After a few months of growth, my beard started to feel wiry and wasn’t nice to stroke anymore. After consulting the good people down at the internet, it became apparent my beard needed more conditioning. The best way to do that: beard oil.
Now, there are many cool beard oil manufacturers out there, with great reputations for making an excellent product. However, mixing a premium beard oil is not the cheapest thing to do, and if you are frugal like me, you can make a passable beard oil for a fraction of the cost.
Also, with a near infinite combination of ingredients, you can be quite adventurous with creating your own recipe. I limit myself to only a few different ones just because I’m a cheap bastard, but I encourage you to experiment and make a beard oil that you love.
For a very good, in depth guide written by someone far more knowledgable than me, I recommend the one written by Shawn at Tools of Men.
Here’s how I make my beard oil and my further cost savings along the way:
Instead of buying expensive bottles with eye-droppers inside, I just went to my recycling bin and pulled out an empty hot sauce bottle. While it may not provide the same level of shelf-life that a brown bottle may, I use beard oil everyday so I don’t need it to keep all that long. And, the narrow neck and small opening allows me to consistently drop the proper amount into the palm of my hand.
After making a mess the first time I tried to get my ingredients into the bottle, I went in search of a tiny funnel, or something that could accomplish the same result. I found a really cool, ancient icing...plunger thing at a thrift store for $0.75, but the nozzles are what I really wanted. They were the perfect size to fit on the top of my bottle to make sure all of my ingredients get into the bottle.
These are all the ingredients I currently use. As mentioned, you can mix and match many different oils, but I only use these 3.
Jojoba is my carrier oil. Everything I read said Jojoba was great because it is most similar to our body’s natural oil. But, to be honest, I haven’t experimented with any other oils to learn if I would like something better.
I use tea tree oil simply because we had it. It’s supposebly good for you for many reasons, but again I wasn’t terribly concerned about that. It was in our medicine cabinet so I tossed it in.
I actually bought the Bergamot oil. I spent a long time at the health food store smelling all the different essential oils trying to decide which one I wanted to smell like. Pretty quickly, they all started smelling the same. I finally narrowed it down to two: juniper berries or bergamot.
I ultimately settled on bergamot because I drink Earl Grey tea daily and figured I was going to spill it on myself, so I may as well start the day smelling like it. Also, since I volunteer with children I didn’t want their parents thinking all I do is drink gin all day long.
To make my beard oil, I half fill the bottle with Jojoba. I then add a few drops each of tea tree and Bergamot oil. Filling the rest of the bottle with Jojoba is all that’s left to do. Then, simply close the bottle and shake.
It’s that easy. If you can mix a drink, rye and ginger or a gin and tonic, you can make beard oil.
What do you think about my beard oil making technique? Do you make your own beard oil? And if so, what cost-saving measures to you employ?
No comments:
Post a Comment