Getting Started
New to this whole DIY thing? No worries!What ingredients will I need?
Here’s an ingredient overview and a couple great starter shopping lists to help you get started.
What equipment will I need?
From a scale to spatulas, you’ll need some equipment to get started (you probably have most of it already).
Where to buy ingredients
Simple Starter Formulations
These DIYs are a great place to get started—they don’t require too many ingredients, they come together easily, and they’re pretty much foolproof!
Super Simple Whipped Shea Butter
Today's project is another back-to-basics post—we're making an all-natural Super Simple Whipped Shea Butter! You'll need just four basic ingredients to create this decadent body butter. It's not greasy, you don't need to heat anything up, and half of the ingredients...
Super Simple Moisturizing Lotion
Today we're going back to the basics with a Super Simple Moisturizing Lotion. I pared down the ingredients as much as I could, so this lotion just features five (5!) inexpensive ingredients that can be easily modified to suit what you have, or what you prefer. If...
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...
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Sign up for my emails for new DIY skincare & haircare projects 2x a week!Essential Reading
Learn about carrier oils, essential oils, solubility, substitutions, and more. I’ve also got clean-up tips, shopping lists, and all kinds of other helpful information.
On Throwing Things Away
I wanted to take some time today to talk about something I find harder than it should be, but something that has to happen: throwing DIY stuff away. Be it past-their-prime ingredients, dubiously useable products, mystery bottles, or packaging you swear you’ll be able...
How to Scale Any Recipe
Recipe scaling is something I get a reasonable amount of questions about, so I thought I'd write out a how-to on how to scale any recipe so you can confidently make lots (or very little) of the things you love. I've also created a downloadable spreadsheet that you can...
Research Red Flags & How to Learn About Your Ingredients
One of my favourite things about this community is the enthusiasm with which people research; the desire to learn more about ingredients, products, and processes is insatiable! However, as anyone who has done much poking about in this space will know, there's a lot of...
So, You Want to Sell the Things You Make
This hobby, moreso than many others, seems to have people opening up their own Etsy shops and stalls at local markets within months of making their first lip balm. And frankly, that's a bit concerning. If you told a friend you'd just learned to make a great marinara...
Why Homemade Sunscreen is Never a Good Idea
Back in 2012 I published a short post on DIY sunscreen, the gist of which was “don’t make it, you can’t know if it works.” That post continues to get a lot of traffic and quite a few comments, many of which aim to convince me that DIY sunscreen is (or can be) a good...
A Guide to Making Substitutions in DIY Recipes
I get asked about substitutions, additions, and swaps a lot—hence this guide to making substitutions. I've already got guides on carrier oil substitutions and essential oil substitutions, so this article is going to be a bit more scattered. I'll look at some starter...
A Quick Guide to Different Emulsifying Waxes
In my time working with emulsifying waxes, I've found that they vary quite a lot. There are two main categories of emulsifying waxes—complete and incomplete. We'll be looking at complete emulsifying waxes (or e-waxes) here as incomplete e-waxes require co-emulsifiers...
DIY Project Clean Up Tips
You might not guess it, but I get a surprisingly large number of questions about how to clean up DIY messes. Beeswax, shea butter, clays, and other assorted powders can make some pretty mighty messes that outclass a kid's pizza party pretty fast. Here's how I deal...
Tips on Creating Your Own DIY Recipes
As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not much for following recipes—I'd rather make up my own. Sometimes it works, sometimes it sort of works, and sometimes it's a catastrophic, err, "learning experience". Over the last few years I've learned some lessons when it comes to...