After checking out a brand of skin care products made from only natural ingredients, I decided that rather than pay $79 for a small tube of moisturizing face cream, I would learn to make my own. Meadowsweet Herbs is a local shop that sells most, if not all, the ingredients for making skin care products, and they also offer training classes. I intend to find the schedule and attend some of these classes. I am also studying a book called "Earthly Bodies & Heavenly Hair," which contains hair and skin care product recipes. I find these recipes to be a bit more tedious than I hoped for; and the recipes call for such a vast array of essential oils and fresh herbs (I need to grow a garden of a wide variety of herbs) that it might be more cost-effective to buy the $79 cream! I am hoping the Meadowsweet Herbs classes have recipes with simpler ingredients.
The "Earthly Bodies..." book has many recipes requiring a heat-proof measuring cup. One necessity for this is measuring beeswax. You heat a certain number of ounces of oil in a heat-proof measuring container and add wax scraped off the beeswax block until the liquid is to the prescribed level.
I have been looking online for a heat-proof measuring cup that clearly marks each ounce; because those are the amounts you work with when making creams and lotions. I am intrigued with the idea of borosilicate glass measuring cups or beakers. Borosilicate glass is lightweight, thin, durable and able to withstand extreme temperatures. (It is different from Pyrex which is made of tempered soda-lime glass.) I will see if Meadowsweet Herbs carries borosilicate glass measuring cups. Natural homemade skin care products will not contain chemical preservatives such as parabens; so their shelf lives will be shorter. Thus, you will probably want to make amounts that can be used within 1 or 2 months. I was interested to read that grapefruit seed extract is a natural preservative, as are some essential oils such as lavender; but they are not as potent as the dreaded parabens.
Carrier oils such as olive, coconut, grapeseed, jojoba and almond, serve as the bases for homemade creams, lotions and balms. Each person's skin has a unique responce to an oil, and you can find the oil best suited for your skin type by testing each on your skin and seeing how it sits on or is obsorbed by your skin, whether it leaves your skin softer, how its aroma mixes with your chemistry. Generally, grapseed oil is considered to be good for oily skin, olive oil and coconut oil good for dry skin, jojoba oil good for mature skin and almond oil good for normal skin.
I am amazed at the antimicrobial and cleansing properties of essential oils. There is a lot to learn about them, and I am eager to start using them and see how they work. Hopefully, I will be conscientious about keeping you posted about my experiences with using them. Happy day to you!
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