When I was pregnant, I oiled my body every day to try and avoid stretch marks. I found a clean-beauty oil I loved, but at the cost of over 50 euros a bottle, and using it head to toe daily, it disappeared fast.

Then my son arrived with beautifully dry skin (thank you, dad’s genetics), and the search started again. The one clean option I trusted was £26, ordered from the UK every few months. Sweet baby, not-so-sweet recurring cost.

So I started making my own. The first batch cost more upfront as you have to buy all the ingredients at once. I ended up reusing old bottles and jars and kind of got into the habit of making them everytime I was running lowl.

To be clear, I’m not someone who’s allergic to spending. Shopping could be my full-time hobby. I love splurging on a nice product with minimal packaging. It’s such a treat. But oils felt different, it’s something nature basically hands you, and I realised I wasn’t paying for the ingredients so much as the label and the shelf it sat on. Same story with a face oil I loved at £100 a bottle: I sat down and hand-selected my own ingredients and started making my own instead.

What I found genuinely interesting once I dug in: most face and body oils, whether they cost €10 or €150, are built on the same small handful of base ingredients: jojoba, sweet almond, argan, apricot kernel, grapeseed, rosehip. Jojoba in particular is prized because its structure closely resembles the oil our own skin produces, which is exactly why it turns up in bargain and prestige bottles alike. What usually separates the €10 bottle from the €100 one isn’t the base oil: it’s the extras, the blend ratios, the scent, the packaging and brand story on top.

I also made a separate blend for my husband, whose skin runs drier than mine and leans toward dermatitis — because one size never really fits all, even at home.

So that’s the “why” behind this corner of the kitchen: not a rejection of nice things, just a realisation that some of my favourite skincare started as honest ingredients on my own counter. Sharing the recipes here because they’ve brought me joy, and I hope they do the same for you.