One of the things going on a journey like mine has shown me, is that the you can make almost any product you put on your skin or hair yourself. So I challenged myself to make the gift sets I would normally buy as Christmas presents for my family. I scoured my Pinterest board and came up with a shortlist of things to attempt. Scrubs, lotions and hair creams where my goal, I gave myself a couple of days and off I went to make The Woeful To FroFull Christmas Pampering range. I did have to buy a lot of the ingredients but homemade hair and skin products have all the same things in, so I may not have got the benefit of these scrubs and lotions but I’ll get the benefit of the leftovers.

 

Sugar Cookie Foot Scrub from “So Let’s Hangout”

My first “product” to make was a foot scrub. I’ve never used one, but I liked how it looked. Of course I liked how it looked because people don’t post bad pictures of beauty products. It was only 4 ingredients, brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla extract and olive oil. This one I liked, this one turned out exactly how I expected. It had a great consistency, smelt lovely and was beyond simple. I would make this again in a heartbeat! This went so well, if only everything was so simple!

 

 

 

 

Brown Sugar and Honey Body Scrub by Simply Shellie

This scrub from Simply Shellie was well, simple. Honey, sugar and coconut oil. Now my coconut oil was rock hard to start as you would expect so I melted it to mix with the other ingredients. I melted it to a complete liquid state but as you can see in the bottom left hand picture, that does not really look like something you want to put on your skin. The coconut oil would not mix with the other ingredients so it created an oil layer on top. When it cooled and hardened, I got the bottom right hand picture which also doesn’t really look like something you would want to use. I then had to smash the sugar mix into the coconut oil to create a give-able gift. Note to self, if I do this one again, use a little less coconut oil and melt it to a soft consistency rather than liquid in order for it to be mixed easily and so it doesn’t leave you with this weird two layered concoction.

 

 

Lemon Honey Face Scrub

This is another simple one that was made without a hitch. It’s lemon juice, honey and olive oil. I have to admit that I may have eaten some of this. Only a bit but it was tasty and I don’t feel guilty about it. You can only judge me if you have never licked the spoon while making a cake or cookies. Yea, I didn’t think so!

I think I had to “octuple” the recipe so I was able to fill 4 baby jars but the colour is really vibrant, the texture is a little runny so maybe a little less lemon juice next time but it was also still rough from the sugar which I like my scrubs to be and all the ingredients are great for your skin.

 

 

Coconut Body Lotion by the Indian Spot

 Who doesn’t love coconut oil? It has so many uses but I don’t think you can beat just slathering it on your skin! This recipe has coconut oil, shea butter, peppermint  jojoba oil. The instructions say after melting all of the ingredients, to put it in the fridge for an hour to harden. Well this took hours and hours but it worked out so well in the end. It does more resemble coconut oil than your average cream in that it is solid in the tub and then melts in your hands but it does really moisturise well. It is one that you need to really massage in or you might end up leaving a bit of a greasy trail everywhere you go but I would like to make some more however just for me next time, nobody else!

 

Exfoliating Sugar Scrub Cubes from One Essential Community

I really liked the idea of making sugar scrub cubes, I thought it would look quite impressive but it just didn’t work out although I made it look fairly presentable in the pictures. This contains glycerin soap, shea butter, jojoba oil, vitamin e oil, lavender essential oil, sugar and mica powder for colour. I may have cocked this up but the instructions were really clear with step by step photos. In the end I didn’t give it away because it failed. I melted the glycerin soap as instructed. Now it warns you that the mixture will start to set very quickly when the sugar is added but as soon as I started adding anything to the glycerin soap it started to set and my end product had lots of globs of the glycerin rather than mixed in nicely with the other ingredients. The cubes also lose their integrity really quickly rather than staying in a useable cube form. I’m not sure what I could do next time to get it right but I am willing to try again. However, as I didn’t give the scrub cubes away like originally intended and I couldn’t face just binning it all, I have 4 large jars of the stuff to use. I have to spend five minutes after every shower cleaning up the glycerin as I don’t want it to block the drain. Oh well, if at first you don’t succeed…

Shealoe Butter Mousse Recipe by Discovering Natural

 

As I was making this one, whenever I got some on my hands I rubbed it in my hair and I kept doing it, leaving me with one ultra moisturised patch of curls a top my head. So anyone who was lucky enough to get this as a gift from me, you’re welcome! This contains all that stuff we know is great for our hair – coconut oil, shea butter, aloe vera gel, jojoba, vegetable glycerin, vitamin e and peppermint oil. It smells delicious, felt amazing and I hope it got used before it went mouldy which is a risk with homemade products that don’t have preservatives in. Even though the Vitamin E should help keep it going for longer, it is not a long-term fix.

So I made a lot of stuff, instead of buying a lot of stuff which I am proud of. The ones that didn’t work were failures but more importantly learning experiences. I’m a beginner, things aren’t going to work every time, I don’t have the knowledge of when things go wrong how to put them right but I really do hope the gifts were well received. I hope they were used and not stuffed into the back of a cupboard like a lot of Christmas toiletries are. I won’t be offended if they were, not massively offended, but it would be nice to know they are making my family even more moisturised, smooth and beautiful! I appreciate the work and time the authors, mixologists and bloggers have given to share their work, ideas and formulations and I look forward to seeing what else is out there to create.

Let’s keep growing (and mixing) together!

xx Lee xx

Comments welcome below. What DIY skin or hair products have you tried? What do you recommend? Any disasters?

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