Yesterday was a good day for making bath and beauty products. I tried the lotion recipe again and had better success with it -- made a really smooth, creamy, white lotion with an Allure for Men dupe. I'm making a series of products for a friend of mine, and tried out this fragrance in body spray, lotion, and castille soap.
The bath and beauty products production started as both a hobby and a way to save money on things like shampoo. The hobby part is fine but I'm not sure if I really save money, at least on shampoo. I have to admit, Suave makes a damn fine shampoo that costs practically nothing. Even so, making your own bath and beauty products is a way to get away from things like extra packaging because you can reuse your old corporate containers. It is also a way to get away from branding, because you can take the labels off the old containers and/or use your own.
Some friends who I make products for are totally into the "lather, rinse, reuse" philosophy and give me their old bottles to fill for them. I'm even collecting old deodorant tubes for when I start making lotion bars/deodorant. With other friends, like the one I made the products for yesterday afternoon, I give them new bottles to start with and ask them to return them when (and if) they want more of the products. I know this contradicts what I was just saying about reusing old bottles, but when you think about it, reusing old containers is a radical idea and takes some getting used to. We're so used to throwing away or recycling containers through city waste management.
I'll get into more of recycling part of this later, as well as posting some recipes and techniques for getting started in making your own heatlh and beauty aids, or HABA (as a friend once called it).