Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Homemade beauty treatments are very much in demand right now. And the good news is you can monetise this trend. If you need a bit of extra cash and love being crafty, why not try your hand at whisking together some bath salts or sugar scrubs? You can make money selling organic, 100% natural cosmetics people will love.
Of course, it may take some practice. But once you’ve perfected your craft, you can sell your homemade beauty treatments at a local jumble sale or a product party you host. Alternatively, you can also give them away as presents so you don’t have to spend money buying gifts. Homemade presents are generally considered to be more thoughtful so it’s a win-win.
Tell us about your hits and misses in the comments section below too!
It’s good business. For instance, things like bath salts and sugar scrubs can easily sell in shops for anything between £5 to £15 (or even more for certain brands). The reality is that they’re so simple and cheap to produce that you can make an easy profit selling them as gifts.
Most – if not all – of the ingredients can be bought in the supermarket. If you can’t find something in your local store, though, there’re loads of websites where you can get hold of the missing items.
Add a little panache in presentation and people will be tempted. Also, you can make bespoke packs, cater for people with allergies, produce vegan-friendly cosmetics and work on your own signature products that aren’t available elsewhere. The possibilities are endless.
This flexibility beats the high street hands down. In fact, you can probably charge much less than the high street equivalents, but still make a healthy profit.
Once you’re confident you can make good handmade beauty treatments, you can start hosting product parties for friends and family, and make some real cash from your hobby.
The first thing you’ll need to start making homemade beauty treatments is ingredients. Some of the things included in the recipes below may seem incredibly obscure. But don’t let that put you off. They’re actually very easy to get hold of and are much cheaper than you might expect.
Here’re the main ingredients:
Some additional ingredients which you can use to personalise your products are:
To start with, try sites like Baldwins and Sheabuttercottage where you can buy ingredients at reasonable prices. Another good site is Aromantic if you’re after herbs and flowers.
Lots of the ingredients you may want to try in your homemade beauty treatments are things you’ll have lying around in your kitchen cupboards or that you can find in the wild (like lavender). Start at home first, take a look at what you could use. Alternatively, a quick trip down to the supermarket will sort you out for other bits and bobs.
Let’s talk equipment. You should actually have most of what you’ll need for making your homemade beauty treatments at home. To get started with potion-making, you’ll typically need the same bits and pieces as for cooking. So, generally speaking, apart from some of the more exotic ingredients, you may already be well-equipped for making your own unique holistic products!
Here’re some of the items you will need to make your lotions and potions:
Making your homemade beauty treatments is a great start. Only if they sell will you be making profit, though. While it’s key your products are good, selling is often not about how great something is, but how well you present it. Get creative with your bottles and gift wrapping. That way, your products will look more attractive and sell better.
Bear in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean a big spend for new bottles and lots of cellophane wrap. Start by reusing any bottles and jars that you’ve got lying around at home. They’re perfectly fine to use as long as you prep them. Firstly, wash your jars in hot, soapy water, then rinse in cold water and finally place somewhere warm until they’re bone dry.
Glass is the best material for your lotions as it won’t taint the product and it’s readily available around your house. If you need more, try collecting old bottles and jars from friends and family to reuse. Another idea is to start hoarding them wherever you go. For example, hotels will often save you the mini jam jars they use at breakfasts, which are great for lip balm pots. You can also try getting free samples from the perfume counters in department stores. And don’t forget to try your local supermarket. See if you like some of the little presentation bottles that olive oils, vinegar or mini products come in, for example.
For scrubs and face masks why not try recycled jam jars. To make them look nice, cover the lid with scraps of fabric such as recycled old clothing or table cloths and string. Simply blob a little bit of glue in the middle of the lid and use a piece of fabric big enough to come down over the sides. Next, tie and string with a tag on top of the fabric around the neck of the jar and voila, you’ve got a pretty container for your homemade beauty treatments.
Alternatively, you could buy cheap jars. You’ll find a lot of unique ones on eBay, for example. The site is full of glass jars with crock lids or glass clamp jars to keep your homemade beauty treatments safely stored. So have a browse and find what’s best for your products.
If you do want to invest in some new presentation vials, Colouredbottles is a great site. It sells pretty glass bottles and jars in bulk. Although if you just want to start off with a few items, you can buy them from their eBay site.
And finally, gather old bits of material. Some of your products will only need a little spare fabric rather than jars. For example, scraps of old cloth can be sewn up into simple drawstring bags, making cheap and pretty packaging for bath melts, massage bars and bath salts.
Your beauty products can also make a wonderful gift. It’s actually very cheap to get some gift sets together to sell. For instance, you can arrange a jar of hand scrub, some hand balm and a nail brush inside a cheap terracotta flower-pot for a gorgeous gardener’s gift set. Or why not try making a selection of herbal bath tea blends (dried herbs and flowers in mini muslin bags) and arrange them inside a second-hand teapot. All you need is a little imagination.
And remember: if all does go wrong, a bit of clever marketing a la l’Oreal can fix everything. For example, most mixtures can be re-melted and remade with an adjustment of solids and liquids, so when it comes to consistency you’ve always got a second chance.
Sometimes your carefully crafted homemade beauty treatments may just seem unfixable. If that’s the case, just rename them cunningly:
All the recipes shared below are from The Holistic Beauty Book by Star Khechara published by Green Books.
The book contains over 100 natural recipes for gorgeous, healthy skin so you can get creating your own homemade beauty treatments right now. You can pick up a copy on Amazon here.
Shelf-life: 3 months
Skin types: suitable for all
Ingredients
How to make
How to use
Dampen skin and massage gently into skin. Rinse off thoroughly.
For a slightly more exotic scrub, try the after-eight(ish) chocolate mint scrub. You can buy most of the ingredients you’ll need at the supermarket. For virgin coconut oil, go to Sheabuttercottage.
Shelf-life: 3 months
Skin types: suitable for all
How to make
How to use
Massage the chocolatey mixture gently all over damp skin. Then rinse off thoroughly.
Another cheap-to-make beauty product is a ‘soap bag’. One of the key ingredients is vegetable or olive oil soap, if you prefer. You can get these from your local health store and they can cost less than £1.
Shelf-life: 3 months
Skin types: suitable for all, especially sensitive skin
Ingredients
How to make
How to use
Use in the shower and soak the little bag under the warm water. Soon enough it should start to feel squishy and soapy. Use the bag like a bar of soap. You’ll find the muslin will exfoliate your skin while the oats soothe and the soap cleans. Because the soap is ‘diluted’ with other ingredients, it’s not so drying to the skin.
Another vegetable or olive oil soap based homemade beauty treatment that you can make cheaply – and sell for a good profit – is soap. To make soap from scratch, you’ll need to use a really strong chemical (sodium hydroxide), which can burn skin really badly. The following recipe calls for making a new and customised soap from melting down an existing one instead.
Shelf-life: 6 months
Skin types: suitable for all
Ingredients
How to make
How to use
Use with water like everyday soap and remember to rinse well.
And finally a herbal bath bag. It’s a great alternative to soap and this recipe below uses only two ingredients (or three, if you like) which cuts down on cost.
Shelf-life: 3 months as a dry mix
Skin types: suitable for all, especially those suffering with eczema
Ingredients
How to make
1. Start by grinding half of the lavender in a coffee grinder, leaving the rest whole
2. Mix all the ingredients together
3. Tie up in a muslin circle with raffia to make a little sack
4. You can make several of these up at once and store them in a glass jar
How to use
Add to warm bath and use the oaty bag like soap. Once it’s wet, it’ll feel a bit slimy – that’s the soothing oat milk coming out. You’ll find that it really does clean effectively but won’t dry your skin like soap and it’s very healing for dry sensitive skin and eczema. Remember to use a bag once only.
Is there a requirement needed to sell these handmade products?
this is great. I actually want to start a scrub business. I could use all of this information. Thank you .
I have seen many people running successful business just by making homemade beauty products and making sure that their products have quality and results as expected by the customer.