Is this book for you? Read on
I requested this book—The Best Natural Homemade Skin and Hair Care Products: 175 Recipes for Creams, Balms, Shampoos and More
Layout and design:
The book is organized, interestingly, by type of oil used as the base. Each section begins with a description of the oil, its origin and properties for skin or hair. The oils include: baobab, monoi, macadamia, flaxseed, safflower, evening primrose, babassu, argan, black cumin, andiroba, grapeseed, pumpkin seed, hemp seed, borage, shea butter, bitter almond, apricot kernel, peanut, sesame, prickly pear seed, tamanu, pequi, and soybean oil. The page design is user-friendly, giving helpful tips in the sidebar and numbered instruction steps. The font for the ingredients could be a little heavier to make that portion easier to read.
Photography:
The book looks beautiful, full of color photographs of both what appear to be final products and ingredients. All the photography is from stock photo sites (Dreamstime and iStockPhoto), so I have no idea whether these recipes make products that look as good as the photos.
Recipes:
Recipes include instructions on how to make creams and ointments (which require special ingredients and a dedicated mixer), body oils, shampoos, and gels. Recipes include: baobab eye cream, monoi and orange moisturizing cream, macadamia and green clay poultice, flaxseed and chamomile shower gel, and babassu exfoliating scrub.
What I liked about the book:
Good instructions if you wanted to go into business creating your own products like these. Great background information on a variety of unfamiliar oils.
I wasn’t so keen on:
Recipes require purchasing many expensive ingredients as well as dedicating kitchen equipment to creating the creams especially. For instance, I can’t even find “lanette wax” on Amazon. I can find something called emulsifying wax, in a 1 pound container of pastilles. I am not going to use my stand mixer to blend face cream, which is required for a large portion of recipes in the book. You also need a special scale to measure the very small amounts of some ingredients. While there are a lot of recipes, they seem repetitive, mostly variations on creams and oils. Very few are for hair care, despite the book’s title.
Recommended for:
natural foods and natural home people who already make their own products, looking to expand their ideas on ingredients. Shops who make natural products who are looking for new recipes.
Not recommended for:
people looking for simple, inexpensive self-care products recipes
A note about my reviews: In the past, I tested at least three recipes from each book, took photos, and described my experience. I did not test any recipes from this book for the reasons stated in the review.
Required FTC disclosure: I received one copy of this book from the publisher for the giveaway on October 29th, 2015.
Here’s the book if you want to see more:
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Yes I’ll have to second the agreement on simple and inexpensive ingredients and boo as well to new equipment purchases. I have no space in the cupboards as is! Thanks for the review though!