So, due to my initial frustration with trying to find good natural makeup options that were safe for acne prone skin…
I decided to start going down the path of DIY makeup and skin care in order to make something that satisfied all my requirements.
So I ordered a whole shwackload of ingredients and set to work messing around in the cosmetic kitchen for the first time ever!
In the meantime, luckily I did end up finding some good pre-made makeup options to recommend. This was a relief since
- a. I knew it might take me a while to hit on a winner DIY recipe, and
- b. I knew that DIY isn’t going to be everyone’s bag
So far, I have tried a tinted moisturizer sunscreen, a foundation, a concealer, and a moisturizer concoction.
I’ve honestly been having so much fun! I can’t believe how not-difficult it is to make something wearable.
Despite that, I haven’t quite hit on my absolute winner recipes yet.
The tinted moisturizer sunscreen looked pretty good, but it also felt very oily and I started worrying the shea butter I used (despite being 0 comedogenic rating) would be too heavy for acne prone skin.
My concealer was almost a winner, but felt too drying around my eyes.
So I’m still going to work on that stuff, but my favourite thing so far has been my moisturizer concoction.
So far it contains argan oil, aloe vera, a little vitamin e oil, niacinimide (Vitamin B3) powder, and a variety of essential oils (currently lavender, frankincense, myrhh, and lemongrass… or maybe ylang ylang too, I can’t remember!)
I am really really loving the idea of just making the PERFECT moisturizer with no chemical fillers; only really healing, nourishing anti-acne and anti-aging ingredients.
I see myself refining this and continually adding and subtracting things until it’s just as nourishing as it can possibly be.
I’m very excited about it!
I Was Never That Into External Skin Care, But I’m Getting Into It…
If you’ve been following me for a long time, you’ll know that I tend to only recommend very simple external skin care ingredients.
Washing with honey. Moisturizing with one ingredient: either jojoba oil or another oil of choice.
That’s what I used to do, and then I started doing ‘the caveman regimen‘ for several years…
This basically means that you just don’t do anything to your skin at all. You don’t wash it, you don’t use any products. You just let nature do it all.
(well, except I do use sunscreen when I’m going to be in the sun for a while – PS I just started using this one for my face and love it.. the ingredients are awesome)
I found that just letting go of all that stuff and going “caveman” was very good for my mental wellbeing… just to stop looking in the mirror so much and disassociate with acne…
It didn’t seem to cause me to get more acne, and I loved the freedom of it. So I stuck with it.
But also…
I was always under the acne philosophy that external skin care could really only do so much.
I believed that most of us are making our acne worse with the products that we use, and the over-washing we’re doing, and the picking and popping…. stripping away all our natural oils and defences, causing all kinds of irritation and inflammation in the process.
So I was always of the opinion that if you got rid of all that stuff… if you were nice to your skin, stopped picking and popping, used only very simple natural things to wash and moisturize, or just did nothing at all ala caveman style …. well then you were basically doing all you could do!
Once you’ve removed the outside issues that could be making things worse, then it was all lifestyle from there.
I believed that what was going on internally was far more important to what your skin looked like than anything you could do for it on the outside.
But, I’m starting to come around and realize that your skin can definitely be nourished from both the inside and the outside!
What happens on the inside is incredibly important to clear skin, and eliminating irritation and damage on the outside is incredibly important too…. but it doesn’t have to stop there!
You can also use the advantage of healing, nourishing ingredients on the outside too to repair your skin and get it functioning properly and looking tip top.
What Sparked This Change?
Well I know I’ve mentioned Melissa Armstrong a whole bunch, but she’s honestly taught me so much.
She is a completely natural esthetician with her own clinic in Illinois, and from what I know, she gets incredible results for her clients’ skin.
Yet her whole strategy focuses on two main things: external natural skin care, and emotional healing.
While of course I encompass these things in my teachings, I have always leaned a little more towards diet and supplements.
So it got me interested, certainly, in what was possible with nourishing external ingredients.
Oh, and Uh, Well, I’m Getting Old Too
Also, when I got back from traveling in South America earlier this year (and eating really badly there which I’m sure contributed to this), I noticed that my skin was looking kind of dryish around my eyes… and…… oh god…….. are those wrinkles?!
So… I’m 29 now. I think it’s normal to have a fine line or two. I don’t have tons or anything.
But I think it was the first time when I really took a good hard look in the mirror and sort of saw the trajectory of where my face was going to go as I age.
Which was a little scary.
I really wanted to just pretend like getting old was something that was never going to happen to me!
But it’s happening, so….
So Now I’m Doing Sort of Caveman, But Not Really
Anyway, so then I decided… well, okay. Maybe I could do more. I love the laziness of the caveman… but…. okay.
Maybe I should be better about taking off my eye makeup, and at least try moisturizing once a day.
I didn’t actually start washing my face, and still haven’t, really.
Honestly, I hate washing my face. I think it is important to do once a day at night if you wear a full face of makeup or perhaps if you live in a polluted place, but I still think my skin personally feels and looks better if I just skip it.
Instead, I started just getting my face a little wet and massaging two drops of argan oil into it at night.
And then putting a couple more drops just around my eyes for added moisture there.
And I also started doing papaya enzyme masks every few days.
And you know what… this is not that hard or inconvenient. I kind of like it, actually. My skin started looking better too.
But now I’m like… well if I’m gonna bother to do that much, why not make my moisturizer a SUPER moisturizer? A SUPER anti-acne, anti-aging moisturizer?
And if it’s really that good, why not use it TWICE a day?
And that brings us to now and my new DIY experimentos.
I’m Having So Much Fun and Learning So Much That I Can’t Wait to Share With You!
In this process of researching the makeup stuff and ingredients for my DIY creations, I have gone down this fun skin care rabbit hole…
I’ve been learning SO much about external skin care and and skin types and skin function and fun ingredients you can use.
So expect a whole lot of blog posts in the next while with all this info that I’ve learned!
I also plan to be doing highlight blog posts on all the ingredients I’ve chosen for my DIY and why I’ve chosen them.
And somewhere in there, we’ll get to my DIY recipes too!
Stay tuned!
23 Responses
Yes, completely agree! I feel good skin totally starts on the inside…both with food and all the emotional stuff. But you can make it even better by putting good stuff on the outside. I have done DIY and it is great. So much fun to customize ingredients. And there are some awesome brands out there now for those who want no part of DIY. Personally I do a little
bit of both!
It is very fun!!
What are you using now for makeup remover (eye and face)? I’ve heard lots of people use coconut oil for their eyes, but was hoping to hear your stance on the matter.
Thanks so much for everything so far – I’m adoring the Real Purity mascara you previously blogged about and can’t wait to hear about your foray into DIY!
I kind of just moisturize (with the argan concoction I described in the blog post), and rub it over my eyes a bit, and then gently wipe away the smudges with a tissue, and then add a bit more moisturizer if needed. I’m still not that great about getting it all off though hahha… I do often wake up with smudges under my eyes… but I feel better about that now that I’m using a more natural mascara (the one from Real Purity).
In honesty though, I find that olive oil is the best for dissolving eye makeup. I think it works a lot better than argan (well I haven’t tried all the oils for eye makeup removal, but in comparing the two it’s definitely the superior). But it’s adding another step for me since I don’t want to use olive oil on my face, so….
I’m 29 too. I can’t quite tell if I have more noticeable fine lines now than when I was younger or if I am just looking more closely now, haha! I look forward to reading your well-researched recipes.
Haha yeah I kind of wish I had never looked!
Hi Tracy!
You made me smile..I’m 40 years old already!! And it really is not that bad! 😀
I think I looked much “worse” when I was 30 years…because I had stress, was unhappy etc…probably even looked older than now! And I’ve got rid most of the acne also by now (thanks to you!).
So I think happiness and health is what matters, not a couple of wrinkles. Speaking of wrinkles around the eyes, I still have none! My friend has have deep wrinkles around the eyes since she was 18. I think it is mostly genetic and also because of facial structure/expressions etc…
By the way, I was thinking, if you make yourself a facial moisturiser etc., how do you preserve the product? I mean, putting something on the face that has a lot of bacteria growing (?)…can’t be good for acne (or any) prone skin? 🙁 Or I don’t know, if the product is oily/made only from oils, maybe bacteria won’t even grow there? Just curious…:)
hah! Well good to hear 🙂 I do think it has a lot to do with lifestyle choices, and a bit of genetic! I am not so worried about the wrinkles themselves, but more like what they symbolize… the realizing for the first time that.. wow, my face does look different than it did ten years ago. And that means that time is passing, and that I AM aging, and aging, I am sure, will bring challenges. My biggest concern is loss of mobility or independence; losing the ability to be able to do the things I want as I get older. I know I have a long way to go before I really have to worry about any of that, and of course I will do everything I can to stay healthy and prevent that! But you never know what life will bring. Youth has a certain privilege about it; that you feel like it will last forever.
Anyway…. good question about the DIY stuff going off…
So oils doesn’t really need preservative in the bacteria sense, but they can oxidize and go off, at which point, they aren’t really very good for your skin anymore. Different oils go off easier than others, so it’s good to check on that. You can extend shelf life by keeping them in dark containers, away from light and heat, and add things like a bit of vitamin e oil or rosemary extract to them (which are strong antioxidants). I have started adding those.
If you introduce a component to your mixture that contains water, then you do need some kind of preservative, unless you use it all within a week or two and keep it in the fridge, which is pretty limiting. In my case, this would be the aloe portion, but the aloe I’m using (from Green Leaf Naturals) does already have a little bit of preservative in it… which is Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Potassium Sorbate, Xanthan … I don’t think these ingredients are too much to worry about, and only comprise 0.25% of the aloe, so even less percentage of the overall concoction. But yeah you do need some kind of preservative, unfortunately
Finding wrinkles is also what led me to start putting things on my skin again, too! After a couple of years of basically using no products, my skin definitely had more lines. This might have happened anyway, but I can see that moisturizing helps. I’m interested in seeing what recipes you share with us down the line!
Yes moisturizing does make a difference, if your skin is hydrated then your skin plumps and fills in the lines!
Have you ever experimented with sea buckthorn oil? After trying many diy products, I started making/ using an oil mix based off of the ingredients in one of Living Libations’ products called Best Skin Ever. I can’t afford this product and it contains coconut oil, which my skin can’t tolerate anyway… but I do like their Hapoy Gum Drops tooth product and was curious about the Best Skin Ever’s star ingredient, sea buckthorn oil. So, I’ve been mixing jojoba with a lesser part of sea buckthorn oil, and even lesser parts of tamanu oil and argan oil. I massage it on and then gently wipe off with a soft cloth. It serves as a makeup remover, cleanser, and moisturizer. For several years, I had been using manuka honey and an oil, but found that the honey was irritating to my eye area and the oils (I tried olive, hemp, jojoba) never seemed to be moisturizing enough for me. This particular mixture, however, really likes my skin. Beware that the sea buckthorn oil will stain, though… but I haven’t found it to be much of a bother for me, it only stains the wash clothes, so I don’t really care.
Hi Katy, no I haven’t done any experiments with sea buckthorn yet.. it’s not one I hear about a lot for acne, although it does seem to be low on the comedogenic scale. I might consider trying it as I also have more dry skin than anything, a very moisturizing oil is good! Glad you found your oil of choice! 🙂
I really wanted to try the full caveman too because my skin hates being washed. When I started skipping that step, my skin cleared up and stopped being so oily. It was amazing. But I hate the scaly congested feeling after a few days, and my skin actually looks nicer with some products. So now I just wash with oil or cleansing grains when needed and moisturise 1-2 times a day with an oil. I always thought adding oil to an unwashed face would make it more oily, but it’s the opposite for me! I do also love doing face masks and mixing up whatever I feel like using on a particular night
Hi Rebecca! Yes I think a lot of people would probably do better by not really “washing” so much as just sort of… a little splash and some oil applied to damp skin instead.
57 year old outdoor yoga teacher here, so moisturizer/ sunscreen is a must. My concoction is equal parts Vaseline, aloe and desitin- perhaps not natural enough for some but it works! Desitin provides the zinc oxide and therefore a matte finish despite the Vaseline and it rubs in (gently) so as not to appear too “white”.
Hi Proo, are you acne prone? And this works for you?
Hey
I did a little researching and came across an Etsy seller littlestuff4u and thought i’d like to share. She provides many natural powders including: “Organic Natural Arrowroot Setting Powder Finishing Veil Organic Based Plant Makeup or Face Primer”
The ingredients include: Aloe Vera Powder, Arrowroot Powder, Kaolin Clay, Neem Leaf Powder, Olive Leaf Powder, Allantoin, Lavender Flower Powder, Green Tea Powder, Morrocan Clay, White Willow Bark, Natural Rose Clay, Pearl Powder.
I’m still intrigued with making my own makeup tho!
I was wondering where you got your pearl powder and iron oxide from? And red or black iron oxide?
Thanks for all your blogs Tracy!
much love
No acne now, yes in the past; what worked for me, at the ripe of 40 was paleo diet. Eczema led me to my concoction.
Hi Miki, oh yeah hers sounds great! Maybe an alternative to Clear Skin Minerals which sounds like it’s going out of the biz. Thanks for sharing your find!
I got pearl powder and iron oxides from makingcosmetics.. I think it’s called that.. it’s an Amazon seller
Hey, Tracy!!
after i read your blog for couple years ago, i started caveman regimen, my face full of patchy skin
and then i wash my face with honey like you do.. but i use clover honey
it slow progress, but now my face is complety clear!! i love you so much <3
now my face lil bit dry and i'll find best oil for this face.. hahaha
i try jojoba oil but not work, make my face worst ever, i have burn sensation.. maybe allergic reaction.
thank you Tracy, u are my inspiration!
Awesome, very excited for you Sisca! Try argan 🙂 It’s more moisturizing than jojoba
Hey sorry for the annoyance but as a broke college student trying to save money and live healthy I would like to know if the iron oxides can be replaced with spices like turmeric, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper or will the spices interfere with oils?
Please let me know if you had any experience!
Yep, I haven’t tried it but I have seen other tutorials for natural makeup using spices like that, so seems like it could work!