Were You Nervous At First?
EDS Skin Care Forums Forum Index » Skincare Tools & Do-It-Yourself Skincare

free skin care · Fri Jul 20, 2012 7:32 pm

Were you nervous at first about being a DIYer?

How did you gain more confidence?

free skin care · Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:20 am

I wasn't nervous at first, because the first thing I ever made was solid fragrances/scented oils for religious purposes.
It was totally idiot proof. I just followed a premade recipe, because I didn't want to spend a fortune on eos to experiment with. If I remember correctly, it was benzoin, bergamot, lavender & frankincense. (but the frank might have been myrrh. I'm pretty sure it was frank.)
From there I went to balms, because I was already using bees wax, vitamin e, etc. so it was a natural progression.
After that, I got brave and started adding phenonip and ROE that I ordered from lotioncrafters, after a DIY friend of mine pushed me too.
After checking out sites like points of interest, I got into emulsified scrubs. Then I finally did a full fledged heat and hold lotion after much more research and deciding I could handle it.
Sure, my first one turned out terrible (I decided to free style and add some beta carotene. I added way too much...) but it's all a learning process.
I eventually got into more work horse actives,got a better understanding of what deactivate what preservative, different emulsifier properties, ect. I think the hardest thing to "work around" when you're a newbie is preservatives and emulsifiers. After that, all you have to worry about is ph, texture, and keeping ingredients that don't agree with each other in different recipes. It helps to have some familiarity with chemistry and/or biology for obvious reasons.

Even today I consider myself an outsider to the whole diy process. I took bits and pieces form different sources and crunched it all into a functional but unique "me" thing. I was always aware of the bigger debates (animal testing, mineral oil, OCM, C derivatives, natural vs. synthetic, blah blah) but I never really felt the need to join in until somewhat recently. I finally need to get other perspectives instead of being a hermit in a cave surrounded by a bunch of bottles and beakers. Laughing

free skin care · Sun Jul 22, 2012 4:14 am

It depends on what you are planning to DIY. I started out with basic oil in water emulsions, went into complex actives and have now come back to the most basic balms. I found the actives weren't all that good anyway and were just a waste of my time and money. My skin looked better both before I used them and after I ceased using them. Different skin types do better with different things I guess.

My advice is don't start with scary stuff first. Start with basic stuff that has no or few active ingredients. Learn to make a cream, learn to make a balm, learn to make a serum. Once you know that process it's easier to add various items to the basics and create more complex formula's. A lot of people start out wanting to replicate some expensive high end cream or serum they use or want to use. But until you know what the ingredients list are, and how they work, plus how to formulate a basic substrate (cream\balm\serum) for adding them to, it will remain a mystery and be very hit and miss.

Note of caution - experimenting with skin products can easily produce unwanted results. If your skin has a reaction to a formula, you can be left with the negative results of that for some time. Treat your skin with the respect it deserves. It's a delicate and important bodily organ and isn't meant to be bombarded with cocktails of experimental formula's. Use actives with extreme caution, in most cases more is not better.

free skin care · Thu Aug 09, 2012 9:51 am

I wouldn't say I was nervous. However, I was very cautious. I started with a very simple vitamin C serum. It consisted of 30ml of H20, 1/4 teaspoon of LAA powder, and 1/4 teaspoon of rosehip seed oil. I used this particular recipe for a long time. Now I use Kassey's C and E with ferulic acid. It isn't hard to make but much more involved than my first one.

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