5 Super easy natural scrubs

A freshly scrubbed soft skin feels great. But did you know many commercial scrubs contain micro plastics? You are actually scrubbing your skin with tiny plastic bubbles that end up in the water supply, rivers and oceans. Luckily there are a number of easy, green and cheap alternatives. Most of them can actually be found in the grocery store around the corner. It almost sounds too good to be true.

1. Sugar
Sugar makes a great scrub. Mixed with some oil it leaves your skin fresh and the oil moistures your skin leaving it super soft. You can use brown sugar or any sugar with larger grains for your body, hands or feet. Use granulated sugar mixed with some oatmeal and oil for a soft scrub for your face. Or make a quick lip scrub!
Lip scrub
sugar and baking soda scrub
sugar and oatmeal facial scrub

2. Sea salt
I found some sea salt in my supermarket and the grains were just the perfect size for a natural scrub. Many health stores will have all kinds salt, from dead sea salt to Himalayan salt if you're looking for something special. Mix it with oil and you have a perfect scrub.
sea salt scrub

3.Baking soda
Baking soda has very small particles and is great for a softer kind of scrub. Perfect for your face if you have acne or just want a gentle scrub.
sugar and baking soda scrub

4. Apricot kernel and other ground up kernels and nuts
Kernels and seeds of apricots, cherries, avocados or ground up almonds make great scrub powder. Plus you'll get your daily dose of fruit and vitamins. Just let them dry, smash them, grind them and do whatever you like to create small particles perfect for a scrub bar or regular scrub.
 almond scrub bar
natural scrub powder DIY

5. Cornmeal
I found some cornmeal at the foreign food section at my supermarket next to the Indian food. You can probably also find it at most Chinese food stores. It has a fine texture but still has some nice scrubbing power. You could use it in a face mask or scrub bar. I usually use it mixed with coconut oil for an oil cleanse with scrub power.

DIY natural toothpaste

One of the things that was missing from my personal care products was some home made toothpaste. I've tried some natural store bought toothpastes, but they weren't really what I wanted. They were either too expensive for my taste, or they were just plain old minty toothpastes. So I decided to make some of my own toothpaste. After searching the web for some recipe ideas I came up with my own little mix. This isn't a toothpaste that foams, but it will clean your teeth just the same!

What do we need?

*a tube or container to store your toothpaste in.
*3 tablespoons of Bentonite clay, but that was hard for me to find so I used white clay. But I've heard good things about it.
*2 tablespoons of coconut oil
*1 teaspoon of baking soda
*1 teaspoon of salt (I used Himalayan salt) 
*1 teaspoon of Calcium carbonate

Now for flavoring. This mixture is really salty and you can add all sort of herbs and sweeteners to give it a better taste and improve your oral hygiene. Taste is such a personal thing, it's best to just buy some ingredients you like and mix it as you go. You can use dried herbs and stevia to create your own blend. I used some sweetener, peppermint oil and clove powder. I used some sweetener to get rid of most of the salty taste and peppermint and clove for a fresh breath.

                                 All you need to do is put these ingredients in a clean bowl and mix it!

You can add some water if you like to thin the mixture if you like. If you decide to do so use water, us some that you've boiled first to get rid of a lot of bacteria and other nasty things that could spoil your toothpaste.

Now it's ready to be put in a tube or container. If you use a container I would suggest using a dry toothbrush to minimize the possible growth of bacteria and molds.

Ethics and ingredients: Making decisions

If you've been following this blog you're very likely to have your own opinions, thoughts, ideas about this world. Green, homemade cosmetics isn't just about looking good and being green. When choosing the ingredients you want to use, you can make those decisions based on a lot of different things. I'll walk you through some of the topics you can think about before buying anything.

Quality v.s. quantity
Sometimes products are cheaper for a reason. They the quality is just not as good as the more expensive version. Sometimes cheaper products contain cheaper chemical substances instead of purely natural substances you might find in more expensive products. Be sure to check labels and ingredients when you buy something and don't just look at the price. Spending a little more on better quality is better deal in the end.

Vegetarian and Vegan
A lot times green ingredients have an animal origin. Milk powder in baths and masks, beeswax in creams. If you're a vegetarian or vegan you can think about what ingredients you want or don't want in your products. There are plenty of alternatives that are plant based. More on that topic here

Local v.s. global
Now that we have airplanes, trucks and boats you can get fresh ingredients all year round. Fresh and exotic products are available in your local supermarket. But have you ever consider the effects on the globe? Transport of these products causes pollution and ingredients are often produced in a greenhouse. Think about what products you could locally before having exotic products shipped over.

Fair trade
In my recipes I sometimes use different teas and sugar. A thing to consider when buying ingredients is the circumstances they were made in. Were people exploited during the production? These are all things you can think about.

There's on personal rule I have when making natural cosmetics. To me it always feels weird to use fresh foods in cosmetics. I just can't stand the thought of putting fresh fruit on my face for beauty while others in other countries are starving because they don't have enough to eat. I'd rather stick to oils, butters and flowers for beauty and leave the fresh fruit there to be eaten.

There's much more things you could think about before you buy products, but I feel like these topics are the most obvious. I hope it has given you something to think about. Feel free to share other topics you could consider at the comments section.

Animal ingredients in cosmetics: what are they and how to avoid them

A lot of animal ingredients are used in cosmetics. You can find them in store bought cosmetics or when shopping for ingredients. Today I'll share some hints and tips on how to avoid such ingredients.

There are tons of ingredients based on animal products. Some you may know such as lanolin, bees wax, carmine. Some ingredients are made by killing animals such as carmine, while others are just a products produced by animals such as milk and bees wax. It all depends on your personal decision whether or not you choose animal ingredients. It's not up to me to force you into choosing anything, I just want to help people make a decision based on facts.
The internet has a lot of info on this matter, but today I'll share some lists from PETA's website. Often companies will claim their products to be "vegetarian" or "vegan" when in fact they're not. So it's best to check the PETA website or to search the ingredients of the product itself.
 Also, not all products that might in fact be vegetarian or even vegan have a label. Companies have to pay to get a certification on their products so in some cases producers may choose not to get one when in fact their products are vegetarian. By checking the ingredients you might be in for a surprise.

so here are some resources that can help you.

A list of a lot of animal ingredients and their alternatives here.
A list of cruelty free and vegan brands here
A website with a search tool on ingredients that also has info on animal ingredients here

I hope these tips were helpful. Always keep a watchful eye when you see a label on your products. It's OK to double check ingredients or to look up labels. Thinking for yourself and doing some research will prevent you from buying stuff you really don't want. 

Sugar Lip Scurb

Being a big fan of Lush products I was checking their website, looking at their lip scrubs. I heard a lot of great stuff about them, but as I was checking the ingredients I thought to myself  "I'm not going to pay over 9 euro's for some sugar and jojoba oil, with added color and flavor!" So I decided to make some of my own. It's 100% natural and super easy :)

Body Butter Bar

Butter bars are cute and very easy to make. With silicone molds in all shapes and sizes you can create a variety of bars. Spoil yourself or make them a personal gift!

Body Lotion

Body lotion, for some it's necessary to keep their skin in good condition, for others it's a product they use from time to time as something extra, to pamper your skin.

This recipe I made is great for oily skin like mine, but with some simple tricks you can make it suitable for normal or dry skin.

for this bottle of about 250 ml I used

*100 gr of rose water
*100 gr of oil: 30 gr calendula, 50 gr sweet almond oil and 20 gr wheat germ oil.
*I used lysolecithine for my emulsifier, it's great stuff, can be used hot and cool, doesn't leave a film and just work with about anything, and makes your skin absorb stuff better. It looks like a red syrup, but in the end it doesn't really add too much color to your cream
*10 drops of essential eucalyptus oil
*10 drops of essential orange oil
Note: citrus can make your skin more sensitive to light.
*1,5 teaspoon of bee wax (or any other wax if you want to go full vegan)

Heat the oil and let the bee wax melt in there, heat the water to about the same temperature. I added the emulsifier to the oil too. Mix it all together, poor it in the bottle and just shake it for a minute or 2. Then add the essential oils, and shake it a bit more. Let it cool and enjoy!

As you can see it's a pretty liquid body lotion, it spread out really easy. If you want you can add a thickening agent to make it a little more solid, I think it all depends on your personal preferences, there are thickening agents out there that also make the cream a little more caring. It's just a basic body lotion I tried to show here, you can add extracts or butters if you like, it's all up to your personal preferences. Just experiment, get to know your own skin and enjoy the journey.

A winter recipe: Lipbalm

A common winter related problem: chapped lips.
Today I want to show you a very simple natural way of making your own lip balm.

For this recipe you just need
1 teaspoon of liquid honey
2 teaspoons of bee wax
7 teaspoons of any oil, calendula, almond or even olive oil will do just fine.

Put it all together in a bowl and heat it Bain-marie untill the bee wax starts to melt and you can mix it together. Once the wax has melted you can take the mixture and put in an old chap stick tube or little pill box like I've done. This was enough to fill both of them. The wax will start to harden quickly once you put it in. The bee wax will give it a nice yellow color, brighter than the picture shows, and smells pretty nice.



Untill next time, love!

Create your own Deodorant

Today I want to share with you a recipe for deodorant. Finding the right deodorant can be tricky when there are so many decisions to make; perfume, alcohol, aluminium salts and so on. For this deodorant I've used as many natural ingredients as possible to ensure a minimum amount of irritation.

Making your own Calendula Oil

One of the things I enjoy doing is making my own cosmetics.
With winter coming up I thought it would be nice to make some Calendula oil,
which is great for dry skin and lips.


Click to see more on my experiment