After months of formulation, testing and perfecting, we quietly introduced this azure gem at the 2018 Natural Products Expo West.
We are delighted to introduce you to our new Blue Cactus Beauty Balm. This creamy turquoise blue balm represents the union of the desert oils of Prickly Pear, Baobab, and Jojoba with butters of some of our favorite, sacred trees.
Cool and refreshing waves of serenity await you.
Blue Cactus Beauty Balm is:
- The juncture between antioxidant serum, moisturizer, and facial butter
- Highly concentrated
- Certified Organic
- Water-free, wax-free, preservative-free
- For all skin, especially sensitive, fiery, reactive, dry, devitalized, over-processed, troubled, mature, and acne-prone.
Blue Cactus Beauty Balm contains an abundance of:
- Essential Fatty Acids — support the protective lipid barrier, soften, fortify and support
- Vitamin E — restorative antioxidant, softens the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and prevents further oxidative damage
- Phytosterols — help maintain barrier function and encourage collagen production
- Polyphenols — harmonize, pacify heat, prevent free-radical damage, and rejuvenate
What It Does
Blue Cactus Beauty Balm is a creamy solid oil. It penetrates instantly into into the skin, transforming from a creamy butter into a silken oil.
This highly concentrated, antioxidant-rich Balm was created to comfort and consecrate all skin. Blue Cactus Beauty Balm features heat-pacifying blue tansy, antioxidant rich prickly pear seed, nourishing baobab, and protective Kperisi Village shea butter.
When paired with a HydroSoul it is a minimalistic reverie, meeting all your skin’s antioxidant, moisture and hydration needs.
Who It's For
This balm is for people who want the soothing, restorative and calming effects of Blue Cactus Beauty Elixir, but with a bit more moisture and protection. Where our Blue Cactus Elixir is Evan’s love song to the desert, Blue Cactus Balm is a global, intersectional, invitation to all skin. An invitation for rest, an invitation for nourishment, and an invitation for cooling tranquility.
While it is a wonderful choice for all skin, the skin conditions that will benefit most from its deep, cooling nourishing are:
- Unquenchably dry
- Extremely reactive and sensitive
- Endlessly red and/or chapped
- Over-processed, over-exfoliated, compromised, and troubled
- Mature
- Acne-prone
Sacred Scent
Blue Cactus Beauty Balm’s other-worldly scent is the fragrance of myth.
Ethereal and enigmatic blue tansy is unique in that it is at once a cool, crisp, clean note, while also bordering on the edge of spicy. The complexity of tansy is anchored by the rich warmth, depth and caramel notes of Hawaiian sandalwood, and then softened by the sweet, lush sensuality of ylang ylang blossoms. Together, these three plants intoxicate the senses, enchant the heart, and soothe the mind.
The Ingredients
Prickly Pear Seed Oil
• EFAs • Vitamin E (over 50% more than argan) • Vitamin K • Phytosterols • Polyphenols
Found in deserts all over the world the opuntia species has been a global dietary staple for millennia. Both the cactus pads and the cactus fruit are edible. The precious oil comes from the small seeds within the fruit, and is extracted through cold pressing.
Prickly pear seed oil contains 50% more vitamin E than argan oil, making it the highest source of vitamin E in all cosmetic oils. It also contains notable amounts of vitamin K, which works to keep the skin strong and resilient. While prickly pear seed oil contains both omega-6 and omega-9, it is dominated by linoleic acid (omega-6) a nourishing, softening and quick-absorbing essential fatty acid. Studies have indicated that blemish-prone skin is often deficient in linoleic acid, which helps to explain why both blemish-prone and mature skin experience such tremendous results from this beautifully restorative oil. It feels lightweight but delivers deep moisture into the cells, while promoting elasticity, pacifying heat and fending off free radicals.
Baobab Oil
• EFAs • Phytosterols • Vitamin E
Mythic tree. Sacred. Ancient. Otherworldly.
As a species, Baobab is over 100 million years old, and predates the splitting of the continents. It grows throughout Africa, as well as in Australia, Madagascar, and Arabia. The trees live for thousands of years.
These immensely powerful and revered trees are considered a symbol of wisdom and longevity and are called the “Tree of Life” because they have provided so much to humans — shelter, wood, food, glue, clothing, rope, and even water. Baobab trees have even been used in burial rituals as final resting places for the holy people of Serer, an indigenous group from West Africa, for it is said to bury your wisdom-keepers in the ground is to bury your history and your knowledge.
Baobab oil is rich in EFAs and has a relatively balanced ratio of oleic (omega 9) and linoleic (omega 6) fatty acids, as well as an abundance of vitamin E and phytosterols. The oil is almost creamy in texture and leaves skin feeling plush and plump. It is calming, nourishing and ideal for sensitive, compromised and over-processed skin.
Baobab ~ Tree of Life
Blue Tansy Oil
• Myrcene • Sabinene • Chamazulene
Also native to North Africa, Blue Tansy is an absolute skin savior. Distillation transforms the golden flower of blue tansy into a deep and mystical azure. The resulting essential oil contains a significant dose of chamazulene - an incredibly heat pacifying compound that contributes to blue tansy’s profoundly calming, cooling, and soothing abilities. When blended into nourishing fixed oils and butters, it blossoms anything it touches into a creamy turquoise. This dreamy Moroccan flower is an absolute gift to red, hot, fiery, reactive and stressed skin and is a true oasis of the deepest calm.
Jojoba Oil
• Fatty acids • Vitamin E • Phytosterols • Phenolic compounds
Jojoba oil is created from the seeds of a humble desert bush and is technically not an oil but a liquid wax ester. Our certified organic Jojoba comes from a small, family-run farm in Arizona, its native territory, and is ideal for nourishing and balancing all skin conditions. Used for thousands of years by the indigenous people of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico to nourish and protect parched skin, its dominant fatty-acid — gadoleic acid — resembles human sebum more closely than any other plant lipid. Jojoba harmonizes all skin and creates a synergy in any formulation.
Shea Butter
• EFAs • Cinnamic Acid • Lupeol • Alpha and beta-amyrin • Vitamin E • Beta-carotene • Phytosterols
Shea butter has an incredibly rich history and is one of most beloved skin allies. Native to equatorial & Subsaharan Africa in a region known as the Shea Belt, shea butter has been used throughout Africa for millennia to treat skin ailments, and also as a nourishing cooking fat.
Created from the inner nut of the sacred Shea tree, this timeless ingredient was once traded to Ancient Egypt to be used in their beauty creams, and the wood was once used to make funerary caskets for burial rituals. It now has worldwide renown and popularity for its remarkable ability to nourish, protect, beautify and soothe the skin.
Aside from its delicious composition of fatty acids — like the über-protective & emollient stearic acid, and the deeply nourishing and moisturizing oleic acid — shea butter contains the compounds of lupeol, and alpha and beta-amyrin. These gems are known to pacify heat and create supreme harmony while encouraging the production and maintenance of collagen. Another special compound — cinnamic acid — provides solar protective and regenerative qualities. Shea also contains phytosterols which are a category of lipids that help support and fortify the skin’s protective lipid barrier, while encouraging collagen production. Additionally, the Vitamin E and beta-carotene in shea butter provide additional antioxidant support and gentle nourishment.
Our Shea Butter is always traditionally handmade and comes to us exclusively from the hands of the women of the Kperisi Village in Ghana.
Cacao Butter
• EFAs • Phytosterols • Vitamin K
Indigenous to Meso-America, cocoa butter is the nourishing and protective fat from the cacao (chocolate) plant. For centuries, the cacao tree was one of the most sacred and important plants throughout the numerous cultures in its native area. The Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Toltec people all had a deep and divine reverence for this special plant. And, as you are probably aware, it has since become one of the most well known and beloved plants around the world.
The botanical name for cocoa —Theobroma cacao — comes from Greek and translates to “food of the gods.” On the skin, cocoa butter provides nourishing, heat-pacifying, protection through its collection of fatty acids — oleic acid, palmitic acid, and stearic acid, primarily — as well as it’s phytosterols and Vitamin K content.
Use
This cloudy, creamy turquoise dream can be used in a couple different ways to calm, cool, nourish and protect the skin.
As Moisturizer: Melt a small amount in the palm of your hand, then massage into skin. For deeper moisture, blend with one of our Facial Tonic HydroSouls.
As Moisturizing Mask:Massage about two fingertips worth of Blue Cactus Balm into your skin. If desired, allow to cocoon the skin for ten or more minute. Lay a warm, damp washcloth over face to steam into skin, pressing over cheeks, chin and forehead. Repeat until completely absorbed. Follow with a generous saturation of hydrosol, and an additional bit of Balm.