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Monday, October 12, 2015

DIY Beauty

Greetings!

I am about to embark on an experiment: homemade makeup

During my family's recent visit here to Arizona, my grandmother implored me to start dressing better and putting on makeup whenever I leave the house. As a rule, unless there is an especially compelling reason for me not to do so, I wear whatever not-smelly/dingy clothes I can dig out of the wearables crate. However, I conceded that on Sundays in particular, I should at least make a half-ass attempt to look better than just pants and my favorite Lady Guadalupe tshirt (especially when it's our week to go to the Latin Mass church).

In addition to dressing better, I also realized that I need to step up my makeup game. I like wearing eyeshadows and do when I have the time and energy, but I almost never wear foundation, concealer, or blush. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I've had those respective items on my face (three times, if anyone wants specifics). It's a combination of being lazy, having oily/sensitive skin, and poverty. Also, foundation tended to feel heavy on my face, though I suspect that was the result of wearing the wrong type of foundation (powders were not as heavy, but mineral-based foundations were the lightest). Whatever I wore, my skin did not appreciate it and would result in breakouts. My skin is also hard to classify (I think I'm technically "fair", but my face color is different from my wrist color which is different from my chest color, etc), which makes shopping for the right foundation color a pain in the ass.

In my quest to find something that worked, I cruised some cosmetic shopping sites I have bookmarked to see if there was anything remarkable. A few stood out, but again, the cost was higher than I'd like. I wondered if it was possible to make cosmetics, so I consulted the oracle known as Google to find out.

As it turned out, yes I can! And since most were made from food products, I was super pleased cuz food stamps can buy them (some of the more specialty items like spirulina or cocoa butter might not clear, but spices and starch bases (arrowroot and cornstarch were the two most common bases I found) will)! And if they suck as cosmetics, they can be utilized as food like they were intended to.

I cruised around some of these DIY cosmetic sites to find an easy recipe that would utilize what I had. While I have a poor opinion of the granola sorts who frequent and run these DIY health and beauty products sites, I was willing to give homemade makeup a try and see how it worked out. Maybe now my long-sought goal of finding the perfect foundation shade could be tackled! I'm all for customization and I'm trying to get away from putting unnecessary chemicals on my skin now that I have a baby to care for.

Today, I put my experiment to the test and made some homemade foundation. My ingredients and approximate amounts used were as follows:

My base. I used 1 Tbsp

About 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg

5/8 tsp of the curry powder (I probably wouldn't use this, but we didn't have plain tumeric) and 1 tsp of cocoa powder. That 1/8 tsp spoon was my measuring and mixing tool

 After mixing everything together, here are the results:

Finished product

Swatch test. Close enough!

Before

After

The verdict: not bad for a first time sample batch. As a powder itself, the coverage is pretty light. I wasn't looking for anything heavy since my skin is generally pretty clear, but I would probably use this as a setting powder. I can see it blowing away the second I step outside the door. But now that I have an approximate recipe, I can see about making it again and adding something to make it stick. I also didn't have any sort of moisturizer on my face (it was just my end-of-day face grease!), so maybe that might also play a role in helping my makeup stick. As an aside, it smells really good too! Even after I washed it off and put on some of my fresh-made aloe vera gel, I still smell the spices.

Putting my mason jars to use. Aloe vera gel on top, foundation on the bottom


Overall, I'd say I'm pretty pleased with the result. Mission accomplished!

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