Gift Ideas
Need an idea for an awesome homemade gift? Here's lots!
3 Butters You Shouldn’t Ignore (and one you might want to)
If you're anything like me, when you first got started in the wonderful world of DIY, shea butter and cocoa butter were two of the first ingredients you purchased. They're fabulous, versatile butters, and I used (and continue to use!) them in all sorts of...
I tried 6 different emulsifying waxes. Here’s what happened.
I'm often ask if I can use a different emulsifying wax than the one I used in a formulation. So, I decided to put six common emulsifiers to the test, using my Easy Emulsified Body Butter formulation (which uses Emulsifying Wax NF) as the sample formulation. Which...
The key to smooth body butters
Grainy, mealy, uneven body butters are the bane of any formulator’s existence. You’re dreaming of something silky smooth and divine, but instead your body butter feels like its full of sand... or perhaps you were promised a solid bar, but got oily slop instead. Bleh!...
Luxury brand formulation secrets for expensive-feeling lotions
Even though I make most of the skincare products I use, I still enjoy perusing the skincare departments at Sephora and airport duty-free shops—paying extra attention to the luxury brands. I sample, sniff, and examine ingredient lists like a lotion detective. If a...
Easy Emulsified Body Butter
If you've been frustrated by heavy, melt-prone body butters, this is the formulation for you. In this post I'll be teaching you how to make an easy 7-ingredient body butter that is lighter than traditional DIY body butters, won't melt in hot weather, won't seize up if...
Lavender Oat Dream Cream
Today we are diving deep into the archives to Bee Better a project I published almost exactly nine (!!) years ago. This formulation began life as a Lush dupe(ish), and while the 2014 version wasn't bad, I've learned a lot since then. Today's updated version is softer...
10 Tips for a Better DIY Lab
Today I wanted to share some quick tips & tricks to improve your DIY'ing lab/making space. These are things I've picked up and figured out over 10+ years and five different homes. No matter what your making situation is—whether you work from your kitchen or have a...
Lighter Whipped Shea Butter
In this post I'm sharing two lighter whipped shea butter formulations—Lavender Calendula and Coffee—and I'm sharing the easiest formulation strategy for creating lighter, less greasy body butters. Let's go! Want to watch this project instead of read it? Watch Now The...
Green Tea Conditioning Hair & Body Butter
Today's formulation is a soft, creamy butter that works beautifully for haircare and skincare. Depending on how you use it, it can be a super-concentrated leave-in hair conditioner, a hair serum, a regular-strength leave-in hair conditioner, or a body butter. It's...
I tried 10 different ways to naturally color lotion.
I'm often asked about different ways to naturally colour lotions, so I conducted a fifteen-week experiment testing out ten different natural colourants to see what worked, and what didn't. Why 'lotions' specifically? Formulations that contain water—like lotions—are a...
Perfectly Pillowy Whipped Shea Butter
I'm pretty excited about this simple yet perfectly pillowy whipped shea butter! This two-ingredient formulation came about as part of my work on last spring's Why is my body butter not whipping? video. I needed lots of b-roll of different body butters being...
Hyaluronic Acid Serum: 3 vs. 5 vs. 8 ingredients
In this post I'm going to teach you how to make three different hyaluronic acid serums; one with 3 ingredients, one with 5, and one with 8. Each formulation builds on the one before it so you can see how to modify and expand on (or, if done in reverse, simplify!) a...