Fact-check: Don’t Get Burnt by DIY Sunscreen

diy-sunscreen-bad

You may have seen DIY sunscreen recipes going around on blogs and Pinterest, promising safe sun protection with gentle, natural ingredients. Generally the ingredients will be zinc oxide, a popular physical sunscreen ingredient (often in the form of diaper rash cream), and some plant oils such as coconut oil. Now, I am partial to a bit of DIY skincare. I …

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Daiso DIY Expanding Sheet Mask Pellets

I went on a trip to Daiso last weekend and this cute little sheet mask set fell into my basket! For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to know, Daiso is a Japanese variety store where everything costs 100 yen, which somehow translates to $2.80 in Australia. This set contains 10 “blank” sheet masks compressed into little pellets, that …

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Lemon-Free Flutter (DIY cuticle balm)

Want to get that Lemony Flutter goodness on your fingers without having to worry about burning when you hang out in the sun, or do your gels under a UV lamp? Or perhaps you’re allergic to lanolin? Don’t worry, I got you covered – here’s a really simple recipe for Lemon-Free Flutter that has the main good bits of Lush’s …

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Make Your Own Soap! Part 2: Let’s Make Some Soap!

It’s the second part of my soap making post! Last time we looked at the chemistry behind soap making (also called saponification) – today we’re looking at how to actually make a bar of soap, using ingredients from the supermarket. Related Post: Make Your Own Soap! Part 1: The Chemistry Behind Soap Making From the previous chemistry post, we know that …

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Fact-check: Can you remove nail polish with vinegar and lemon juice?

In one of the nail polish enthusiast groups I’m in, this article was recently brought to my attention. In summary, it says that if you’ve run out of nail polish remover, don’t worry! You can easily remove your polish by first soaking your nails in warm water for 10 minutes, then soaking cotton balls in a mixture of equal parts …

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Aztec Secret Indian Healing Clay and apple cider vinegar – a tale of pH

Apple cider vinegar and Aztec Secret Indian Healing Clay are two budget-friendly, cult status beauty products that work beautifully together. Why are they such perfect partners? Well… it’s got something to do with the magic known as pH. What is pH? pH is a measure of acidity or alkalinity – the amount of hydrogen ions (H+) in something. It’s a …

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Damn You Stained Nails! Pt 2: How to remove stains

After Part 1, where I stained my nails (For Science!) to work out how best to prevent staining, the obvious next step was to figure out stain removal! I worked out in Part 1 that the teal colour is CI 77288, which is chromium(III) oxide. Here are my nails again – argh! I had to live with this for two …

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