I know sometimes when people see the word "chemical" they stress out, but it shouldn't! The word chemical only means "something that contains elements", which is to say everything on earth. Your hair, your window, your cup of tea, arsenic, mushrooms - everything on earth is a chemical. So when we talk about chemical exfoliants, we're talking about those exfoliants that work through chemical reactions with your skin to exfoliate! These include such ingredients as AHAs, salicylic acid, and extracts, like willow bark, papaya, or pineapple.

Rather than re-write the post on chemical exfoliants again, I'll refer you to that post - chemical exfoliants. Don't worry: I'll be here when you get back.

Okay, so now that you know all about chemical exfoliants, please keep this in mind: We generally don't want to combine a few different ones together in one product. More is not better in this situation. We want to keep well within the suggested usage guidelines, lest we end up with severely reddened and sensitive skin.
Can we combine physical and chemical exfoliants" I don't recommend it because we could end up with really sensitive and annoyed skin.

So how do we include them in our facial cleansers" We can use them at the suggested usage rates in any product we make. We can take a recipe we've made before - like this one for oily skin from the Newbie Tuesday on modifying our recipes to include hydrolyzed proteins - and modify it to include our chemical e...