Julianne Balmain - Crafty Girl: Beauty: Things to Make and Do

Copyright 2001 by Chronicle Books LLC.
Line drawings copyright 2001 by Stephanie Sadler.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3363-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available under ISBN 0-8118-2999-5.

Line drawings by Stephanie Sadler
Designed and illustrated by Gayle Steinbeigle

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Crafty Girl is a registered trademark of Chronicle Books LLC.

Martinellis Gold Medal is a licensed trademark of S. Martinelli & Company. Neutrogena is a licensed trademark of Neutrogena Corporation. Pyrex is a licensed trademark of Corning Incorporated. Visine is a licensed trademark of Pfizer Inc.

Notice: This book is intended as an educational and informational guide. With any craft project, check product labels to make sure that the materials you use are safe and nontoxic. Nontoxic is a description given to any substance that does not give off dangerous fumes or contain harmful ingredients (such as chemicals or poisons) in amounts that could endanger a persons health.

Thanks to my parents for encouraging crafty flights of fancy and to my sister Victoria for copiloting; to Tali Koushmaro, Miriam and Mitzi Schleicher, and the staff and students at Woodland Montessori Childrens House for being so generous with ideas and input; to Peter McGrath, Angela Hernandez, and Daniel Archer for putting up with a messy test kitchen; to Mikyla Bruder for being a superlative editor and friend and for giving me a job; and to Stephanie Sadler, Gayle Steinbeigle, Laura Lovett, Jodi Davis and the rest of the Chronicle crew.

This book is for Judy B. (AKA Mom), who endured and even encouraged the scalding lemon peel facial, my first homemade beauty treatment. Many thanks to the team at Chronicle Books for their inspiration, creativity, and hard work. Further thanks to all the beautiful crafty people who gave us hot tips and shared their secret formulas. May your hair always shine and your skin never feel rough or dry.

A side from the pure sport of it, there are three good reasons for a crafty girl to apply her skills and creativity to the realm of beauty and body care: look great, smell great, feel great.

Are you a sleek urbanite? Are you a glamour queen hiding out in suburbia? Is your look tribal chic? Maybe you have a flair for ponytails and jeans. No matter what your style, Crafty Girl: Beauty offers inspiration for making you a more dazzling creature, even if that just means having healthier pores and shinier locks. Whipping up your own products to pamper, purify, and enhance your natural aura of health and vigor also saves you money, ensures that the stuff on your skin and hair is natural and nontoxic, and prevents a few of the worlds bunnies and other test critters from having to wear your moisturizer and lip gloss before you do. Best of all, your creations will be entirely yours, endowed with whatever scents you choose and tailored to your personal needs (as in, I have a need to smear avocado all over my face). An eye-opening journey of discovery in the land of lotions and potions, Crafty Girl: Beauty is your ticket to supple skin, radiant cheeks, glitzy nails, cozy toes, and a new sense of empowerment on the fragrance front.

The first step is demystification. Face it crafty girls, those froufrou goodies at the cosmetics counters in department stores may contain scientifically engineered hydrolyzed sea kelp extract, but mostly theyre made of water, oils, and fragrances. You will be amazed at how far you can get with a few inexpensive, pure, natural ingredients found in supermarkets, drugstores, and natural foods stores. Beauty basics include:

Oils and moisturizers: mineral oil, sweet almond oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, olive oil, beeswax, cocoa butter, avocado, banana

Exfoliants: oats, sea salt

Astringents: lemon juice, grapefruit juice, distilled white vinegar

Soothers, refreshers: cucumber slices, chamomile tea bags, baking soda

Stock up on an assortment of these basics, and you are on your way to looking gorgeous.

As with many other pivotal moments in your life, the decision to make your own soap will lead you to a nice, big craft store for supplies. If you dont have one nearby, there are tons of places to buy soap-making ingredients on the Web, such as www.sunsoap.com (they sell essential oils too) and www.craftcave.com . Glycerin soap base is widely available, sometimes at the ubiquitous discount chains, and is clear, gentle, and easy to work with.
Note: Glycerin Rule #1 is, it looks like water, but it is not okay to drink. Dont leave it sitting around in a water glass. You can substitute Neutrogena in a pinch. Dont fear the soap.
The next important stepand perhaps the best part about crafty beautyis choosing a perfume or essential oil (or several) for adding fragrance to your creations. A tiny vial of essential oil lets you have an aromatherapy experience while you perfume all kinds of soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, scrubs, and baths, because it takes only a drop or two to make any concoction smell heavenly. Essential oils of lemon, orange, peppermint, rose, lavender, vanilla, and cinnamon are all crowd pleasers. For more exotic scents, you might try amber, cedar, eucalyptus, rosemary, ginger, or almond, and when you are ready for a truly deluxe experience you can combine two or three oils for a signature fragrance all your own. Essential oils are available at most natural foods stores, some drugstores, many bath and skin-care shops, and a number of Web sites, including www.bodytime.com . Note: Aromatherapy Rule #1 is, always use glass containers (essential oils react with plastic). Start looking for pretty bottles now. Ultimately, the crafty girl approach to beauty is as much about relaxation and celebrating your own personal beauty as it is about smearing stuff on your face and gluing sequins to your shoulders. The recipes included here will give you simple, inexpensive, low-commitment ways to pamper and rejuvenate good old you at the end of a long day or a tough week. Even if your life is nothing but Sunday morning cake and sunshine, youd probably still enjoy a peppermint steam facial now and then. And who would turn down a Nourishing Nectar smoothie for tub-time sipping? (Not us. Jennifer is running a bath right now.) These recipes are just the beginningtheyre sure to give you plenty of ideas for new creations. After you blend a new beauty concoction, be sure to craft a worthy container, too. Keep self-adhesive labels on hand to decorate with stamps and glitter. Title your product and write the name in fancy script: Firming Cider Skin Tonic #12, Manufactured by Hand in the 21st Century, for Producing a Radiant Glow about the Face.
In the great game of life, originality counts. Who else could fashion a full line of glittery lip gloss, body sparkles, and high-glam nail polish, all in precisely the same shade and luminosity as your favorite earrings? Who else could make that see-through soap with the plastic hula dancer inside? Only you, crafty girl. Whether you bottle it up and give it away, or lock yourself in the bathroom for the next decade anointing your limbs with delicious-smelling oils, is up to you. All we ask is that you hose out the tub after an herbal soak, and leave a tea bag or two in the kitchen cupboard in case somebody actually wants to make tea (weird).