Yeah, you guessed it. I make most of my  personal care products.

Updated: March 2023

I no longer recommend most of the DIY products/recipes I used in 2012. These didn’t really work out *that* badly for me, but the main reason they didn’t is that allergenic products were WORSE for my skin than the DIY stuff I was using.

What I’m doing now is home formulating my own ph balanced, water-based formulations using actual cosmetics ingredients and broad-spectrum preservatives to protect against microbial growth. My reasons for switching away from “food on your face/in your hair” recipes is:

1. Many of the options I was using were very high or low PH and literally caustic. Again, these were doing better for me than corny things, but barely.
2. Oils do not moisturize your skin. Water moisturizes your skin. Oils can help seal that moisture in, but there is only so much they can do. It is far better for your skin if you can apply a product to your face that contains water, a humectant, and a number of emollients that may or may not include oil.
3. No-poo low-poo type hair recipes are often not PH balanced are are also not great at actually cleaning your hair. Even using the Carina Organics shampoo and conditioner was not cutting it- the coconut oil in the conditioner built up on my hair and the single very gentle amphoteric surfactant in Carina’s shampoo, cocamidopropyl betaine, was not strong enough to remove that oil. Over time my hair began to streeetch and stretch when wet and eventually snap off. I had a microscope analysis done to my hair and even though I had washed the sample I sent them several times in the Carina shampoo, they still could not see the cuticle of the hair in their microscope because there was a film of buildup over the whole thing. They had to wash it in a special detergent that people would not use on hair that was still growing out of their head to see anything.

All that said, I am still using a few DIY type recipes. Those are listed below.

I am still narrowing down my home formulated shampoo, conditioner, lotion, if you want to understand the basics of what it looks like to formulate your own products, I would start with the blog Humblebee and Me and her youtube channel. She is not formulating for allergies so you wouldn’t likely be able to use any of her formulations as-is, but you can at least get an idea what it looks like to do this kind of thing if you wanted to get into it for yourself.

For a list of brands of products/raw ingredients I am using, see my safe-for-me food and products list.

Simple Oil Cleanser

• Jojoba Oil

Instructions

Apply jojoba oil to face and gently massage in. Use a soft cloth soaked in warm water to gently rub the oil off your face, which should remove the dirt along with the oil. Follow up with a safe non-oil cleanser. (The honey face wash for myself currently.)

Based on this information from Labmuffin, I would prefer to follow this up with an actual surfactant-based cleanser. However I’m not quite ready to try any of my cosmetics formulations on my face. The skin there is much more sensitive and prone to reactions and while I’ve done my diligence in checking for corn in the production of my cosmetics ingredients, there’s a limit to how much the vendors know since the laws around what needs to be disclosed for cosmetics ingredients is different from food. They may not be directly made from corn but I’m not 100% sure they haven’t been cross-contaminated in processing, or don’t have some kind of trace of some kind of preservative or excipient or something that isn’t labeled.

Raw Honey Face Wash

In the mornings, and any evenings where I don’t need to take off heavy makeup or lots of grease and dirt, I literally just put apply raw honey to my dry face and then rinse. For “creamed”, meaning crystallized honey, I get my fingertips a bit wet to allow the honey to spread on without pulling my skin around too much. I am also currently experimenting with infusing honey with thyme and cinnamon for an acne treatment.

Facial Moisturizer

I used to apply straight oil to my face after washing, but I now do a two step process that includes a humectant. I am making body lotion but I am not yet ready to try those ingredients on my face for the reasons already mentioned.

1. Wet face, and also wet palms.
2. Put a pea-sized or smaller amount of pure coconut, palm, or other safe corn-free glycerin into your wetted palms and rub together to mix into the water.
3. Apply diluted glycerin in your palms across your face and neck.
4. Put another pea-sized or smaller amount of jojoba oil on your palms and apply over the top of the glycerin and water to seal in moisture.

The reason I apply things in stages rather than mixing them together  in batches is:

1. Oil will not mix with glycerin and water without an emulsifier. I’m not yet ready to try the emulsifiers I use on the rest of my skin on my face. It might go fine. It might not.
2. Any formula containing water MUST be preserved with a broad-spectrum preservative if you do not want to culture horrifying bacteria and fungi in your bottle. Even keeping stuff in the fridge will only slow the microbial growth, not stop it. I have a broad spectrum preservative that is working for me, but again, I am not ready to apply it to my face.

To modify this formula:

You can use just about any oil you want, although make sure that you choose a non-comedogenic oil, and also realize that some people develop Melessezia Folliculitis from using basically any oil except mineral oil on their face. I am not aware of mineral oil being sourced from corn at this time, but I have not tried any mineral oils on my skin to know how I do with them or if I suspect them to be cross-contaminated.
For safe glycerin, I’ve been using the Pure D’or brand coconut glycerin for ages. I know many people are allergic to coconut. I haven’t tried this product but there is a sunflower-derived glycerin here.  If you are not allergic to soy, soy glycerin is relatively easy to find. Mountain Rose Herbs has one.

Deodorant

This recipe still works okay but I honestly just buy my deodorant now. I like the ones from PureRemedy lately and they’ve been safe.

• 2 tbsp calendula-infused semi-liquid oil (actually calendula, tea, rosemary, lemon balm infused combination of grapeseed, olive, and shea) (how to make an herb infused oil)
• 6 tbsp shea butter
• 2 tbsp zinc oxide (only buy NON-NANO zinc oxide!)
• 1/4c baking soda
• 1/4c arrowroot
• essential oils- amount depends on your preferences

Melt coconut oil and beeswax. Stir in infused oil. Add baking soda and arrowroot and mix. Wearing a mask, carefully stir in zinc until smooth. Transfer to jars and apply to pits with fingertips. (I was making my deodorant stiffer and in stick form but after I accidentally made my last recipe too gooey, I decided I like the cream version better.)

Body Wash, Body Lotion, Shampoo, Conditioner

I’m formulating all of these using techniques similar to what you would see in the Humblebee and Me blog, but I’m still narrowing down my actual preferred formulas as well as doing do diligence with the corn safety of my raw ingredients.

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