Do you remember the look of joy on your mom’s face when you brought home a gift you gave her at school? Nothing compares. You could have given her a brand new car and she wouldn’t be so pleased. Now, imagine the reaction if you gave your family and friends the grown-up version – a great DIY-made botanical beauty gift like a lip balm or whipped body butter – maybe even customized just for them.
As the premier online organic makeup school, we’d like to give you this gift: beginner-friendly, yet healthy skin care formulas that are fun and easy to make at home. These aren’t skincare recipes measured in cups, teaspoons and drops – these follow practices and methods adopted by professional manufacturers, and your finished homemade beauty products will rise just the same.
Anyone can whip up these 22 easy skin care products—you don’t need to be a cosmetic chemist to create darling, homemade beauty gifts that are the ultimate in skin luxury. First, let’s talk about what kind of setup you need at home to get started. Trust us when we say you can articulate with just a few, basic tools (between 6 and 12 actually) and in a small, dedicated space.
Setting up your home potion lab
It sounds scary, but a “lab” is simply a space you dedicate to formulating your skincare products, like a craft table or a corner of your kitchen (when it’s not being used for food preparation). This is how our students and graduates get started and many now have their own beauty brands.
Cleanliness is important – make sure your workbench and tools are sanitized. Tying your hair back and wearing an apron, gloves, goggles and sometimes a mask is good practice when you’re a beginner – and essential if you’re selling your skin care products, which is often the natural next step. Security is paramount even – or perhaps especially – if you’re giving to family and friends. The following blog posts guide you through the tools you will need, which are readily available from online stores, and how to prepare a sanitized area for compounding. We’ve included a video post of some of our students’ workshops for you to get inspired.
Beginner’s guide to setting up a home potion lab
Behind the scenes in our students’ workshops
Top 6 Lab Tools Every New Moderator Needs
Makeup kit: 12 tools to get you started
22 Easy DIY Beauty Gifts
With approximately 120 free formulas on our blog, the Formula Botanica website is a rich resource for natural formulators. Most of the recipes are aimed at beginner to intermediate brewers. But, we’ve done the legwork for you and picked out the ones that are not only among the easiest beauty products to make at home, but also the most suitable for gifts that will bring smiles and skincare benefits to the recipients.
You can follow each of these skin care formulas as written or tweak them to create your own custom formulas by choosing different botanical oils and butters, for example. But whatever you choose, handmade skincare gifts are always special and appreciated.
Face and body oils
It’s true that anyone can craft, and it’s especially true that anyone can formulate body oils. Just mix in some botanical oils you like, add an antioxidant and essential oil if you want – make sure the latter is at safe levels – and that’s it. All that’s left to do is get creative with the gift tag and packaging. Here are some super simple face and body oils to make:
After sun body oil
Facial oil during the day
Vitamin E serum
Gold lip oil
Delightful lip serum
Butters, Balms and Scrubs
These are just as easy to do as face and body oils, but in this case, you use heat and pay more attention to the method. Don’t think that the word ‘simple’ in the first two formulas means boring: the first is a beautiful whipped butter with a lovely floral scent, and the second showcases lovely vegetable oils and butters instead of fragrance, which might be a safer choice when gifting. fragrance can be a matter of personal preference. Body butter is a great place to start, and we even recommend it as “your first formula.”
Simple body butter
Simple unscented balm
Body balm with oats and cranberries
Nourishing hand balm
Amazon lip balm
Green tea and cocoa body balm stick
Body polish with green tea and lemon
Solid Beauty Bars
Constant skin care is trendy for a number of reasons, including environmental friendliness and water-based properties. While soap is the original solid skincare product, the cleansers here are a new-generation favorite with a more skin-friendly pH. The method of making them is similar to that of making balm, but the ingredients give a harder consistency. Others contain some water, so in some cases pH control and a preservative are recommended and worth the extra effort.
Lotion bar (melting body)
Facial cleansing stick
Solid cleaning bar
Cocoa shampoo bar
Hair conditioner
Method of safe formulation with powdered surfactants
In their pure form, powdered surfactants are very irritating to the throat and lungs (although this is not a problem once they are mixed into finished products). When working with powdered surfactants, always wear a good face mask and safety glasses. We cannot stress this enough.
It’s easy to think that because you use a little, it will be okay to turn your head away from the dust and skip speed just this once. But it’s best to get into a professional mindset from the start, even if it’s your first time pitching. So put on your protective gear and these formulas will make impressive gifts.
For more solid skincare ideas, check out:
6 compact beauty bars perfect for beginners to make at home
Powder beauty products
Technically, powders are a form of solid skincare since they don’t contain water and couldn’t be easier to blend. But since the form and gift-wrap capabilities are different than what’s required of a compact bar, we’ve put them in a category of their own. The three formulations we have chosen below show how diverse and interesting powder cosmetics can be both to make and to use.
Dragonfruit Foaming Powder Cleanser
Face mask with activated carbon
Baby powder without talc
Water-based compositions
These contain a significant amount of water, so using a preservative and testing pH is not optional. As such, these are geared more towards mid-level modders. However, they are still easy to follow, satisfying to word out and let’s be honest, everyone needs a goal to stretch them.
Rose face moisturizer
Body yogurt with coconut and orange
Design your own wonderful homemade beauty gifts
Once you get started, it’s easy to get used to making your own skin care. Many of our students and alumni started out with DIY recipes at home, just like you, and decided to take their passion to the next level. If this is you, our Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation could be an exciting next step in the right direction.
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Shauna is a copywriter and content creator with Formula Botanica. Her love of beauty started with Fresh ‘n Fancy – a do-it-yourself cosmetic kit for kids. She is a former beautician and completed her Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation in 2020. Today, she is a perfumer, formulator and brand owner of Ivy’s Poison.
