Sarah Callard's kitchen in Yelverton, West Devon, smells of strawberries, lemons and avocados. One bowl contains porridge oats mixed with yoghurt to make a skin-smoothing face mask. Sarah dabs some on her face.

Next she cuts a lemon in half and sprinkles it with sugar. It releases the scent of home-made lemonade as she rubs it on her elbow to exfoliate the hard skin.

"I'm feeling hungry," says Sarah, who is breastfeeding a three- month-old baby and confesses to feeling ravenous all the time. The advantage of making your own beauty products is that you can always eat them.

The avocado mask could definitely pass as a dip, and the strawberries smell particularly enticing, even though they are (whisper it) bound to be imported at this time of year.

She uses a fork to mash them up in a bowl, releasing the sticky scented juice. She is going to use them in a cleanser, but they have other beauty uses too.

"Strawberries in particular are known for their teeth-whitening effect, so you can rub them on your teeth," she says. "Eating strawberries at the end of a meal is a good idea because of this.

"Strawberries also make a good cleanser; mash them up a bit with some of the strawberry juice and with lavender oil. I also use lavender oil instead of Savlon on cuts, scratches and insect bites. It is brilliant stuff."

Sarah's book the Little Green Book of Beauty is packed with tips for making your own beauty products, alongside warnings about the chemicals found in many commercial beauty products, among them perfumes, toothpaste and deodorant, moisturisers and shampoo.

Sarah tries to practise what she preaches. She has the fresh, natural beauty of the earth mother, with her loose blonde hair and pink natural complexion.

She doesn't slather herself in make-up, uses olive oil as a moisturiser and only washes her hair once a week, with her three- year-old daughter's eco-friendly shampoo.

Going green on the beauty front is a compromise, though, as she freely admits.

She still uses lipstick and finds the lure of a seductively marketed scent - in her case a bottle of Jo Malone - impossible to resist when getting glammed up.

And her partner has not given up on deodorant because "being a teacher it is important that he doesn't smell".

Neither of them has given up on toothpaste, although many brands contain triclosan, a chemical with anti-bacterial properties which has a molecular structure resembling known carcinogens (cancer- causing toxins).

Sarah does, though, suggest an alternative which would be familiar to our ancestors, made from bicarbonate of soda mixed with water and a little lemon juice.

"I don't brush my teeth with bicarbonate of soda, but some people might, so that is why I've included it in the book," she says. "The bicarbonate is doing the cleaning and the lemon is doing the whitening."

Pouring beer on your head - in her case a can of Cornish Tribute - is her recommendation for glossy, healthy hair, the natural way.

"Wash your hair as usual, then give your hair a final rinse with flat beer, which you then rub into your head and rinse off," says Sarah, boldly demonstrating over her kitchen sink.

"The proteins in beer help counteract damage and the sugar in beer gives it the shine."

It was becoming pregnant which put Sarah off using vast amounts of chemical-based beauty products.

"This all became quite important to me when I was pregnant both times," she says. "The whole sense of smell goes crazy; you can smell if someone is having a fag a mile down the road. The smell of synthetic fragrances made me feel sick."

Essentially her philosophy is to have fewer beauty products, where possible chemical-free (she uses a Dr Hauschka moisturiser), make your own where you can and to have fewer competing scents on your body.

For washing, she suggests eschewing body washes, shower gels and foam baths in favour of a vegetable-based soap, scented with an essential oil.

"Just really be aware of what you are using and how much you are using and ask yourself if you really need a different moisturiser for each thing, or could you perhaps put a bit of one thing on all of it. Try to cut back on the number you use.

"I think that we are all sucked into the fact that we need to slather ourselves with tons of stuff, and if we don't we are missing out," she says. "There is a big psychology to do with beauty products."

© 2008 Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.



x