HOLLISTON - Suzanne Foxwell's approach to beauty is a bit like cooking: a pinch of this, a dash of that, whip it all up and the finished product looks and smells wonderful.
Foxwell's beauty secrets lie in the gardens that surround her house and a basketful of items found in most kitchens, ingredients such as oatmeal, corn starch, nonfat dry milk and safflower oil.
"If you like to cook, you'll like to make your own makeup," she says, adding that even people who don't enjoy cooking can have fun making their own beauty products.
Since January, Foxwell has been creating all-natural skin care items using herbs harvested from her acre of gardens at The Lambs Ear Herb Farm. In her workshop, she has experimented with facial scrubs, clay masks, hand lotions, body powders and herbal bath solutions.
She has even concocted a perfume, combining floral oils with alcohol and aging it in a dark place for six months. When applied to the wrist, the mixture does indeed smell like a pricey store-bought scent.
"You've got to have a good vodka," Foxwell explains, preferring to keep the rest of her perfume recipe under wraps.
She is quite willing, however, to share the remainder of her herbal beauty tips. This spring, she began teaching courses in her home on how to make and apply these products, as well as how to plant an herb garden.
"Makeup is no mystery," she says. "The components of these are the same as those you buy in a store."
The difference, however, is that the homemade products contain no artificial ingredients or preservatives, which can irritate some people's skin.
Foxwell says she decided to start making her own beauty aids after her face broke out from products applied at a "natural" makeup store she visited. The products, she says, contained preservatives that bothered her skin.
"I had been thinking of this for a while. I had been reading and researching," she says. "I've always been interested in makeup - most girls are." After her experience with skin irritation, she decided to try her own facial treatment and has been pleased with the results.
LEAVES SKIN SOFT
"This just leaves the skin very soft. It looks like velvet," she says of a homemade face cream. Since January, when she began making her own, Foxwell has stopped using commercially made body or face lotions.
"My skin was soft but not quite as silky," she says comparing the commercial creams' effect to that of her own lotion. "I can't scientifically tell you why. It wish I could, but I can't."
Using flowers and herbs as beauty aids - as well as for food, decorative and medicinal purposes - is nothing new. It has experienced renewed interest, however, with the current back-to- basics trend. "In New England, we're no-nonsense people. It's getting bigger here," Foxwell says.
A stroll down the shampoo and skin care aisles of any store reveals the popularity of products containing henna, aloe and herbs.
History shows that the Egyptians used henna to highlight their hair, according to Foxwell. And that's not the only natural beauty treatment discovered centuries ago.
"Way back in Egyptian times, they would take drops of rosemary and rub it through their hair to make it shine," explains Lynn Hartman of Hartman's Herb Farm in Barre. This was a practice, however, that only the wealthy could afford.
"Peasants wouldn't have access to the oils," Hartman says. "It would be too expensive. It takes lots of pounds of material to make the oil."
Fortunately, these ancient treatments are now much more accessible and affordable.
"A lot of the shampoos that are sold today have rosemary in them because it's supposed to be good for the hair," acting as a conditioner and making it smell nice, Hartman says.
And way before Clairol came up with hair colorings, people rinsed their hair with water, in which dried chamomile had been steeped, to lighten their locks. It's a process that remains popular today, Hartman says.
The ingredients for making homemade herbal beauty products are readily available nowadays. "All the products we use here can be found in a drug store or a grocery store," Foxwell says.
The major investment can be measured in hours, not dollars.
"The biggest problem is that it takes time. That's why people like over-the-counter products," Hartman says.
"We've become so lazy," Foxwell says. "We can run to the store and pick it up already made for us.
"It's amazing how we as a society discarded all of these wonderful recipes. It takes a little more time, a little more work, but you get them the way you want them."
CREATING ITEMS
Foxwell says she is interested in learning to create actual makeup items. "Lipstick is nothing more than bee's wax with a tint," she says.
But for now, she's busy working on her other skin care products and sharing her beauty advice with others.
"You're not going to change your wrinkles. Once they're there, they're there," Foxwell says. "But we can make our skin look healthy."
For $25, Foxwell offers a one-day course including an herbal facial scrub, a facial steam, clay mask, a facial and hand message, instructions on making herbal beauty products, and a tour of her herb garden.
Here are a few natural beauty recipes to get you started. Because they contain no preservatives, Foxwell suggests refrigerating homemade products of a liquid nature and keeping powders in airtight containers. People who are unsure of a product's effect on their skin should test a small portion of it on their hand first.
FENNEL FACE PACK