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For the beginner DIY-er it is fun to experiment with mixing raw ingredients and working with tablespoons, teaspoons and a drop of this or that. Lovely to make your own little concoctions that way, isn't it? As you may have noticed, all our new recipes in our tutorials and on the website are built up using percentages. Why do we work with percentages? You can read all about it in this blog.
For the beginner DIY-er it is fun to experiment with mixing raw ingredients and working with tablespoons, teaspoons and a drop of this or that. Lovely to make your own little concoctions that way, isn't it?
Personally I have nothing against this and, to be honest... that is how I started out myself too.
There are an incredible number of DIY recipes to be found on the internet. Sometimes they are a source of inspiration, but sometimes they miss the mark completely.
DIY-ing only really gets interesting when, after success number one, you can make that lovely cream for the second time. And when that cream turns out exactly as you had in mind. The cream with the perfect thickness, moisturising effect and which, according to your mother, smelled so wonderful.
How annoying is it when you have made a perfect cream, you want to recreate it and you have to ask yourself: what was the recipe again? What made the scent so lovely? Was it the clove... or was it the rosemary, and if so, what was the ratio? Or you want to improve the cream because your skin became irritated after use. Could it have been that one essential oil that caused the skin irritation? And hold on a moment... doesn't rosehip oil lose its properties when it is heated?
Once you are out of the experimenting phase and you want to formulate a more stable product, it is very important that you write the recipe down exactly. You can then recreate it or adjust it as needed.
My father always used to say: "Malou, first organise everything, only then begin."
As you may have noticed, all our new recipes in our tutorials and on the website are built up using percentages. Why do we do this? This way everyone can very easily adjust the recipe to the desired quantity. It also provides a lot of clarity. Provided the method is followed precisely, the recipe will always have the same end result. That is rather nice!
With percentages you easily calculate the weight of an ingredient in your recipe.
You can easily change the weight of your end product.
It does not matter whether you work in grams, pounds, ounces, millilitres or other units. The percentages always stay the same. PLEASE NOTE: it is of course important that you choose only one unit, and do not work partly with grams and millilitres.
Example
Suppose we give you a recipe for a 50 gram jar of cream, but you would rather fill a 250 gram jar? Then the percentages stay the same.
Would you rather fill a 60 or 80 gram jar? No problem at all! With the percentages you very easily work out how much you need of each ingredient.
But how do you do this?
To calculate the quantities per ingredient there is a formula. With this you divide the total weight of your recipe by one hundred and then multiply it by the number of per cent per ingredient.
For example: 20% Shea Butter in a cream of 250 grams:
250 / 100 = 2.5 * 20 = 50 grams of Shea Butter.
This way you can adjust recipes very easily and still experiment!
Lip balm example
You have found a recipe for a lip balm on our website. You have made it, but you want to make the lip balm just a little more liquid because you are going on holiday to Greenland, or a little harder because you are planning to go to the beach.
You can then easily make a small recipe and experiment with your percentages of butters, waxes and oils to make it more liquid or harder. And as a bonus, for the next lip balm you know exactly what does and does not work, and this way you can always personalise your recipe.
Do you still want to formulate with tablespoons, teaspoons and millilitres and drops? Then bear the following in mind:
Not every measuring spoon on the market is the same in shape and, unfortunately, not in weight either.
A tablespoon from your cutlery drawer is not the same as a measuring spoon.
There are various pipettes and dropper caps that give different drops. One a little more, the other a little less.
The weight of one drop of essential oil can vary per oil and even between different batches of the same oil.
1 millilitre can only be converted into 1 gram when you are dealing with water. With oils this does not work, as they weigh less per millilitre.
With powdery raw ingredients the weight differs depending on whether you press them down, fill loosely or level them off.
Not every raw ingredient is supplied in the same way.
Examples
Cocoa butter can be supplied as a solid block or in shavings. Shea butter is sometimes grainy and sometimes softer in texture. Baking soda sometimes clumps together, and some oils have a solid texture at room temperature (coconut oil, for example).
This makes it very difficult when you work with tablespoons. A tablespoon of liquid cocoa butter simply does not weigh the same as a tablespoon of cocoa butter shavings.
Of course we understand that not everyone has a precision scale and can weigh everything to the decimal. Most simple recipes are based on 100 grams and you can generally make them perfectly well with an ordinary digital scale.
Do you work in a somewhat more advanced way, just like we do in the lab? Then a precision scale is a must. Because good tools are half the work.
We hope that you are just as enthusiastic as we are about experimenting with your own DIY products! If you have questions about making your own products, please get in touch with our customer service at support@naturalheroes.nl. We are happy to help you further! Have you found a recipe that you are really pleased with? Let us know. We are curious about your creations.
Written by: Malou Hofmann
