natural

A new year is here! It’s customary to create resolutions at the start of a New Year to help yourself better your life over the course of the next 12 months. Swapping out conventional beauty products for natural skin care products is an easy way to reduce processed ingredients and chemicals in and on your body. This can also end up saving you money in the long run.

Of course it is fun to have a shopping spree at Sephora, Ulta or other luxury beauty retailers every so often as a treat or for specialty products. However, over the years I’ve saved myself tons of money by switching my every day care products to natural skincare products that I make myself. My skin and hair feel great and I don’t miss conventional products at all. 

To be honest, I am the kind of person that prefers DIYing, cooking and creating things from scratch. But if you are new to DIY natural beauty, you do not by any means have to do all of these at once! I recommend you choose one or a couple recipes to start with that can be a substitute for your usual products. You may be pleasantly surprised at the quality of products you can create right in your kitchen, which can be encouraging for you to continue with your natural cosmetic journey over time.

Benefits of creating your own natural skin care products:

1. Products homemade with natural ingredients are typically much more concentrated, which means you get many uses out of the product so they last you a longer time. 
2. Because they are concentrated with the active ingredients that are effective in protecting, moisturizing and improving your skin, you will usually find you get much better results from using them.  
3. You can customize your product to fit your liking and skin type so it is exactly what you need and want. 
4. You end up using less packaging so you can minimize waste, for example using glass containers for your finished product which can be reused when you make more or new products.

How to make a natural DIY lip balm

If I could pinpoint one product as my starting point to DIY natural beauty, it would be DIY lip balm. Personally I have never gotten great results from lip balms made from petroleum products or mineral oil, which can also include irritating menthol or phenol ingredients. They do create a barrier on the lips for a little while, but I never felt like they left lasting moisture on my lips the way natural balms can. Conventional balms also have to be reapplied frequently. To me, they just never felt like they made a difference at the end of the day, often seeming to have made lips drier and more irritated.

Using a DIY lip balm has made a huge difference with my painful cracked lips, dry lips, and chronically chapped lips. Plus, the nutrients in natural butters penetrate deeply to moisturize and fortify the deeper layers of skin so they feel and look great. Here’s my personal favorite lip balm recipe:

DIY Lip Balm Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 oz cocoa butter
• 1 oz shea butter
• 1 oz almond or jojoba oil
• 1 oz beeswax
• Optional: 1-5 drops of peppermint essential oil

Instructions

1. Melt the cocoa butter, shea butter, and beeswax over a double boiler system on low heat, stirring to combine. 
2. Add carrier oil and stir
3. Decant into your favorite small pot or lip balm container
4. Let cool in the fridge or freezer for 1 hour
5. Your DIY lip balm is ready for use.

Easy natural face cleanser

Your skin and scalp are acidic and soaps and detergents can compromise the acid mantle of your skin, which can in turn weaken your skin’s barrier and throw off its pH. Have you ever heard the old advice “never use soap on your face”? After testing this I’ve found it to be true over the years, at least for my particular skin type. 

My preferred substitute is oil cleansing, which is using a carrier oil to break down excess sebum, irritants, pollutants, and other impurities. Here’s a step by step breakdown of my favorite oil cleansing process:

1. Apply your butter or carrier oil of choice to your face. 
2. Apply a washcloth soaked in warm water over your face for 5 minutes to allow the oil to warm and soften any impurities and dead skin cells
3. Gently buff away the oil with the wash cloth, exfoliating your face 
4. Apply another layer of your preferred cleansing oil to help seal in moisture

To find your favorite oil cleanser, you may choose to follow a guide such as the comedogenicity scale of oils and butters, but I’ve found this is best only as a guide as there can be a great amount of variance due to your personal skin tolerances. 

Here are some suggested products for your oil cleanse: 

• Jojoba, grapeseed, and shea butter tend to be safe and balancing for oily or acne-prone skin types
• Almond, rice bran, and mango butter are wonderful for sensitive skin types 
• Olive, apricot kernel and kokum butter are excellent for mature skin types
• Wheat germ, cupuacu butter, cocoa butter are deeply moisturizing for very dry skin types

Clean skincare products don’t have to be complicated or expensive – sometimes just one single ingredient can give you the results you’re looking for. 

Natural, Non toxic face moisturizer:

The best part of using natural butters and oils as your face moisturizer is that they aren’t just moisturizers, due to their high level of natural vitamins and minerals, they’re serums too! It’s another frugal way to naturally combine products, save money, and get potent and concentrated nutrients all at the same time.

Moisturizing your face helps keep your skin barrier intact and repairs any damage from pollution and other environmental stressors. When you use unrefined natural butters and oils, the added bonus of plant based vitamins, minerals and antioxidants delivers a boost of nutrition daily and feeds your skin from the inside out like a good quality serum will do. The best organic face moisturizer for you could be the one you make right in your own kitchen – the results speak for themselves. A natural face moisturizer recipe I really like is below.

Deep Moisture Face Butter Recipe

Ingredients

Instructions

1. Melt the butters and oils in a double boiler on low heat
2. Place in the fridge for 1-2 hours until partially solid
3. Whip with an electric mixer for a minute
4. Add in optional essential oil
5. Continue whipping until it is to the desired consistency
6. Scoop into your jars or final container

See the full recipe and blog article here. This is a great concentrated shea butter face moisturizer.

DIY face masks and packs

With reusable silicone face masks, it’s easy to eliminate the use of single-use sheet masks by whipping up gentle and effective treatments at home. Lower quality sheet masks may sometimes not even be effective, or worse, be irritating to your skin, which can cause more inflammation and damage instead of soothing and fortifying skin. 

One of my go to face mask recipes is made with Calendula Flowers, the recipe is below.

Calendula and Aloe Face Mask Recipe

Ingredients: 

Instructions: 

1. Make tea with Calendula Flowers
2. Once tea is cool, add in Aloe Vera Juice
3. You can at this point freeze the mixture in your facial ice stick, or directly apply to your face with a cotton pad or a mask application kit. You can then cover your face with a reusable silicone mask to let it sit protected. 
4. Leave on for half an hour, rinse, and moisturize as usual. 

For more quick and easy options of homemade face masks see this blog article and recipes here.

Homemade Body Butters

By far, my favorite DIY recipes to make are body butters. They’re a simple way to create concentrated, luxury-quality products at home. They also help boost and repair the skin barrier over time. 

With conventional lotions, you must use a lot to cover your whole body and reapply often, sometimes multiple times a day. They usually do not contain a large amount of vitamins and minerals to help soothe and repair skin, or they contain very little of an active ingredient. 

However, with a homemade natural body butter you have a concentrated moisturizer packed with nutrients that can help protect, moisturize and soothe your skin. My favorite simple whipped body butter recipe is below.

Whipped Shea Butter Recipe

Ingredients

Instructions

1. If shea butter is soft, cut into small pieces and blend on low to mash it up (if shea butter is harder you may need to melt it on low heat and put into the fridge until partially solid.
2. Pour in your carrier oil a little at a time and continue to whip the butter and oils together
3. Add in the essential oil or oils of choice
4. Continue to whip until the body butter reaches your desired consistency.
5. It is now ready! Scoop into your final containers, cover with a lid and store in a cool dry place.

To use, clean the area of the body in need, pat dry and apply body butter. Allow to soak in. Use once a day or more if needed.

With many body butter recipes ranging from a light whipped mousse to a rich and deeply moisturizing cocoa creme to an everyday skin-healing whipped body butter, you can use the these concentrated moisturizers to keep your skin soothed and moisturized and help improve its moisture-retaining properties. All natural lotion is very easy to achieve with just a few natural ingredients.

Would you prefer more of a balm-like product such as Vaseline or Aquaphor? Simply add 1-2 tbsp cosmetic wax at the melting step to your formula and pour the melted product in the final jar instead of doing the whipping step. Stick it in the fridge and it will come out with a nice balm texture.

DIY deodorant and homemade body powder

Yes, you can make a natural deodorant that works! Even the most effective commercial natural deodorants on the market right now are made up of butters, oils, cosmetic powders and waxes.

Sweating is your body’s way of cleansing and releasing toxins, and I prefer to use only the most natural and gentle ingredients in the armpit area around breast tissue. While it may require a bit of an adjustment period when swapping antiperspirants for deodorants, you may find that you will sweat less than anticipated once this process is complete. You will find more information on making this switch and a popular natural deodorant recipe here.

If you’d prefer a more matte formula to help keep areas of your body dry and odor-free, a soft dusting powder for your body is very easy and cheap to make with natural ingredients. Adding your own optional custom blend of essential oils can help it smell great exactly the way you would like.  Here is my preferred recipe:

DIY Deodorant Powder

• 4 oz arrowroot powder
• 1 oz zinc oxide powder
• 30 – 50 drops of essential oil blend of choice

1. Combine powders in a bowl with a spatula, stirring gently. 
2. Empty these powders into your container of choice
3. Add your essential oil blend to the container
4. Close the lid and shake vigorously for 5 minutes

That’s it! Help keep your skin smooth and dry and feel refreshed any time of the year.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog article and have found some ideas to swap into your beauty routine to create DIY natural products. The best organic skincare for you could be one of the recipes in this blog post – no more combing the aisles of the drugstore or spending a fortune on product after product at the luxury beauty store. Start the year off strong by using skin-loving ingredients, saving money, and looking your best!

As always please leave any feedback or comments below.

Author: Natalie, DIY skin care enthusiast