We’ve all heard the adage “you are what you eat.”
HomeGrown Cosmetiks creator Amanda Perey takes that a step further with her organic body product line that contains only all natural, organic, fair-trade ingredients.
“I believe that if you can’t eat it, then you shouldn’t put it on your skin. So all these products I’ve eaten. The chocolate lip balm, I didn’t put enough bee’s wax in it the first time so I dipped banana chips in it and ate the whole thing. . . ,” laughs this busy mother of three who lives in Charlottetown.
Perey started working with these types of ingredients about a decade ago with the pregnancy of her first daughter when she developed a skin condition called pregnancy mask, which is a blotchy tan or dark discolouration.
Previous to that she’d been informally studying with people in the northern British Columbia region where she was living at the time to learn all she could about natural healing ingredients and remedies for the skin.
“I’d studied with women who had been working with natural ingredients for decades and decades and the first thing I had concocted for myself was this facial scrub. It’s almonds, rolled oats, lavender, sea salt, rose petals, all kinds of things. So using my first product my skin condition went away so I really started thinking there’s got to be something to this,” she says.
“That spurred a love for natural products and working these ingredients. And then when my daughter was born I couldn’t imagine putting anything else but on her because there were so many things on the market that really terrified me.”
Perey started creating things for her friends and family, which now includes Sophie, eight, Bijou, seven, and 15-month-old Ayla, at first purely as a hobby.
She originally developed her biggest seller — her Serious Relief healing salve — for her then husband who worked in the forestry industry to alleviate his severely dry and cracked hands.
“He was getting splits in his fingers (so deep) that you could put a dimes in them. It’s awful and it’s very painful. . . ,” Perey says.
“So after using it for that first few weeks, he still carries a tin with him.”
Perey slowly developed her HomeGrown Cosmetiks line that now includes body butters, face creams, facial scrubs, sticking to her main premise
of no petroleum,
parabens, sulfates and propylene glycol.
“Coconut oil is something I work with a lot; shea nut butter, hemp seed oil, those are my main staples,” she says.
Lip balms were also a must have for Perey so she then focused her concocting attention on them.
“I’ve always been addicted to lip balms every since I was a kid. I would see the big lineups of lip balms; they were so colourful and wildly named. I remember just standing there in front of them thinking, ‘If I could just name lip balms for a living, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful thing,” she laughs,
“Pot Brownie is beautiful. It’s the best chocolate lip balm you’ll ever taste. It’s made with organic coconut butter, cocoa powder, coconut oil — all kinds of good things in it. And Canadian Kiss is maple syrup-flavoured with peppermint. And this one is ginger citrus, it’s like having a cup of tea on your lips. It warms it up with a little organic ginger. It’s unreal.”
All of Perey’s products have been pretested on a host of more-than-willing human subjects and are packaged in reusable containers, such as stainless steel cocktail shakers and other metal tins that can be reused as lunch or jewelry storage cases.
Perey attempts to use as much locally sourced ingredients as possible, such as P.E.I. lavender from the Five Sisters of Lavender Lane in Kellys Cross and bees’ wax from Tim O’Flaherty at Drake Farms in St. Andrews.
She also uses Vitamin E Spectrum 50 in her products, which improves the quality and the consistency and gives them a shelf life of at least a year and a half.
She is also developing a line of lipsticks and eye shadows and an organic baby line of products as well for HomeGrown
Costmetiks, which she launched more than two years ago.
“I really wanted to turn it into a company because I knew that it was working for people. I know that I enjoy and I know that it works,” Perey says.
“And it’s a passion of mine. I feel that Prince Edward Islanders are moving toward more of an education as to what they’re putting into their bodies and on their bodies.”
We’ve all heard the adage “you are what you eat.”
HomeGrown Cosmetiks creator Amanda Perey takes that a step further with her organic body product line that contains only all natural, organic, fair-trade ingredients.
“I believe that if you can’t eat it, then you shouldn’t put it on your skin. So all these products I’ve eaten. The chocolate lip balm, I didn’t put enough bee’s wax in it the first time so I dipped banana chips in it and ate the whole thing. . . ,” laughs this busy mother of three who lives in Charlottetown.
Perey started working with these types of ingredients about a decade ago with the pregnancy of her first daughter when she developed a skin condition called pregnancy mask, which is a blotchy tan or dark discolouration.
Previous to that she’d been informally studying with people in the northern British Columbia region where she was living at the time to learn all she could about natural healing ingredients and remedies for the skin.
“I’d studied with women who had been working with natural ingredients for decades and decades and the first thing I had concocted for myself was this facial scrub. It’s almonds, rolled oats, lavender, sea salt, rose petals, all kinds of things. So using my first product my skin condition went away so I really started thinking there’s got to be something to this,” she says.
“That spurred a love for natural products and working these ingredients. And then when my daughter was born I couldn’t imagine putting anything else but on her because there were so many things on the market that really terrified me.”
Perey started creating things for her friends and family, which now includes Sophie, eight, Bijou, seven, and 15-month-old Ayla, at first purely as a hobby.
She originally developed her biggest seller — her Serious Relief healing salve — for her then husband who worked in the forestry industry to alleviate his severely dry and cracked hands.
“He was getting splits in his fingers (so deep) that you could put a dimes in them. It’s awful and it’s very painful. . . ,” Perey says.
“So after using it for that first few weeks, he still carries a tin with him.”
Perey slowly developed her HomeGrown Cosmetiks line that now includes body butters, face creams, facial scrubs, sticking to her main premise
of no petroleum,
parabens, sulfates and propylene glycol.
“Coconut oil is something I work with a lot; shea nut butter, hemp seed oil, those are my main staples,” she says.
Lip balms were also a must have for Perey so she then focused her concocting attention on them.
“I’ve always been addicted to lip balms every since I was a kid. I would see the big lineups of lip balms; they were so colourful and wildly named. I remember just standing there in front of them thinking, ‘If I could just name lip balms for a living, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful thing,” she laughs,
“Pot Brownie is beautiful. It’s the best chocolate lip balm you’ll ever taste. It’s made with organic coconut butter, cocoa powder, coconut oil — all kinds of good things in it. And Canadian Kiss is maple syrup-flavoured with peppermint. And this one is ginger citrus, it’s like having a cup of tea on your lips. It warms it up with a little organic ginger. It’s unreal.”
All of Perey’s products have been pretested on a host of more-than-willing human subjects and are packaged in reusable containers, such as stainless steel cocktail shakers and other metal tins that can be reused as lunch or jewelry storage cases.
Perey attempts to use as much locally sourced ingredients as possible, such as P.E.I. lavender from the Five Sisters of Lavender Lane in Kellys Cross and bees’ wax from Tim O’Flaherty at Drake Farms in St. Andrews.
She also uses Vitamin E Spectrum 50 in her products, which improves the quality and the consistency and gives them a shelf life of at least a year and a half.
She is also developing a line of lipsticks and eye shadows and an organic baby line of products as well for HomeGrown
Costmetiks, which she launched more than two years ago.
“I really wanted to turn it into a company because I knew that it was working for people. I know that I enjoy and I know that it works,” Perey says.
“And it’s a passion of mine. I feel that Prince Edward Islanders are moving toward more of an education as to what they’re putting into their bodies and on their bodies.”
