The Skincare Industrial Machine Is a Problem
Part 3: Make Something
Part 3: Make Something Yourself
In "Part 1 — Meet the Machine" we did the accounting. In "Part 2: How to Emancipate Yourself" we mapped your own course: the notebook week, the sticky notes, the questions every product has to answer about its ingredients, its sourcing, and its packaging.
This last part is the fun one.
Make something. Not everything.
Nobody is asking you to render tallow on a Tuesday night. But make something, once, with your own hands, and you will never read a label the same way again. You’ll know what a balm actually is, what it costs to make, and how few ingredients it takes. That knowledge doesn’t wear off.
These are teaching recipes: simple ratios, no secrets, nothing you need a lab for. They are the recipes I’d hand a friend at the kitchen table.
Before You Start
Weigh, don’t measure. A cheap kitchen scale is the single best tool you can own for this. Beeswax pellets and scoops of shea butter pack differently every time, so cups and spoons give you a different product every time. All the ratios below are by weight. Grams make the math easiest.
Keep water out. Every recipe here except the lip scrub is anhydrous: made with oils, butters, and waxes only, no water. That’s on purpose. Water is what microbes need to grow, which is why anything with water in it (lotions, creams, most things in a pump bottle) requires a preservative system to be safe. Keep your tools and jars bone dry, and don’t let water drip into your balm from wet hands in the bath.
Go low and slow. Melt in a double boiler, or a heatproof jar set in a saucepan of barely simmering water. Never melt wax directly over a flame. Beeswax melts well below boiling, so there’s no reason to rush it.
Use dedicated tools if you can. Beeswax is stubborn to clean off. A thrift-store pot, a couple of old spoons, and a glass measuring jug that lives in the craft cupboard will save your kitchen.
Patch test. Dab a little of anything new on your inner forearm and wait a day. People can react to beeswax, honey, plants, and oils, and your skin is its own country.
Label it. Write what’s in it and the date you made it. Right now you’ll remember. In four months you won’t.
Know when it’s gone off. Oils eventually go rancid. Your nose will tell you: old crayons, stale nuts, or paint means it’s time to compost it and make a fresh batch. A little vitamin E (tocopherol) oil helps slow rancidity. It’s an antioxidant, not a preservative, so it won’t rescue a balm that got water in it.
1. A Simple Balm
This is the one to make first. It’s the foundation of nearly every lip balm, hand balm, and “miracle” salve on the market, and you can make it in ten minutes.
The ratio: 1 part beeswax : 1 part solid butter : 3 parts liquid oil
For a small batch (about 100 g):
- 20 g beeswax
- 20 g shea butter or cocoa butter
- 60 g liquid oil: olive, sunflower, or meadowfoam
Method: Melt the beeswax and butter together gently. Once they’re fully liquid, add the oil and stir until everything is clear and even. Pour into small tins or jars and leave them undisturbed until they set. Now make your tea. Give yourself the half hour.
Make it yours:
- Too hard? Next batch, use a little less wax.
- Too soft or greasy? A little more wax.
- Test before you pour: Dip a cold spoon into the melted mix and set it in the fridge for a minute. That’s roughly your finished texture, and you can still adjust.
- No beeswax? Candelilla wax is a plant-based swap. It’s harder, so start with about half the weight and adjust from there.
That’s it. That’s a balm. Ingredients you can count on one hand.
Of course, you can add essential oils. If you do, measure carefully and by weight, because essential oils are potent. When we distill our grand fir oil from our own greens, it takes an entire F-150 long bed full of boughs to fill a pint jar. Plants make many of these aromatic compounds to defend themselves against pests and disease, and that same strength is why they can irritate skin. The amounts are tiny, too small for a kitchen scale, so use an inexpensive jewelry scale that reads to 0.01 g.
Each essential oil has its own safe limit for skin, and those limits vary a lot. Look up the limit for every oil you use, and stay under it. A good rule of thumb: kitchen spices don’t play nice. Clove, cinnamon, and thyme oils are among the most irritating and sensitizing oils there are. Lavender and rose are gentler choices, but even they have limits.
A good reference is Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young’s Essential Oil Safety. I’ll write a full essential oil primer soon. Until then, look it up before you pour.
2. Plantain Itch Salve
Plantago major and its skinny cousin Plantago lanceolata are the lawn weeds, not the banana. You have almost certainly walked on them today. Plantain has a long history in folk practice as a first-aid plant for bug bites and stings, and this salve is the classic way to keep it on the shelf.
Gather and dry: Pick leaves only from ground you know hasn’t been sprayed, and only if you’re sure of your identification. Rinse if needed, then dry them completely, spread out on a towel or screen, until they crumble. Fresh leaves carry water into the oil, and water in oil is an invitation to mold.
Infuse (two ways):
- Slow: Fill a clean, dry jar loosely with dried leaves, cover completely with olive oil, cap it, and leave it in a cupboard for 4 to 6 weeks. Give it a swirl when you think of it.
- Quick: Set the same jar, uncapped, in a pan of warm water for about 4 hours. Keep it warm, not hot. If you can’t comfortably hold your finger in the water, it’s too hot.
Strain through cheesecloth or a fine sieve, and squeeze the leaves well.
Make the salve: Gently melt 1 part beeswax into 4 to 5 parts infused oil. This makes a softer product than the simple balm, which is what you want for dabbing onto a bite. Pour into tins.
Good for bug bites, nettle stings, and the mystery itches of summer. For anything that’s spreading, oozing, hot to the touch, or not getting better, see a clinician.
Read our blog to learn more about our "Bug Bite Soother Salve"
3. Whipped Body Butter
This one looks like the most expensive jar in the store and is the easiest thing here to make. It’s also the best lesson in how much of what you pay for is air and marketing.
The ratio: 3 parts shea butter : 1 part liquid oil
For a small batch:
- 75 g shea butter
- 25 g liquid oil: sunflower, olive, or meadowfoam
Method:
-
1. Melt the shea butter gently until fully liquid, then stir in the oil.
2. Put the bowl in the fridge until the mix is opaque and just firm, soft in the middle like cold pudding. Check it every 10 minutes or so.
3. Whip with a hand mixer for several minutes until it turns pale and fluffy and holds soft peaks.
4. Spoon it into a jar. It will keep its fluff at cool room temperature.
Troubleshooting:
- Grainy? Shea butter can form little grains if it cools too slowly. Melt it again fully, then chill it faster.
- Melted on a hot day? It will. Re-chill and re-whip.
- Want it firmer or richer? Swap part of the shea for cocoa butter.
A little goes a long way. Use it on damp skin after a bath for the best spread.
4. Oatmeal Honey Lip Scrub
The only one here you eat off your own face.
- Grind a tablespoon of rolled oats to a coarse powder in a coffee grinder or mortar.
- Stir in a teaspoon of honey.
- Add olive or sunflower oil a few drops at a time until it makes a paste.
Rub gently on your lips, then lick it off shamelessly or rinse. Make it in small amounts: it keeps a week or two in a small jar in the fridge. Honey isn’t safe for babies under a year old, so this one is for grown-ups.
Read our blog to learn more about our "Oatmeal Honey Lip Scrub"
Now Write Your Label
Here’s the last step, and it’s the one that ties all three parts together.
Take your simple balm and write out its ingredient list the way a manufacturer has to. In the United States, cosmetic ingredients are listed in descending order of predominance: the ingredient present in the largest amount comes first, and so on down. Ingredients at 1% or less may be listed in any order after that.1
Your label looks something like this:
-
Olive oil, shea butter, beeswax.
Three ingredients. The first one is most of the jar. You know exactly where each one came from, because you bought it, weighed it, and melted it.
Now go back to your cabinet and read the first line of one of your store-bought jars. You remember the finding from Part 1: in most lotions and creams, the first ingredient is water. Then look for where the long chemical names begin, and where the plant extracts that star on the front of the bottle actually land in the list. Often it’s down in the 1% crowd.
That’s what I mean when I say ingredients matter. Not that store-bought is poison and homemade is pure. It’s that once you’ve made something, you can read. The front of the jar is marketing. The back of the jar is the truth. And now you can tell the difference.
What Making Teaches
You don’t have to make everything you use. I sell soap and balms for a living, and I still buy things I could make, because my time is finite and so is yours. The point was never that you should become a maker.
The point is that you now know what a balm is. You know what it’s made of and roughly what those ingredients cost. You know it took ten minutes. The next time a jar promises you transformation for sixty dollars, you’ll turn it over first.
That’s emancipation. Not a purchase. A skill.
Three parts. Read at your own pace.
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