Do-It-Yourself Personal Care Products

Who doesn’t love Ikea or The Home Depot? They are great do-it-yourself home improvement or home decorating megastores. Ikea designs it, you put it together; or, if you want to be the designer, The Home Depot is your raw material supplier. Even though making your own personal care products sounds a little 13-year-old-truth-or-dare-slumber-partyish, it’s also effective, economical and just plain fun. But as formulators, seeing how consumers make their own personal care products may spark new ingredient ideas or just give you a better idea of what consumers are looking for in their natural personal care products.

Brush ‘Em: Baking soda and hydrogen peroxide are the basis for this recipe. But fear not, because even though those two ingredients leave a bad taste in your mouth, a drop of peppermint oil or tea tree oil will really spice this paste up.

Spray it: The fragrance industry is getting a bad rep for its use of potentially dangerous ingredients, but essential oils are moody, making it hard to formulate a lasting product without a little help from its friends. But if you go through fragrances rather quickly, an essential oil may work just fine for you. 

De-odorize:  Deodorant has a bad rep. It’s been linked to Alzheimer’s and judged harshly its smell-good ingredients and their wear and tear on the body. But Shea butter, corn starch and cocoa butter can really make for a sweet-smelling odor cover-up..

Scrub it out: SassyBella.com spelled out 10 recipes for all types of facial scrubs. The Basics: baking soda and water—works for some, other hate it; The Breakfast Scrub: oatmeal, lemon juice and yogurt—good for hydrating and toning; and The Biblical Scrub: milk and honey, and ground almonds—this one is adjustable for different skin types: skim milk, 2 percent or cream.

Suds Up: Shampoos and conditioners are notorious for using bad-rep ingredients. But a couple soap flakes, glycerin and Chamomile tea can make for a new approach to shampoo.