homemade body care products

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Here are recipes of a different sort- instead of food we’re featuring recipes for a spicy sweet face scrubby, easy homemade lip balm/salve, and an anti-fungal foot spray! These recipes are easy ways to incorporate more holistic products into our lives. Often conventionally produced body care products contain animal products, plastics, and chemicals like parabens and phthalates. Not only are these homemade products effective and easy to make, they help us avoid chemicals, decrease waste from packaging, and save money! 

warming face + body scrub

If you peruse a health food store to browse the million offerings for face scrubs, you will find that most contain ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. This simple scrub  will make your face + body soft and warm.

sugar and spice

3 Tablespoons fine turbinado sugar (finer than sugar in the raw)
3 Tablespoons brown rice flour
2 teaspoons warming spices (nutmeg + cinnamon + a pinch of cloves)
2 Tablespoons coconut oil or olive oil (see note)

Mix up the brown rice flour, sugar and spices in a small bowl, then add the oil and stir. Mix until all ingredients are evenly distributed, and store in a glass jar at the sink or in the shower. Each batch lasts about a month of daily scrubbing. I always follow with a rinse with Dr. Bronners. 

A note about the oil: Coconut oil will solidify under 75 degrees so if you live in a cooler area use half coconut and half olive oil; any combination will work well if you live in a warmer area, but it will be a more liquidy mixture. But don’t worry: the sugar and the flour maintain their graininess for months, whether the oil is solid or liquid.

homemade anti-fungal foot spray

This is great replacement for the Dr. Scholls aerosol foot spray, which is non-recyclable and made from who-knows-what toxic ingredients. More importantly, it actually heals your feet, instead of just kept the fungus at bay. This recipe mostly fills a 2-ounce spray bottle, which I purchased from a health food store.

the pharmacy!

the bases

A note about the ingredients: Grapefruit seed extract (GSE) is an incredibly powerful anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-parasitic extract with a myriad of household uses. Tea tree is also anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral; in combination with the other skin-healthy and healing oils like lavender and geranium, this makes a powerful yet gentle spray.

1 oz witch hazel
1/2 oz rubbing alcohol
35 drops grapefruit seed extract
10 drops peppermint essential oil
20 drops tea tree essential oil
15 drops geranium essential oil
20 drops lavender essential oil
5 drops rosemary essential oil

Add all ingredients into a small bottle, and shake well to disperse. It should evaporate quickly from the skin, and leave a lovely herbal scent. Do test on a small area first to make sure it feels good on your skin. Shake before each use, and use daily on your toes to keep the fungus away.

homemade cocoa-honey lip balm

Homemade lip balm is much easier than you think, and it’s some of the best lippy I’ve ever tried. It’s smooth and chocolate scented, just a little glossy- perfect for guys and gals. This can also be used as a hand salve during the cold dry months of winter. Rub it onto your elbows, hands, or feets for instant relief.

find little tins like this online or at a store- or reuse old lip balm containers.

3 Tablespoons chopped (edible) cacao butter (see note)
2 Tablespoons finely chopped beeswax
1-2 teaspoons coconut oil
20+ drops vanilla essential oil

1. Add cacao butter and beeswax into a small glass bowl. Place over a pot of boiling water and melt until liquified.
2. Add the coconut oil and the vanilla essential oil, stir to combine.
3. Immediately pour the liquid into your pots, tubes, or jars. Set in the fridge for about 10 minutes to set, and then remove. It will remain stable at warm, but not very hot, temperatures.

Yield: about 2 ounces lip balm. The recipe made one empty Burt’s Bees tube, the little silver container, and another 1-ounce jar that I keep in my car.

beeswax and cocoa butter

Notes: For this recipe I recommend a raw cacao butter- an edible product which is rock solid at room temperature (you can also use it to make homemade chocolates!). Most health food stores sell cacao butter (or cocoa butter) in their supplement/lotion sections, but it’s often mixed with other ingredients to make a smooth texture- which I don’t think would work for this recipe. Also, this recipe uses vanilla essential oil (which has a jojoba base), but you could use any flavor you might like. For other safe flavors for lip balm, check out this information from Aura Cacia (don’t worry: almost all essential oils are safe in these teeny doses!).

For more lipbalm recipes, Ashley at Small Measure made her version on Design*Sponge, which inspired me to try my own. Check out the comments section for even more suggestions! Also, Local Kitchen has a recipe for a homemade avocado-beeswax hand salve which looks equally awesome.