One of the great things about making your own handmade skin and hair care products is that you can control what is or isn't inside them. Vegan skin and hair care products can be hard to find when shopping at big box stores. Ingredient labels can be confusing, and it can be hard to feel confident about the products you are purchasing.
By creating your own products, you can be completely certain that they are free of animal ingredients or byproducts. In fact, it's surprisingly easy to avoid using animal ingredients in most skin and hair care formulations. Vegetable Waxes, such as Candelilla and Carnauba Wax offer vegan friendly alternatives to Beeswax. Vegetable Oils and Butters are now almost always used in place of animal based lipids.
The following recipes are a selection of vegan friendly choices from the Natural Beauty Workshop. Have fun creating your own, homemade vegan skin and hair care products!
Hair Care
- Ayurvedic Hair Cream
- Ayurvedic Hair Rinse
- Fruit & Veggie Hair Oil
- Herbal Vinegar Hair Rinse
- Rosemary Walnut Shampoo & Rinse
Bath
Body
- Blissful Body Mousse
- Blossom Body Cream
- Citrus Ice Cooling Body Spray
- Cucumber and Mint Body Oil
- Organic Body Oil
- Peppermint Tea Tree Foot Soak
- Whipped Pedi-Butter
Soaps
Facial
Massage
Scrubs
- Chocolate Truffle Sugar Scrub
- Ginger Crush Salt Scrub
- Goddess Salt Scrub
- Lavender Lover's Body Polish
- Lemongrass Salt Scrub
- Lemon Walnut Foot Scrub
- Monoi De Tahiti Summer Salt Scrub
- Patchouli Cupcake Body Polish
- Patchouli Mojo Scrub
- Sunrise Salt Scrub
- Yuzu Garden Salt Scrub
These look wonderful. And I’m getting hungry! 🙂 I am a novice at mixing up my own stuff, so what would you recommend as a good beginner project? Many thanks, and I love your blog!
Thanks! Im glad you are enjoying the blog. Scrubs are very easy to make, and a pleasure to use. Id recommend starting off with one of the scrub recipes listed here for a first time project. My favorites are the Goddess Salt Scrub or the Ginger Crush Salt Scrub. Good luck! If you have any questions while you are making your scrub, just let me know.
Thank you, Emmy! I cant wait to try the Goddess Salt Scrub. ~Amy
These look really neat! I’m so excited to try and make some of them.
My only concern is about the oils and butters… I’ve read that cosmetic grade or refined butter takes away alot of the healing benefits from the oil and butters. I see that a couple of your butters are refined, but some aren’t, so I’m wondering if the ones that aren’t refined, are they 100% pure and natural? Same with the oil?
While many of our ingredients are refined to one degree or another, they are all 100% pure and natural unless specified otherwise in their ingredient listing. There are many types of refinement when it comes to the creation of Vegetable Oils and Butters. They must be pressed in order to be made, and refinement is used to create a more stable, consistent product from the raw material. While raw Butters definitely have their advantages, they can be hard to work with due to strong aromas, short shelf lives, or inconsistency in texture, color, etc. We try to carry ingredients that are refined as gently as possible, so that as much of the ingredients key components and characteristics are preserved as possible. We also carry some ingredients that are ultra refined to yield an ingredient with as little color or aroma as possible. When shopping for ingredients, look at the extraction method to see what kind of refinement was used. For the least refined ingredients possible, look for the words Cold Pressed, or Virgin in the title or extraction method. Organic Cold Pressed or Virgin ingredients will be even less refined, as they are subject to very strict refinement guidelines. To learn more about Extraction Methods, and how they affect natural ingredients, check out the following article from our blog: https://naturalbeautyworkshop.com/my_weblog/2009/05/extraction-methods-for-vegetable-oils.html
I understand that depending on how it is refined can determine how pure the product is, but what I’m wondering is even if you cold press something to take the odor away and give it a longer shelf life, isn’t it still going to be taking away some of the benefits of the butter/oil? Sorry for so many questions, I really enjoy looking through your website and I’m eager to make a purchase, but I don’t want to buy anything if it’s a watered down version of the real deal. Sorryif that sounds rude, not trying to be! Just needing an answer.
Thanks for answers my questions 🙂
Im sorry if my answer seemed unclear before. Raw ingredients can sometimes possess more potent properties because the heat involved in refinement can damage some of the more fragile components in some ingredients. For example, some people choose to use raw Shea Butter over refined because they believe that the raw Butter has more potent properties than the refined Butter. Others choose to use refined Shea because they prefer its aroma and texture. Refined Shea still contains a bounty of beneficial properties, but the choice between refined and raw ingredients is up to each persons personal preference. The reason I mentioned Cold Pressed and Virgin ingredients is that they are a great compromise between fully refined and raw ingredients, giving formulators a larger menu of ingredients to work with if this issue is a concern. Raw ingredients can be a little harder to source than refined ingredients. Luckily, whichever type of ingredient you choose to work with, you can still create countless handmade skin care products. Use our recipes as inspiration, and experiment by substituting a refined Butter for a raw one if you like. The greatest thing about handmade skin care is the opportunity to customize recipes to your tastes.