutes, until the mixture looks fluffy and almost white.

Transfer the mixture into airtight jars or storage containers.

How to apply eye cream

How do you apply eye cream? Here are a few tips for the application of my DIY hydrating eye cream:

• Take a cosmetic spatula, coffee stirrer or wooden ice cream stick and take out a small amount of eye cream. If using your fingertips, make sure they are clean. This DIY eye cream is very rich, so a little goes a long way.
• Apply the hydrating eye cream in small dots on the skin below your eyes. Then tap the eye moisturizer into the skin to help absorption and stimulate the blood flow. Gently massage what is left on your fingertip into your eyelids and the skin under the eyebrows.
• You can use this moisturizing homemade eye cream twice a day, in the morning and evening. In the morning, I usually use only a tiny amount to hydrate the dry skin under the eyes. The cream can be worn under make-up, but you will have to do a test to see how your make-up products and the homemade eye cream work together.
• At night, after removing my make-up and cleansing my face, I apply a generous amount and leave it on like an overnight eye mask. Your skin will be perfectly hydrated and radiant the next morning.

How to store eye cream

Regardless of climate, the refrigerator is the best place to store this DIY hydrating eye cream. Since this is a natural skincare product without synthetic stabilizers, exposure to heat can brake the delicate emulsion, and you would be left with an oily mess, not at all what we want from an eyelid moisturizer.

The eye cream won’t harden in the fridge but will stay soft and creamy. And as an added bonus, the DIY eye cream will also feel incredibly cooling and refreshing. I noticed that using chilled eye cream even reduces puffiness and the appearance of dark circles.

More homemade winter skincare ideas

Whether you need more winter skincare ideas or just enjoy making natural products, the following homemade beauty recipes will make your skin looking and feeling great!

Bath & Body

• Hawaiian black lava bath salt with cornflower and hibiscus
• moisturizing snowflake bath bombs
• moisturizing melt & pour soap for dry skin
• body lotion for dry skin with cornflower and chamomile

Face

• 6 blue clay mask recipes
• exfoliating cleansing balm with jojoba beads
• lip repair cream with berry wax and pomegranate seed oil
• face moisturiser for dry and sensitive skin

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