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Tuesday, October 29, 2024

My Dupe For Repair Vita Oil

 I fell in love with the first (and only) bottle of the Repair Vita Oil that I got from Making Cosmetics. At that time (2021), I paid less than $20 for an 8.4-ounce bottle that lasted for MONTHS.


about $2.14 per ounce
 I was so happy to find something so good on my aging skin. I think it wasn't until several months - maybe even a year or more - that I needed to reorder. Well. Child. 

about $43.40 per pound
and 11 LBs is ONLY option

Who has that kind of Elon de Bezos money???? Don't look at me. I was rearranging things in my budget to get the twenty-dollar bottle! Obviously, MC decided to ignore the smaller customers and go for selling in bulk.  (Even if I could afford the stuff, I wouldn't indulge. That kind of excess is morally stupid, no matter how much money you have!)

Okay so... it was time to improvise. Actually, after I thought about it, I realized I should have done that in the first place. It was simple to find the ingredients and, because I already use oils for my skin and hair, I had most of them in my pantry and a couple of the missing are those I don't use anyway. This ended up being my base blend:

The only thing I did not have much of was the Rosemary. Apparently, adding just a very little bit was good enough. Because my skin and hair aren't crazy about coconut oil, I omitted it and, because I am me, I didn't worry about the other ingredients because I was testing the blend as I went. When I got to the Neroli, I found I liked my blend much better than the MC version.

repurposed a good bottle.
This is after aboeut a month's use

Of course, I made 2 variants of the oil because I happened to have some vanilla bean oil that I'd been infusing in sweet almond oil for several weeks. I added a little of that to another bottle of my Vita Oil blend (which I call Skin Food!) and it is lovely. I was worried about the vanilla because I've never used an infusion on my skin before now but it turned out nicely and has a really faint delicious scent.

If I add up the ingredients used to make the 2 one-ounce bottles I already had, I would guess it cost me less than $0.40 to make all of it. You can see why I will never buy any more from MC...

If you decide to make a DIY oil and can't figure out what percentage of each ingredient to use, ask ChatGPT. It gave me percentages and drops. Okay. That's one safe use of AI, I guess.

I now have 3 oils (and will be making more until I run out of ingredients). I have the one I use on my face every morning; one that I use in the evening; and one that I will be using during the dryer winter months.

Morning Oil:

  • Plum kernel oil (which feel amazing and absorbs so well)
  • Rosemary oil
  • Pure Vitamin E oil
  • Coconut oil (just a drop of the fractionated version)
Evening/Overnight Oil:
  • Plum kernel
  • Rosemary
  • Vitamin E
  • Vanilla bean (oil from a sweet almond infusion)
Dry Weather Oil:
  • Plum kernel
  • Jojoba
  • Vitamin E
  • Helichrysum (and E.O.) ~this smells angelic~
  • Neroli
  • Sweet almond oil
(I use the Dry Weather formula under my Nivea cream.)

And, no matter what time of year it is, don't forget to use sunscreen...

As I said, because I have always used oil for my hair, skin, and cooking needs, I didn't need to buy much. One recipe I saw in a forum called for EVOO mixed with tea tree and coconut. I think that one was for combo or acne-prone skin (?).

It absorbs even more after 3 or so minutes
Anyway, I am glad to say goodbye to MC's Vita Repair oil. I think they figured out how popular it was becoming and so they upped the minimum quantity and/or price. If I can't trust the availability of a product, why even bother falling in love with it?

Peace
--Free

P.S.: There might be some discrepancies in this post. After I wrote the original draft, I played around more with my formula, so I (clumsily) have made some changes to this post.