Welcome to your guide to all-natural, toxin-free beauty products that you can create easily at home. This may sound daunting to some, but making your own products is one of the most empowering ways to take your beauty and health into your own hands. Just because the beauty products in stores contain tons of ingredients with extremely long and complicated names doesn't make all those chemicals necessary--don't let them overwhelm you. Making beauty products is a lot easier than you'd think. Some of those ingredients can even be harmful. Pthalates, sodium lauryl and sodium laureth sulfate, propylene glycol, polyethylene glycol and the infamous parabens are just a few common beauty product ingredients that have been reported to cause irritation, cancer, organ abnormalities, hormone disruption and sterility. Now that that's out of the way, for the majority of the book I want to focus on the enjoyable aspects of natural beauty rather than the disease-causing aspects of the unnatural variety. Hand-crafting your own all-natural beauty products is extremely satisfying and fun. If you love DIY, then I'm certain that you'll enjoy creating some handmade beauty products. Additionally, making homemade beauty products is also a cost-effective and super thoughtful way of making gifts for friends and loved ones. From the stance of a beauty professional, creating your own personalized homemade beauty products is a fantastic way to find solutions to problematic skin without blasting your face, hair and body with chemicals that may be detrimental down the line. I speak from experience. After moving to New York from Texas, my skin had never looked worse. Stress, change of climate, change of water, pollution and who knows what else were clearly taking their toll, and my skin exacted its revenge with tons of huge, angry, inflamed zits. Of course, my first course of action was to evaluate my diet, up my water intake and be sure to be active and sleep well, but then I took a look at what I was putting on my skin. After some research I discovered my ordinary store-bought cleanser was mostly petroleum-based, preservative-filled garbage. I began researching more natural brands, and as I did that, I realized a lot of their active and most effective ingredients were those found in my kitchen. As a makeup artist and beauty addict, I'd always been interested in skin care, but once I embarked upon my natural skincare sleuthing, my interest turned to an obsession. For my imbalanced, acned condition, a friend suggested I use raw apple cider vinegar as a toner after cleansing. I began seeing drastic improvement in my complexion, and started trusting all-natural ingredients to care for my skin. I also began using tea tree oil to zap away zits, and a lemon and honey concoction to decongest my pores (you can find the recipe for that in the Detoxifying section of the Skin chapter!). Day by day my skin was improving and eventually returned to a state of homeostasis. I began to wonder what natural ingredients could do for my dry hair and body. Natural oils, fruits, yogurt and a number of other items found in my very own kitchen did a fantastic job of nourishing and hydrating my hair and skin. At this point I was hooked on educating myself about, and randomly slathering on, all types of edible ingredients. Excerpted from Homemade Beauty: 150 Simple Beauty Recipes Made from All-Natural Ingredients by Annie Strole All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
