Formulating organic skincare: How Chantal puts her passion into action

Many of our students take our courses to make products for themselves, their friends and family – not everyone wants their own skincare brand!

We’re sure that lots of you reading this feature will also be pursuing this as a hobby, or for your own personal growth, and we think that’s amazing!

Take our student Chantal Gangnon, for example.

She formulates her own organic skincare products for herself because of a desire to express her passion about living organically through the products she puts on her skin and hair – and this is a very common reason why people start to make their own.

After all, do you really understand the label on conventional skincare products? Do you know what’s going on your skin?

The benefit of making your own organic skincare products

Understanding what goes into skincare products – both conventional and also natural/organic – is one of the added benefits of learning to make your own!

Not only do you learn the practical art of combining ingredients together to create something delightful and good for your skin (or for your friends, family or customers), but you also learn so much more information that is ultimately incredibly empowering!

You will learn what skincare ingredients are, how to read a cosmetic label, how the skin works, how to select ingredients that conform to your values, and what ‘natural’, ‘organic’ and ‘vegan’ actually mean on a label.

All of this makes you a supremely aware and informed consumer. You can make better choices because you can discern what’s right and what isn’t, you can decide for yourself whether you want to buy something or not, and you can start to live your life in greater accordance with your deepest values, whatever they are (vegan, organic, fair trade, cruelty free, etc).

When it comes to cosmetics and the things we apply to our skin and hair, fortunately, not everything is absorbed. If it did, we wouldn’t need to eat! However, a great deal is absorbed and that’s a source of concern to those of us who don’t want certain ingredients or potentially harmful chemicals in our bodies.

For those of us striving to lead organic lifestyles, by making and using organic skincare products we are able to avoid using ingredients that don’t conform to our organic values, which means we’re able to more easily avoid chemicals that we don’t want to expose our bodies to. Making our own products is a win-win!

Chantal is conscious of a number of interconnected environmental issues, including the role of pesticides in the production of non-organic ingredients. Chantal strongly believes that pesticides cause great harm to the environment, destroying valuable habitats and insects and often ending up inside our bodies to potentially wreak havoc there. She’s also concerned with GMOs and wishes to completely avoid them in her products.

The essential role of community for Chantal

Chantal focuses on creating wonderful, nourishing organic products and places great value on being part of a community of like-minded formulators. Chantal shares:

“Network and tell people you’re trying to make organic products and why. It is important to spread the word about why this is important to you, to be an advocate and join the community.”

She is a proponent of sharing knowledge with fellow formulators and offering help. She believes that sharing in a community benefits everyone and that the organic community is welcoming and inclusive.

We’re also firm advocates for learning in a community – we have dedicated student support groups for our courses, staffed by our formulation tutors and open to everyone enrolled in those courses! We encourage sharing knowledge, experiences, successes and failures and always love to hear what amazing products our students have been creating!

As a parting gift, Chantal once received some words of wisdom that she would like to share with you:

“… always listen to feedback and never get defensive about it, because of the minute you get defensive, you cut off the communication and people will stop being honest.”

Wise words indeed! Thank you Chantal.

Join the natural and organic skincare revolution!

The organic movement is rapidly expanding and is now part of the mainstream for good reason. We’re excited to welcome students who place importance on making organic cosmetics to join our growing global tribe.

As Chantal has experienced, being part of our community of like-minded passionate natural and organic beauty lovers can make a huge difference to us all.

Our courses are designed to be self-study courses and we teach students all around the world to make their own natural and organic beauty products, for themselves or to sell, in their own time and at their own pace.

We also know how important it is to feel part of a community, which is why we place great emphasis on our vibrant online community where thousands of natural and organic beauty lovers from around the world share experiences, collaborate, and support each other through their studies and ongoing learning journey.

By coming together to learn and collaborate, our aim is to help the natural and organic movement to flourish and grow, and who knows, one day become the norm!

If you’d like to learn to make natural and organic skincare products for yourself by following our recipes rather than creating your own from scratch, then our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products is for you.

If you want to be able to create your own products from scratch like a professional, for yourself or to sell, instead of only being able to follow other people’s recipes, then you’ll want to look at our Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation.

And if you’re looking for some inspiration about how you could become a more conscious in your skincare formulation…

We’re offering an email training series to help provide some key insight to our students, as well as natural beauty fans even if they’re not students with us yet!

Right now, consumers, formulators, and brands alike are becoming much more aware of environmental and ethical issues.

Discover the issues that are important today and how to become a conscious formulator creating cosmetics for the conscious consumer!

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