DIY Sweet Almond & Rosehip Face n’ Body Oil

You don’t have to spend big bucks to pamper yourself. Making your own beauty & skincare products saves money and can be surprisingly easy, not to mention is highly personalized to your unique skincare needs. Additionally, buying ingredients in bulk and using reusable packaging is eco-friendly by greatly reducing the amount of plastic you consume. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I make my own face and body oil!

Beauty oils have become a preference of mine over lotion, I find them easier to get out of their bottles and a more pleasant application. I also use face oils so frequently and burn through them faster than almost all other skincare products.

After reviewing two expensive oils—Mitchell & Peach’s Flora No. 1 Face Oil and Caudalie’s Divine Oil—and trying a few that I haven’t posted about, I wanted to save money on my next full-size purchase yet still have a high-grade product. The only way to do this was to concoct it myself.

I use this DIY oil on both my face and body! It doesn’t clog my pores and is super lightweight and fast-absorbing. Applying oil on my body with the dropper bottle makes me feel incredibly posh, hehe.

I already knew what oils worked for me: the most recent brand I tried seemed to make my skin the happiest. Its ingredient list was so simple to replicate! I already had the essential oils in my collection, so all I needed to purchase was the carrier oils. There was even no need to buy a container for my DIY project—I just peeled off the sticker and reused the old glass bottle.

Sustainability Sidenote: Just think about how much waste this isn’t contributing to the planet. Another great reason to do DIY is to prevent waste via skincare packaging. According to the EPA, while glass is recyclable, a large portion of it still goes to landfills. So, in addition to other sustainable practices (eco-friendly water bottles & coffee mugs, not using plastic cutlery or straws) keeping DIY products in non-plastic, reusable containers can effectively reduce your waste footprint.

Read below for a straightforward DIY face oil recipe. I used ratios, for those who will use different-sized containers. The ingredients listed below are also suitable for substitution to better suit your unique skin type.

Making Sweet Almond & Rosehip Face Oil

Project Duration	5 minutes
Cost per bottle	$3.60 per 25 mL (see calculations below)

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

1. Use a 1 to 1 ratio between the Rosehip Oil and the Sweet Almond Oil. Their sum should equal the total amount your container can hold. For example, I used roughly 12.5ml of each oil for my 25ml bottle.
2. For the essential oils of your choice, use a ratio of 1 drop to every 5~8ml of oil (depends on your preference).
3. Mix well and store in a container out of direct sunlight.

And that’s all there is to it! So easy-peasy, at a fraction of the cost per mL. See below how I calculated costs, savings over time, and important purchasing decisions to consider for this DIY.

CALCULATING COSTS PER 25 mL BOTTLE

I referenced prices for the ingredients I used—they are in larger sizes (I use them several ways, other than this DIY) and pricier than other brands (doTERRA essential oils). Despite the higher costs of bulk ingredients, costs per ml are still much lower: DIY costs $3.60 per 25ml, compared to store-bought face oil at ~$16.00 per 25ml.

INGREDIENT & BOTTLE SIZE	PRICE per BOTTLE	COST per mL	mL NEEDED	COST
Sweet Almond Oil, 473ml (16oz)	$12.00 / bottle	$0.03 per 1ml	need 12.5ml	$0.40
Rosehip Seed Oil, 118ml (4oz)	$14.00 / bottle	$0.12 per 1ml	need 12.5ml	$1.50
Geranium EO, 15ml (250 drops)	$31.00 / bottle	$0.13 per drop	need ~5 drops	$0.65
Lavender EO, 15ml (250 drops)	$23.00 / bottle	$0.09 per drop	need ~5 drops	$0.45
Bergamot EO, 15ml (250 drops)	$30.00 / bottle	$0.12 per drop	need ~5 drops	$0.60

As you can see, the main reason initial costs run high are essential oils, and the rosehip oil. Their prices reflect the time-consuming process behind extraction. For rosehip oil, it is so expensive due to its’ cold-pressed extraction—also referred to as ‘expression’—resulting in very small amount of oil per seed; only a mere 3% oil yield per rosehip seed, according to Aura Cacia.

Additionally in doTERRA’s case, it also reflects ethical business practices of paying fair wages and investing in the communities who grow, harvest, and distill the crops needed for essential oils.

Unfortunately, doTERRA doesn’t sell smaller sizes for the aforementioned oils. One can simply omit essential oils from their DIY recipe, or try a different brand that sells smaller sizes… however, I do highly recommend doTERRA’s oils as they’re transparent with where they source their ingredients, they actively empower communities globally through their Healing Hands Foundation, and their quality control is top-notch.

For those on a tight budget: I recommend saving up for one EO at a time and adding them into your DIY products as they’re purchased. It may be worthwhile sharing an essential oil collection between friends if you are infrequent users, which would lessen financial costs and ensure the oils would be used up before their shelf life ends.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN BUYING INGREDIENTS

You may be tempted to buy an ingredient in bulk and save it for a few years. However, you must always consider an ingredient’s shelf life. For example:

• Both Rosehip Seed Oil and Sweet Almond Oil are good for ~1 year after opening.
• Bergamot EO’s shelf life is 2~3 years; Lavender and Geranium EOs last between 5~6 years.

While they may not necessarily be rendered unusable, oils are susceptible to deterioration at the end of shelf life, aka loss of their aromatic & therapeutic values from oxidization over time. This may lessen an EO’s skincare benefits or cause sensitivity in the skin.

Therefore, try to purchase smaller sizes such as 5ml of essential oils if you won’t use up ingredients fully before its expiration—this prevents unnecessary spending, product waste and the risk of possible skin irritation. Better yet, split the costs with friends: pool together money to purchase ingredients and/or build a communal essential oil collection. Holding DIY skincare workshops at-home with friends would be a fun, enriching activity for everyone.

SO… HOW MUCH MONEY AM I REALLY SAVING?

The cost of ingredients I purchased may be shocking; at first, I was also skeptical. Out of curiosity, I’ve budgeted into the future to see if I’m actually saving money after purchasing all these ingredients! I thought others might find this helpful, too.

Firstly, I’ll break it down by cost per year. Since 25ml of face oil lasts me around 2½~3 months, this means I use 4~5 bottles per year.

So…

In the 1st Year

I found that in the first year, my DIY face oil is slightly more expensive than store-bought face oil. But consider that I personally buy ingredients in larger quantities! If I had purchased smaller quantities or even less-expensive brands, costs may have added up to the same amount.

Additionally, I utilize the entire volume of ingredients in many other ways: as a body oil, in aromatherapy, diffuser, and a few other DIY products. I make up the financial ‘loss’ of ~$22.00 rather easily in other areas of my life.

Also bear in mind that most EOs last at least two years so there’s no need to repurchase them every year like carrier oils. I can make several bottles of face oil indefinitely, repurchasing ingredients through the years as needed—instead of buying store-bought bottles every 2½~3 months.

With that in mind, let’s go to the next few years…

In the 2nd & 3rd Years

See that by the 3rd year I’d have saved enough to cover the 1st year deficit, with money to spare at $108.00, or ~$54.00 per year! Fantastic.

Let’s move on to the next following year. I’d need to repurchase Bergamot EO, so I’ll add that into the sum of restocked ingredients.

In the 4th Year

The savings are smaller than the previous years, as EOs are our more expensive ingredients. I’m only saving ~$24.00 this year—but hey, it’s better than nothing!

Luckily for the following two years, I won’t need to repurchase any EOs (since Lavender and Geranium have shelf lives up to ~6 years). Here’s what the next two years would look like:

In the 5th & 6th Years

Again, I save $108.00 or ~$54 per year when there’s no need to restock EOs.

In the 7th year, I’ll have to restock on my last two ingredients: Lavender and Geranium EOs—I wonder if this will cost more than store-bought oils? Let’s find out!

In the 7th Year

It looks like I break even on $$ in the year I repurchase Lavender and Geranium EOs! Very interesting, indeed.

The next year would repeat like the 3rd year in which I’d restock on Bergamot EO (~$24.00 savings that year), and so on!

Conclusion: From these calculations, I’ve learned that even if I didn’t save any money in the first year and the years I restock on Lavender and Geranium, this DIY practice is still money-saving altogether, over time. When you think about it, I save ~$31.00 dollars per year!

From a sustainability standpoint, I am reducing waste substantially. I am not buying ~5 new bottles of oil each year, instead only restocking a couple of ingredients each year. Over 7 years, I purchase ~20 bottles of ingredients as opposed to purchasing ~35 bottles of a skincare brand’s oil. This results in a ~42.86% reduction of waste.

At first buying bulk ingredients for DIYs can expensive—especially when it comes to essential oils. However, making some of your own face oil can be cost-effective in the long run as the initial amount purchased is enough for many refills. You won’t be as wasteful per year, recycling a few containers less than store-bought face oils each year. Additionally, by splitting essential oil costs with friends in a communal EO collection one can save money right off the bat.

Overall, this is an incredibly easy and super customizable DIY that I find worth doing, and I hope this example inspires you to do the same.

_{Originally published on my old blog, The Plant That Never Blooms (on Blogspot)}