When making a formulation, you always need to begin with a base – something to hold the actives and serve as a carrier. Bases can be creams, gels, oils, or other liquids. As a beginner, we recommend our base creams, Canvas cream if you have oily or normal skin or European cream if you have dry skin. You can also try your own favorite creams and lotions as bases for actives, but be aware that they may be less effective at dissolving some actives.

In terms of actives, I would like to discourage (yes!) you from buying lots of actives “just because.”Buying too many actives and mixing them “willy-nilly” leads to disappointment and we at SAS don’t like to disappoint anybody. Our aim is to keep our clients for many years. That said, do use the Product Selector to find actives that will work for your skin care needs and just try a couple at first – seeing what it’s like. We don’t just want to sell product, we want your creations to work for you.

If you are thinking about imitating an expensive cream keep in mind a few things. First, you may be assuming that if a product is expensive it must be good, but in my experience there is no correlation between price and quality. On the other hand, if there is a product you really like, go for it. When emulating a product, try to identify what it is that you like about the product: is it a make-up effect, is it the “feel” or fragrance, or is your skin looking younger after a month or so of use? If it is the fragrance or color you like in the expensive product, it is very unlikely that you will be able to copy those attributes. At Skin Actives we don’t sell fragrances or coloring dyes, although we have some actives that will color your creams and a couple of fragrances that you can use to personalize your products.

Getting started, here’s what you will need:

Notebook: The most important element in mixing your own skin care product is a notebook to write down exactly what you are doing. If you get that “magic potion” you always dreamed of, you will want to be able to reproduce it next time.

Scale: A small scale that can weigh up to 250 gm and will give you 0.1 gram, they go for about $12. A kitchen scale is also useful but it may not help if you are trying to weigh very small amounts of actives. Many recipes on the web give measurements in teaspoons and tablespoons, but weighing a powder is more convenient. Many of the difficulties encountered by DIY have to do with powders that don’t dissolve or only dissolve partly. This happens when powders have relatively low solubility in a solvent and the measurements in the recipe are in teaspoons, leading to recipes that contain more powder that can be dissolved in the serum and to unhappy customers.

Mini scale: 1,000 by 0.1 gram.

Mixing Utensils: We send you some mixing and measuring tools with your order, including spatulas, small scoops and pipettes.

Understanding Solubility: Solubility has to do with how well something dissolves – and in what kind of products the actives are able to be dissolved (i.e. they are soluble). Please remember that the solubility of an active in a solvent depends on the chemical structures of solute and solvent, which dictate how they will interact with each other. Temperature will also affect these interactions, but if you heat the mix you may affect the stability of the active and, in any case, when the mix returns to ambient temperature the active will likely come out of solution.

Reading: To decide what you are trying to achieve, our list of “essentials” will help you find out the main activity of an ingredient. Our Product Selector, Forum, Newsletters, and Blog are all great references for choosing actives and learning about their properties. The web is great, too, just remember to make sure you are looking at a reputable resource. I prefer university-based websites. As a matter of principle, I don’t believe anything reported in a website that is selling you stuff. Note: I like to think of Skin Actives as a notable example, motivated by ethics and also by a wish to keep clients for decades and not for days.

Patience: Go slowly with the mixing, and be patient with yourself and tolerant of any mistakes. CoQ10 for example is very orange, if you add too much to a cream the color may make it unusable as a daily cream, although you can still use the mixture as a concentrate. That handy notebook will help document your successes and failures, resulting in great formulations!

Attitude: Don’t define your skin using pejorative terms; try to be objective and not to magnify little problems. The only people with perfect skin are celebrities whose photos have been modified with Photoshop. Keep your attitude positive and remember that you are taking your skin care destiny in your hands!