Rock Make Up

When I was 7, my best friend and I used to make our own make up. We'd take pretty colorful rocks and scrape them against other rocks to get a powder and apply it to our eyes for eye shadow. He'd take Vaseline and mix it up with berries from her grandfathers garden and make our own lip gloss. It is a fond memory I have of my childhood, and it recently came flooding back to me while in a store looking at makeup with my daughter.

She is fascinated with makeup right now, and being the cool , totally out of the box mother that I am, at 8 years old I'm letting her wear blush and lip gloss and eye shadow. I helped her pick out the colors, and gave her tips and hints on how to apply, and let her go to town.

She somehow manages to put the eyeshadow on like she is a cyclopes every time and has big blue and green streaks across the bridge of her nose! :) But, she's 8 and she thinks she is beautiful.

Some might wonder why we'd agree to let our 8 year old daughter wear make up, while I'm sure others think that we are outright wrong for doing so. It doesn;t matter to me what anyone else thinks, because it is our choice.. but for the sake of discussion...we did it for two reasons.

1. I'd rather she experiment now and make her mistakes at this age, so that when she's a teenager she knows how to put it on already and the novelty of it will have worn off by then, and she won't look like Mimi from the Drew Cary Show.

2. I'd rather she desire wearing make up for herself, rather then as a teenager because it is somehow tied to being pretty enough to attract the attention of the boys.

Now, I'm writing this because she and I have decided that we are going to experiment when we move to the new house and start making our own makeup. Namely gloss, blush and eyeshadow. The reason for this is because there is not much these days that does have "made in china" marked on it when we look at make up ( that is in our price range mind you), and with the tainted milk ( and powdered milk often being a filler in bubble baths and makeup) and lead in things these days, I'm in fear of giving my daughter lip gloss that has some sort of chemical in it that would leech into her lips and make her sick.

If we know where it came from, and what's in it, I'll feel better about it, and I think it would be a good chemistry/cooking lesson for her for homeschooling.

So my latest googling project has been to acquire homemade make up recipes and some small jars to hold stuff....things that are simple and that have easily attainable ingredients.

I think this will be fun, and I can't wait to get started :) Stay tuned ....