Not for me. Did not finish. ( )

I've made four recipes from this, the Aloe and Calendula Cleansing Cream, the Fennel Soother, the Smooth-as-Velvet Vanilla Toner, and the "Out Damn Spot" Antiblemish Elixir. I've not tried the vanilla one yet because it's still got a week and a half to steep until it's ready, but I've been using the others for the past several days.

The cleansing cream is an incredible moisturizer. My husband has eczema on his hands, and this is just wiping it out. It's taken a little getting used to as a facial cleanser since it's more like a cold cream than I'm used to, but I think it will be great for winter.

The soother feels wonderful after a shower, and the antiblemish elixir seems to do a fairly good job of wiping out small pimples.

I love the way all of this stuff smells. I love to just stick my nose into the jar with the cleansing cream and breathe in the rosemary fragrance.

It was a bit of an investment to acquire all of the ingredients (including more obscure essential oils) and storage containers, but I can see my family using the recipes I've made with them. In the end, I think it will cost less than the natural skin care products in the stores, and I have complete control over what goes in them.

Oh, and if I start making this stuff regularly, I might invest in an inexpensive blender just for this purpose. The cleansing cream (which contains beeswax and lanolin) was a beast to get out of my VitaMix.

Update: I've stopped using the cleansing cream on my face; it was just too heavy and left my skin looking greasy. But I still use it as a hand lotion and on my decollete. And the anti-blemish elixir is still pretty awesome. Photos of a couple of the things I made are on my blog in the post entitled "Potions Class." ( )

I have a lot of cocoa butter sitting unused in my fridge and was hoping to find some kind of hand lotion I could make from it in this book. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in here aren't vegan. A promising lotion using cocoa butter also called for beeswax and lanolin. ( )