The Holistic Beauty Book: With Over 100 Natural Recipes for Beautiful Skin

This is a really good book! In the introduction it gives you a list of reasons why you may wish to make your own products and then goes on to explain how high street brands con us into using their chemical nastiness giving a glossary of misleading terms such as 'hypo-allergenic' and 'derived from...', which may sound innocent, but they are not what they seem! The author gives a short explanation of various chemicals and the effects they have on our skin and our health.There's a chapter on essential oils, explaining why it's important to make sure you use 100% pure. Instructions on how to infuse your own oils with flowers and herbs. There's a sciencey section all about how your skin works, which I found quite interesting and there's even recipes for things to eat in order to feed your skin from the inside.But you can skip all if that and go straight to the 'potion-making'. There's a basic list of common ingredients such as butters, plant oils, essential oils, and a list of kitchen equipment that will be very useful to you.The recipes are easily set into catergories: The face (cleansers, toners, moisturisers, lip treats, the mouth, masks), the body (cleansers & scrubs, lotions & butters, deodorants, masks), the hair (cleansers, rinses, conditioners) the hands & feet, bathroom bliss, baby & bump, chocolate potions, love potions. There's really something for everyone in here. Some things only have 2 ingredients that just need to be melted together....easy!There's a very useful section at the back with a list of suppliers to buy your ingredients, and even includes a site for very pretty glass bottles and packaging.One of the best parts of the book is that all recipes include the shelf life! I find when looking at recipes on the internet, very few of them include this, which is pretty useless really. Some of these recipes you have to use straight away, but the majority are between 2-12 months :)My only problem with this book is that quite a lot of the recipes use rose/rose otto essential oils (50 drops at a time in some cases), for those of you not familiar with these oils, it costs around £28 for a mere 2ml! so unless you are rather rich, you may find yourself skipping a fair few recipes. But with a little research into essential oils, you will find something to replace the rose oils that has similar properties, so all is not lost and I therefore give this book a well deserved 5 stars.

What a fab and wonderful book this was! This is primarily a recipe book to make your own Earth-friendly natural skin/beauty products but it is also filled with information on how to care for your skin, and how using natural products is not only kinder to your skin but also the environment, and also info about the beauty industry and the "natural" products commercially sold in shops and how they aren't so natural after all! There is also a small section near the front of the book with a few food recipes to steer you in the right direction to eating healthy. And eating healthy means healthy skin too!You don't have to read this from the beginning, you can just dip in and out of it whenever you want. It's filled with tonnes of really easy to follow recipes to make your own yummy and kind-to-your-skin beauty products from lip balms to face creams to shampoo, and from just a handful of ingredients too! I'm itching to make some scrummy smelling lip balm and all I'd need is 2 or 3 ingredients! The first thing I wanted to do after reading this, actually it was during if I'm totally honest, is go out and buy all the ingredients and utensils to make my own beauty products. I can't wait to try them out. The best thing about making your own products is that you know exactly what you're putting in there and that there's no nasty chemicals or added preservatives, colours etc. Instead it is all natural which is especially great if you have sensitive skin. This book really is amazing and definitely worth a read.

There are a decent amount of recipes in this book to help you make products to replace the processed products you may use in your daily/weekly life. Star (the author) give you a good amount of information about dubious ingredients in most processed products out there, and even gives you a website where you can type in whatever wierd polysyllabic ingredient you aren't so sure about and find out possible harmful properties of that product. You have info of various companies from which you can purchase containers and ingredients as well. I once contacted her to get some info and she was really helpful as well. I think this book's a good starting point for people wanting to move away from chemical riddled product to make products that are genuinely natural and good for you.

Star is truly a Star, what a fabulous book with fabulous recipes! I had previously bought many DIY skincare books and almost always been disappointed. Either they contained ingredients that were only available to buy from the author, such as those written by Aromantic (which really infuriated me) or they contained recipes that don't work (emulsifying with beeswax?! doesn't work!).The Holistic Beauty Book contains recipes that are fun, easy to follow and most importantly - they WORK. Once I found this book, I actually embarked on a career in natural skincare and haven't looked back. Star's knowledge and experience shine through the recipes in this book and it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that she also runs a successful online natural skincare school at Formula Botanica.If you're going to buy one book to learn DIY skincare recipes, then buy this one. You won't be disappointed. The two reviewers who gave this book 1 star obviously didn't open the book in the first place!

Adorei livro, muito completo e fácil para ler e entender, recomendo muito. Uma guia muito completa para quem gosta de cosméticos naturais

Great book

At first glance, this book looked as if it was going to be just another collection of old-fashioned "kitchen" recipes - the same old stuff that teaches you how to make a beeswax body cream using borax & lanolin. But this one was suprisingly a bit different. The author focuses mainly on the sourcing and use of fair trade and organic ingredients - with most if not all of the recipes formulated to feed & nourish the skin. I have tried and liked the massage "Chocolate Orange Body Butter Bar" made with pure raw cocoa powder (she has a seperate chapter dedicated to chocolate body potions). She even has a rhassoul mud hair treatment (great for softening & detoxing the hair) along with a simple shampoo using African Black Soap. Overall, I highly recommend this book.

I love the way this book is organized, science-y, easy recipes, uncommon (but not esoteric) ingredients. Simple, very informative, with a current list of suppliers at the end of the book. The author is very passionate about being ecofriendly AND healthy, and I learned a great deal about the misuse of marketing terms (natural, organic, etc), as well as the problems associated with the distillation/extraction processes for essential oils. I am very excited to make some of these recipes.

Easy to follow and ingredients are not difficult to locate.