Food doesn’t only have the power to keep you healthy on the inside – you can use it to make your own beauty products and save money on expensive formulas!
WORDS: CARLY HOBBS. IMAGES: SHUTTERSTOCK.
Red and yellow and pink and blue, purple and orange and green... you can paint a rainbow with all the fruit and veg we have available to use. From berries to avocados, nature’s best offerings will increase your vitamin and mineral content. But did you know they can make you look fresher when you apply them topically? By transforming the food in your kitchen into cleansers and masks, your beauty routine can receive a powerful, natural boost.
‘We’ve seen a steady increase in women producing homemade skincare formulations. The desire to take control of what we put on our skin has grown exponentially over the past decade, with people experimenting with fruits, herbs, flowers and oils to make their own lotions and potions,’ says Lorraine Dallmeier, director of organic cosmetic science school Formula Botanica (formulabotanica.com).
Lorraine has seen worldwide student numbers coming to her online school grow from 300 in 2014, to 4,500 in 2018 and now 20,000 in 191 countries in 2024. Throw into those numbers the rise of independent British beauty brands such as Beauty Kitchen (beautykitchen.co.uk), which started life in a kitchen in Scotland; MAKE Skincare (makeskincare.co.uk) hand-blended in Somerset; London’s Skin and Tonic (skinandtonic.uk), which specialises in magical mists made with just seven ingredients; as well as one of Lorraine’s most successful graduate brands BYBI Beauty (bybi.com), and it’s clear the homemade beauty idea is burgeoning.
‘The main benefit of making your own beauty products is that you control the ingredients that go into the formulation,’ says Lorraine. ‘Once you start to delve into this exciting world, there’s no looking back and it’s good for your skin. Plants alone contain compounds that work in synergy with each other – it would be almost impossible for a combination of synthetic ingredients to mimic such a complex operation.’
SHORT SHELF LIFE
And while making your own is great fun, it’s not just a case of combining all the best anti-ageing veggies and fruits with some store-cupboard essentials. You also need to ensure they work in harmony and can remain active so they actually serve your skin.
Start with the basics, then you can work up to more complex formulations, with expert guidance from books, online services or specialise
