Body & Skin Care Recipes

Lotion, lip balm, salves, body oils, and more—oh my! You can make it all with these awesome recipes.

Making Substitutions

Don’t have the oil or butter called for in the recipe? Here’s a guide on how to choose a good alternative from what you do have.

What's with the waxes?

Beeswax, carnauba wax, candelila wax, bayberry wax—how are they different? Can you use one instead of another?

Help, I made a mess!

My best tips for cleaning up your DIY messes 🙂

Whipped Minty Foot Scrub

I really like going barefoot during the summer. My bathtub and typically clean floors really wish I wouldn’t. There’s something about dirty feet that just end up being a whole different level of dirty. You’ll give them what feels like a fairly dedicated sudsing with a...

Rose Witch Hazel Facial Toner

This sweetly fragrant, refreshing facial toner has become a fast favourite of mine. It smells deliciously of roses, features several soothing and lightly hydrating ingredients, and leaves my skin feeling revived and gently cleansed. It's also crazy easy to make (no...

Oil Cleansing Gel

When I was in Montreal last year I visited Coop Coco, a local DIY supplier, and poked around, looking for things I didn’t have that would fit in my suitcase. I ended up picking up a bottle of Sucragel, a cold-process emulsifier I’d never worked with before, brought it...

Herbs & Honey Pink Clay Mask

Today's project is inspired by a face mask I spotted on Instagram that rings it at about $100/100mL. It definitely had some good ingredients in it, but nothing that should make it that sort of wince-worthy expensive. My version blends two different clays with some...

Creamy Lip Balm

This rich, creamy lip balm came out of the experiments I did as I was developing my recipe for my Basic Moldable Lipstick Base. It was the far end of my "let's make this creamier" experiments, and while I loved how it felt, it basically glued itself to the inside of...

Lavender Patchouli Body Butter

I've been playing with lots of more complex DIYs lately, and I was itching to get back to something a bit simpler. Something made with wonderful plant-sourced oils and butters that are accented with essential oils. The sort of thing that isn't intimidating, and really...

Moisturizing Overnight Lip Mask

Back in December I picked up Laniege’s Lip Sleeping Mask at San Francisco’s Duty Free shop during a rather long stop-over on my way to New Zealand. I’d read about the product working wonders for super dry lips and was intrigued by those claims and also by the idea of...

Soothing Aloe Aftershave Cream

Today's recipe comes from a recipe request from Felipe; he was looking for an "aftershave balm that is easily absorbed on the skin and helps the skin recover after the shave". He also included a link to a product he liked, and a quick look at the ingredients showed...

Foaming Coconut Bath Milk

Last year I made some bath bombs that contained both milk powder and a surfactant, and while I loved them, I found that any large amount of milk powder negatively impacted the structural integrity of the bath bombs. I wanted more milk, dangit, but the bath bomb format...

Frankincense Facial Lotion

This delightful lotion comes from a recipe request from Ashlie, who loves the Frankincense Intense line from Neal’s Yard Remedies. I love Neal’s Yard; their formulations are solid and their corporate ethos is both environmentally and socially responsible. I’ve visited...

Rose Silk Hydrating Sheet Mask

Sheet masks are all the rage these days, but they are also usually at least $1–2 a piece, and you only get to use them once, and that’s a bit ridiculous. I have a few (mostly from last October's trip to NYC) and I find myself hoarding them (like I used to do with bath...

Eucalyptus Mint Soft Cleansing Balm

This soft, squeezable cleansing balm is rich and creamy, melts into a stunning cleanser once you start working with it, and leaves your skin feeling refreshed and just a touch minty. I love it first thing in the morning to help me hit the ground running! Want to watch...

Oatmeal & Milk After Shower Oil

This lightweight oil is post-shower (or bath) perfection. It perfectly melds with your soft, damp skin to lock in moisture and leave your skin feeling velvety, conditioned, and downright pampered. Soothing colloidal oats and rich coconut milk play starring roles, with...

Foaming Shaving Cream

One of my clearest memories from early adolescence was the discovery of shaving cream, and how utterly wonderful it was. A thin stream of colourful gel would transform into abundant, creamy lather for an utterly decadent shaving experience that usually smelled like...

Coconut Massage Butter

Massage lovers everywhere: prepare to fall in love. This silky, glide-y Coconut Massage Butter gives you eons of working time on the skin for a luxurious, satiny massage. It isn't oily or greasy, but you'll find your hands gliding over skin with a wonderful, soft...

Canada Day Clay Face Mask

Happy Canada Day! For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm Canadian, and Canada Day was yesterday—a day where we celebrate red and white, maple leaves, apologizing to people who bump into you, and our delicious decision to elevate doughnut holes into their own food...

Lemon Rose Tinted Lip Balm

After returning from a week in Toronto earlier this month my lips were a mess. Toronto is wonderfully humid whilst Calgary is... not... and my lips had been spoilt with all that decadent, skin-loving humidity. The return to Calgary saw my lips pitching a very...

Whipped Shea Citrus Body Butter

This marvelous body butter is many things I thought it couldn’t be. It is rich in skin-loving shea butter, but not at all greasy. It smells deliciously of citrus, but isn’t photosensitizing. It is lightweight and whippy (and stays that way!), but you don’t have to do...

Lemon Rose Foaming Hand Wash

It would seem I cannot get enough of all things rose and lemon these days. I'm ok with it 😄This foaming hand wash smells delicious, foams up into a wonderfully silky lather, doesn't use too many fancy ingredients, and requires no heating! You can just measure...

Lightweight French Lavender Hand Lotion

One of the first products I ever really wanted to dupe was a lavender scented hand lotion from L'Occitane. The scent was the first thing that drew me in—a soft, powdery lavender with hints of citrus and vanilla. It was also a wonderfully light lotion, but still...

Five Alive Citrus Bath Parfait

I will happily admit that I motored through my Unicorn Bath Parfait very quickly—the luscious, silky bubbles and bath water was far too lovely to pass up if there was still some parfait in the jar! So, when Ivan from YellowBee dropped by with some very cool screw-top...

Lavender Spruce Shower Gel

This fun, bright shower gel emerged out of a series of experiments I did last summer when I got a bag of Sodium Coco Sulfate for the first time. I basically tried combining it with a variety of different liquid surfactants and transforming those blends into shower...

Lemon Rose Facial Lotion

This lightweight, hydration-packed facial lotion is one of my formulas from my Formula Botanica coursework, and it also happens to be the first recipe I'm sharing using hyaluronic acid! I tested this lotion through some of Calgary's driest winter months and found it...

Soothing Cedarwood Ointment

This soft, creamy ointment features an intoxicating blend of essential oils designed to soothe skin and nerves. It was inspired by a for-purchase essential oil powered ointment I spotted on Pinterest and after perusing the ingredients I quickly figured I could whip up...

« Older Entries

Follow on Instagram

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This