Home cosmetics > with my hands

You can make all kinds of cosmetics at home and making them is fun! Making your own cosmetics allows you to choose the ingredients and avoid stuff that irritates your skin. I have previously made home cosmetics together with my daughter and we had so much fun. This time, I tried making bath bombs, foot bath salt and exfoliating creams for the face and lips.

Bath bombs

I am not able to use bath bombs that you can buy at Lush or other shops since all of them seem to contain citric acid that I’m sensitive to. Neither do I like the strong scents that many of them seem to have. One day I saw this Glorex bath bomb making kit in the hobby store and I was surprised that it didn’t contain citric acid. Instead, the kit had ascorbic acid, better known as vitamin C. The other ingredients were corn starch and some kind of wax.

In addition to the kit, I also bought some green soap colour and citrus scent to add a bit interest to the project. If you are planning to make colourful bath bombs, do not use food colours since those, unlike soap colours, will end up staining the skin.

Following the instruction, I melted the wax in the plastic container immersed in hot water. Then I added the other ingredients. I added about 40 drops of scent oil and lots of green colour. As the ingredients were mostly white it took quite a lot to get the pastel green colour I wanted. On a whim, I threw in some green tea to get green the and lemon bath bombs. After mixing I got this:

The bath bomb mixture ready to be molded.

First, I tried to use empty plastic Christmas ornament ball as a mold to make nice round balls but the mixture stuck to the mold. Then I got an idea and got an ice-cream scoop. I measured the amount of mixture using my mold and then squeezed the stuff in my hands. After I got a rough ball, I started turning it around in the ice-cream scoop.

Using the ice-cream scoop to make round bath bombs.

The ice-cream scoop did the trick! I ended up with these beautiful round bath bombs!

The bath bombs need to dry about 2 days and then they are ready to be stored and used.

Foot bath salt

I still had green soap colour and scent oil left so I decided to continue and make some foot bath salt to soften my feet. For this, I needed also Epson salt and baking soda.

For the foot bath salt, the amounts are not so important. I measured about 3 dl of Epson salt and perhaps a 1 dl of baking soda. I added a few drops of lemon scent oil and a bit of dye. After mixing I had plenty of food bath salt:

I stored the salt in a little plastic bottle with a hand-written label:

Put the foot bath salt in a pretty container with a hand-written label!

Facial exfoliator

I once went through the ingredients in an expensive exfoliator that my cosmetologist recommended for my face. I realised that it basically contained sea salt and baking soda plus a microscopic amount of cool sounding stuff that was actually bad for my skin. This prompted me to start making my own.

You could, of course, use fine sea salt and baking soda and just rub the mixture on your wet face. I prefer, however, to mix it with honey. As honey is a natural antibiotic, it helps my acne prone skin and makes it easier to spread it evenly.

Home cosmetics: The ingredients for my facial exfoliator.

As I have these ingredients always in the kitchen, I only need to make enough for a single use. In fact, I have previously used my palm as a handy container! Just for you, I use this glass cup!

I used perhaps 2 teaspoons of honey and one tea spoon of fine grained sea salt and baking soda. After mixing, it was ready to be used:

Lip exfoliator

There is nothing poisonous in the ingredients in my facial exfoliator above but, to be honest, the mixture doesn’t taste very good. That’s why I prefer making lip exfoliator out of honey and sugar.

The recipe is nothing fancy: Take about a teaspoon of honey and add sugar until you achieve a nice consistency. Mix and you have enough for you and your family!