If you’re going to use flowers or herbs in a homemade beauty product, follow these safety tips…

Basic flower and herbal safety tips:

• Use organic herbs and flowers when possible.
• Know your herbs and flowers. Get a good guidebook so you can recognize types. If you grow yourself, clearly label the plants.
• Using the wrong herb in a soap could be bad news if you’re allergic. Read Homemade Organic Beauty Safety Basics to learn about dab tests.
• Herbs and flowers work slower than essential oils because they’re less potent, depending on how much you boil them down. If you create a homemade product that also has healing properties it may take longer to work than products made with essential oils. Also, it may take longer for an allergic reaction to appear, so wait your dab tests out.

Also read:

• Essential Oil Buying Guide
• Essential Oil Safety Guide

Basic essential oil buying tips:

If you’re using essential oils in your homemade beauty products, you’ll want to follow these tips… for therapeutic, not just fragrance reasons, than follow these tips…

1. Essential oils can be therapeutic, but only if you purchase pure essential oils. You can easily tell if you’re getting a pure oil based on the oil price. For example, various oils, when pure cost various amounts. Orange, lavender, and geranium oils for example, differ widely in cost. If you see a shelf of essential oils that are all prices $9.99 skip it. These are likely just fragrances, not pure oils.
2. Purchase organic essential oils when possible.
3. Reputable sellers bottle in dark glass to protect the essential oil from sunlight.
4. If possible, take blotter paper with you when you shop for essential oils. Oils are not all that oily (odd but true). Most pure oils will quickly evaporate when dropped onto a bit of blotting paper, while a fragrance (fake oil) tends to leave an oily mark.

Also read:

• Homemade Organic Beauty Safety Basics
• Essential Oil Safety Guide
• Flowers & Herbs Safety Guide

Basic essential oil safety tips:

• Never use straight essential oil drops. Essential oils must be diluted in a carrier oil (often called the base oil in recipes). I like sweet almond oil as a carrier but if you’ll need to use a different carrier oil if you’re allergic to nuts. Apricot oil is a nice choice. Look for a light carrier oil that won’t clog your pores. In a pinch you can use olive oil as a carrier oil, but don’t use cooking oils (you’re not a turkey that needs basting!).
• Before using essential oils in a homemade beauty product be sure to read Homemade Organic Beauty Safety Basics to learn about dab tests.
• Hopefully you won’t be drinking your homemade body wash or toner, but just to be on the safe side, you should know that The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA) recommends that you never ingest essential oils when another application such as massage may be just as appropriate. There are some recipes with essential oils, say for a sore throat or mouth rinse that do involve swishing oils, and some health remedies involve essential oils in teas, foods, or other drinks. If you’re going to ingest an oil, weigh the risks, and make sure you know what you’re doing.
• Keep oils out of the reach of little ones. If your child (or even an adult) accidentally ingests an essential oil, treat it like any other medication or household product, and call poison control.

Also read:

• Essential Oil Buying Guide
• Flower & Herb Safety Guide

If you’re planning on creating some of your own homemade beauty products, please be sure to read this guide completely.

Just because a beauty product is homemade, it doesn’t mean it’s safe for your skin or body type.

Before you get started, you may also want to read:

* Essential Oil Buying Guide
* Essential Oil Safety Guide
* Flower & Herb Safety Guide

These tips apply for products you make at home, such as homemade organic cosmetics, soaps, hair colors, body washes, massage oils or steams, lotions, sugar scrubs, or any other homemade concoction.

1) You are responsible for your own health and safety. Books, websites, blogs, and other resources for homemade beauty products (myself included) ARE NOT responsible for your personal health and safety. Homemade beauty products are amazing, but be sure to take charge, and stay safe.

2) Speak with an expert. I know a lot about homemade beauty products, essential oils, flowers, and herbs. I’ve worked as a doula, went to college for nursing, and have picked up tips from experts I’ve worked with over the years.

However, I’m not a licensed holistic doctor or a professional in the field of aromatherapy, herbs, flowers, essential oils, or any other homemade beauty or health profession. The ingredients that go into creating homemade beauty products are complex. Method of use is also complex. If you’re not an expert in the field, or someone with plenty of self-experiment experience, speak with a professional health care provider (holistic or conventional) before making homemade beauty products. Skipping this step is not safe because many herbs, flowers, and oils can interact negatively with medications or vitamins you may be taking. You may also have a health concern that limits your use of homemade beauty products.

3) Educate yourself. Some excellent books on this topic include:

• The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy: Over 600 Natural, Non-Toxic and Fragrant Recipes to Create Health – Beauty – a Safe Home Environment
• The Herb Book: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to More Than 500 Herbs
• A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America
• Organic Body Care Recipes

4) Basic homemade beauty product safety tips:

• Homemade beauty products are not one size fits all. They’re meant to be tweaked personalized.

• Natural or organic does not mean a product is 100% safe. You could be just as easily have a reaction to a homemade organic product as you could a store bought conventional product.

• Always do a test dab of a new homemade beauty products. For a test dab, take a dab of a homemade product and rub it on your inner arm. You can actually also do test dabs with individual ingredients instead, like lavender essential oil, before using it in a completed product. Cover the dab with a bandage. If you develop red, burning, itching, pain, or any other issue it’s likely you should toss that product you just made, or you can tweak the recipe ingredients to make it work for you.

• Homemade products are preservative free (unless you have some freaky chem set in the basement). Preservative free is healthy for you, but not so great for shelf life. If there’s anything questionable in your product, that may go bad, keep it in the fridge. Make small batches so you don’t have to toss a lot of one product. Lotions and some hair colors are important to keep in the fridge, while things like soaps and sugar scrubs are not.

5) MAJOR SAFETY CONCERNS:

If you are pregnant: Your midwife or doctor needs to give you the go-ahead before you use any homemade beauty product. Some essential oils or herbs can cause birth complications, harm your baby, or induce early labor. There are many safe natural and organic items for pregnancy, however, if you can’t happen to name them all, then check with your prenatal care provider first.

Babies and elderly individuals: Natural and organic homemade beauty products can be good for little ones and the elderly. Still, it’s commonly recommended that you down-size recipes for these age groups. For example, if a recipe for a body wash calls for 12 drops of lavender oil, you’d want to cut that by 1/3 or more for a baby or elder adult.

6) More information:

• The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy
• The Herb Research Foundation