Skincare recipes and getting started
How do You Know What Ingredients and Their Quantities to Use in a Natural Skincare Recipe?
You’ve decided that you’d like to make a natural skincare product to target a specific skin concern. You’ve decided what skin type it is for. You’ve even designed the packaging! But when it comes to actually making a natural cosmetic product, how do you know what...
Understanding How Your Skin Works
Your skin is amazing. It’s a constantly changing, dynamic and adaptable living organ. It can adapt in an instant, responding to differences in the environment, temperature and light. It is highly sensitive to heat, vibration, movement and pressure, and it protects us...
Making natural skincare products free from chemicals
It’s something we hear all the time - “I want to learn how to make products free from chemicals.” Perhaps that’s something that resonates with you? It’s a sentiment that really means a lot to us - but there’s something we should explain first. You can’t...
Shea and benzoin soothing hand cream for dry skin
The subject of hand care has been a hot topic of late, and due to everyone washing and sanitizing their hands more now we know many people will be experiencing dry skin. It is really important that you keep up with washing hands and don’t avoid doing so. What we can...
Skincare formulation tips
Creating a Broad-spectrum Preservative System for Natural Skincare Products
Without a doubt the questions we get asked the most are about natural preservatives for cosmetics! There are several useful blog posts on our website that cover the basics: Do You Need to Use Preservatives in Homemade Natural Skincare Products? and 3 Natural...
How to turn a skincare recipe into a cosmetic formula
If you have been using a natural skincare recipe for a cosmetic product for a while and you like it, you might want to turn it into a cosmetic formula. Professional cosmetic formulas are written in percentages. Before we look at a cosmetic formula, let us look...
How to test and adjust the pH of natural skincare products (and why you should)
We get asked all the time about how to measure the pH of skincare products – what pH is, when you need to measure it and how to measure it. Here you’ll discover the answers to these questions, as well as why we measure it and how to adjust your pH testing equipment....
The different types of natural (non-foaming) cleansers you can formulate
These days many people want to avoid surfactant-based cleansers like face wash and foaming facial cleansers as they can be too harsh for the skin and strip it of its natural oils. In her book ‘Skincare: The No Nonsense Guide’, skincare guru Caroline Hirons is adamant...
Ingredient information
6 ingredients used to make cold process soaps
Soaps are created by a reaction called saponification, which is a chemical reaction between lye and oil, or better yet between lye and the fatty acids within the oil. The base ingredients that make up natural soap are oils, lye and water. Depending on the oils in the...
5 Vegan Beeswax Alternatives for Natural Skincare (+ Free Sweet Orange Lip Balm Recipe!)
Waxes are often an essential part of a cosmetic formulation. Waxes help harden liquid oils, which plays a crucial role in making lip balms, ointments, solid lotion bars and other natural skincare products. One of the most commonly used waxes is beeswax. Beeswax is...
Building a business
How Tanya juggled life with kids, work and studying natural skincare to launch her beauty brand, Indagare Beauty
Where Indagare began Tanya Joslin struggled with hormonal, severely congested skin for many years, and was running out of options. Stress levels, diet, I tried everything. I'd used dermatologist-prescribed creams and antibiotics, and my frustration levels were rising....
The Hunt for High-Quality Ingredients: How to Find a Quality Cosmetic Ingredient Supplier!
Exceptional, high-quality products always start with high-quality ingredients—and there’s nothing you can do during the process to make a poor-quality oil, butter, or botanical product into a higher-quality one. The abundance of online and in-person sources for...