Advertisement

Meet the woman cooking up cosmetics for a natural look

Alex Brennan believes your kitchen has all you need to look good - Rachel Whiting
Alex Brennan believes your kitchen has all you need to look good - Rachel Whiting

When Alex Brennan gets ready for a night out she hits her kitchen. The model and beauty entrepreneur takes the phrase “looking good enough to eat” literally, digging out frozen raspberries, cocoa powder and ground ginger to mix up her own make-up.

The 28-year-old is passionate about making natural beauty products, and she sees no reason why the rest of us shouldn’t be able to knock up a bronzer in a couple of minutes. “I rarely wear make-up these days but if I need it I’ll make it on the day,” she says.

makeup - Credit: Rachel Whiting
Tried and tested: Alex Brennan is passionate about homemade beauty products Credit: Rachel Whiting

Today she’s wearing a shimmery eyeshadow made from ground ginger and cocoa powder, while her dark lashes are thanks to coconut oil mixed with a bit of activated charcoal.

“You can make things as you’re making breakfast. If you’re having yogurt and muesli, mix a bit of yogurt with a bit of lemon juice and chuck it on your face, leave it 15 minutes and wash it off and you’re done. All those things could be part of natural routine.”

Alex makes it all sound easy, but she learnt her craft the hard way. Six years ago while living in her native Australia her hair fell out due to stress. Diagnosed with alopecia, she started using medicinal shampoo, to no avail. In ­desperation, she decided to mix up her own lotion.

I started using a nettle and rosemary rinse that I made and within two months my hair had started to grow back

“I started with baking soda and ­water and within two weeks my hair loss stopped,” says Alex. “I came off all the medication and started using a ­nettle and rosemary rinse that I made myself and within two months it had started to grow back.”

There was no stopping her. “Once my hair started to grow I was looking at everything else. Why have I got bad skin? Why have I got cellulite? Why don’t I sleep well? How much of that is caused by what I’m using? You don’t realise it but you’re exposed to over 500 different chemicals every day as a woman because of what we slather on our bodies. You absorb 70 per cent of what goes on your skin, while you only absorb 30 per cent of what you ingest, so it has such a big impact on the body.”

Today, Alex says she’s probably the healthiest that she’s ever been. She makes all her own beauty products, toothpaste, shower gels, shampoos – even her household cleaning products are handmade.

makeup - Credit: Rachel Whiting
‘Mix yogurt with lemon juice and chuck it on your face, leave it 15 minutes and wash it off', suggests Alex Credit: Rachel Whiting

It took her a couple of years to perfect her recipes. “A little tip, don’t pour beeswax down the sink. My mum had to constantly call out the plumbers!” But by the time she moved to the UK four years ago she had notebooks and scraps of paper filled with recipes, which have now been refined in two books, Fresh Faced Beauty and Fresh Faced Makeup.

She hopes that it will inspire more of us to try making our own beauty products. Figuring that part of the reason we buy so many is out of convenience, it was important that each product was easy to make.

“I wanted something that was a ­tablespoon here and teaspoon there and you’re done,” she says.

Given all the pseudo-science that floats around the beauty industry, it’s easy to be sceptical about Alex’s assertion that simple ingredients you might already have in your kitchen cupboard are all you need.

But then there are lots of tried and tested old staples that many of us have forgotten about.

Take baking soda for instance, says Alex. “It’s cheap and so people think, ‘it’s only 50p, it can’t be good’. But it can. My grandparents used it to scour their pots and pans. I first used it in my hair. It’s a great exfoliant for your skin. A little bit in water is good for indigestion. You can knock a bit in your shoes and tip it out and it deodorises. Oh, and it makes your teeth white.” 

makeup - Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley
Recipes for a healthy glow: Alex Brennan shows Boudicca Fox Leonard how to make a blusher using only beetroot, tapioca and ginger Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley

I’m in the market for something a bit more glam than baking soda though, so Alex shows me how to knock together an easy blusher using just three ingredients. A tablespoon of tapioca powder which absorbs oil and creates stick (any white base like arrowroot or cornflour works), two tablespoons of beetroot powder for colour and a pinch of ground ginger for shimmer (nutmeg or cinnamon also work).

“If you wanted it lighter, add more tapioca. You could do it more brown and use cocoa powder instead. I always stick with a white flour base.”

For more crazy colours, particularly for eyeshadows, she recommends spirulina for green or any food grade colouring dropped in with tapioca flour. An easy lip-stain consists of coconut oil mixed with dried berries.

KISSABLE NATURAL LIPSTICK
KISSABLE NATURAL LIPSTICK

Not everything is a kitchen staple. Alex uses vitamin E as a preservative, carrot seed oil for its anti-ageing qualities and SPF 40, and for a pricey anti-wrinkle product, frankincense. Her standard concealer contains small portions of a red, yellow and blue oxide, which colour correct, added to a tablespoon of Australian beige clay. Her primer contains sericite mica, which is light reflective. “It’s really good for healing acne scars. So rather than putting on make-up and taking it off and your skin is 10 times worse, this is better. That is the goal for me. If you want to wear make up, it shouldn’t damage your skin.”

The recipes have been trial and error, with Alex admitting: “I have looked disastrous in my time. There were long periods when I first started off looking like I hadn’t had a bath.”

She’s planning to launch her own range of natural products in the UK in March. In the meantime, those who feel inspired can use her book to craft their own at home.

“I hope it gives people the opportunity to have what everybody should have. A product they can use, knowing it isn’t going to hurt them.”

 

Fresh Faced Beauty and Fresh Faced Makeup by Alex Brennan are published by Pavilion.