DIY Halloween Makeup (Homemade Costume Makeup)

Avoid the toxic chemicals in store-bought Halloween makeup by making your own homemade costume makeup. It’s a fun project that can be customized for your costume.

Why make your own homemade costume makeup?

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I promote making things yourself to control the ingredients.

A 2016 study found that many kids’ Halloween costume makeup products contained harmful chemicals. Almost half were found to have at least traces of one heavy metal, but some were found to have as many as 4.

They found heavy metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium, along with cancer-linked volatile organic compounds like styrene and toluene. Lead is a neurotoxin, and cadmium is a hormone disruptor. Neither is something I want in makeup for my son.

Creating your own costume makeup allows you to control the ingredients and customize the color completely. It’s also a fun project.

Ingredients

The base recipe includes oil, wax, clay, and natural colorants. It also optionally uses magnesium stearate.

Oil

Being a very forgiving recipe, you can use pretty much any liquid oil you like. I used sunflower oil because it is an easily obtainable, affordable, non-comedogenic option. That said, any liquid oil should make a homemade costume makeup stick with a consistency similar to mine.

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Wax

To make a solid makeup stick, we need a wax. Beeswax works very well in this recipe. Keep in mind, though, that it has a comedogenic rating of 2, meaning that it may cause breakouts for some people.

Candelilla wax is slightly harder to find, but it has a comedogenic rating of 1. It is very similar to beeswax in texture, so you can substitute it for candelilla wax to make a vegan, less comedogenic makeup.

Clay

After much experimentation, I discovered that adding bentonite clay gives a more opaque, less shiny makeup that spreads more easily on the skin. Adding clay improved coverage and reduced the need for colorants.

I tried using other clays like kaolin clay when making white makeup and red clay when making a red makeup stick. Colored clays work relatively well for coloring the makeup, but I prefer the texture that bentonite clay gives the makeup. (You may still prefer white clay when making a bright white makeup stick.)

Natural colorants

In my soap-making journey, I have experimented with lots of natural colorants. Some are more “natural” than others. Here are some common pigments I’ve used:

• Black: activated charcoal or black iron oxide
• White: titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, or kaolin clay
• Other colors: iron oxides, micas, colored clays, or spices

I don’t have a problem using iron oxides and micas, but some people avoid them because they want to use something 100% natural.

Iron oxides

Iron oxides are minerals that are identical to those that can be found in nature. Naturally mined iron oxides aren’t typically used in cosmetics in the United States due to their potentially high levels of harmful heavy metals.

If you’re making your own costume makeup to avoid heavy metals, it doesn’t make sense to use iron oxides that contain heavy metals.

I usually prefer natural products, but for iron oxides, I choose lab-synthesized ones for safety. Select cosmetic-grade iron oxide.

Micas

Micas are usually mined and then coated with pigments, which can vary in their “naturalness” based on the pigments used.

Truly natural colorants

If you want to use truly natural colorants for your homemade costume makeup, consider using herbs and spices. Here is a list of some that you could consider trying:

I haven’t tried all of them for this project, but have successfully used activated carbon, cocoa powder, colored clays, alkanet root, and achiote powder in homemade makeup.

• Yellow: turmeric, yellow clay
• Brown: cocoa powder
• Black: activated carbon
• Red: alkanet root, paprika, or red clay
• Pink: Beetroot powder or pink clay
• Orange: powdered annatto (achiote) or orange clay
• Green: spirulina, chlorella, or green clay
• Blue: blue clay or butterfly pea powder

Clays can color makeup smoothly but generally need to be combined with other colorants for brighter hues.

To see the results of using some of these colorants, check out my posts on how to make food colorings and how to make naturally colored boba.

What is magnesium stearate?

Magnesium stearate is a somewhat controversial ingredient, perhaps unfairly. It got a bad rap after being found in many, if not most, supplements.

Magnesium stearate is a white powder used to lubricate machinery during the production of supplement pills, ensuring faster and smoother operation. It also helps prevent the supplements from sticking together and from sticking to the machinery.

People debate whether ingesting magnesium stearate is harmful. Based on what I’ve read, as long as the quantities you ingest are small (as in supplements), it probably isn’t harmful.

In makeup, larger amounts are used but they aren’t meant to be ingested.

Is Magnesium stearate safe in makeup? Why addd it?

Magnesium stearate is often added to mineral makeups to help them go on more smoothly, to adhere to your skin for longer, and to absorb oils and shine, amongst other reasons.

• I added magnesium stearate to help the makeup flow more easily over the skin and have more staying power.
• It also helps absorb excess oils in the makeup and on the skin, making the final product more matte and less shiny.

I tried making several batches with and without the magnesium stearate, and I preferred the batches that used it. The makeup was easier to apply, had better and more opaque coverage, and theoretically may be longer-lasting, although I didn’t test that aspect out.

The EWG Skin Deep cosmetic database rates magnesium stearate as a 1, which is a low hazard rating for cosmetics. I feel that it is a safe ingredient and often use it in my homemade cosmetics.

Omitting magnesium stearate

If you prefer not to use it, though, you can leave it out.

I’d suggest substituting it with more clay. You could also add some titanium dioxide to help reduce shine and make the makeup more opaque. (Titanium dioxide will also lighten your color, so add it slowly to make sure you don’t lighten the color too much.)

How to make a Halloween makeup

1. in a double boiler, heat the beeswax and oil together until the wax has fully melted.
2. Add in the clay, magnesium stearate, and natural colorants. Start with around 1/8th of a teaspoon of the colorant, and add more as needed.
3. Test out the color by applying some of the mixture to your skin.
4. Add more pigments, as needed, until you reach the desired color and consistency.
5. Pour the mixture into your storage containers. (I use empty chapstick or lipstick tubes for easy application.)
6. Allow to cool and harden before using.

Customizing the makeup

If you aren’t happy with the color or consistency of your makeup, you can remelt it and adjust it until you’re happy.

Getting the right color (Lightening or darkening)

If your color is too dark, titanium dioxide can be added to lighten up colors. Add it little by little to avoid adding too much.

Colors may lighten as they solidify, so it’s better to make them a bit darker at first. It’s more difficult to darken colors once they are too light.

Customizing the texture of your makeup

Typically, adding more oil to cosmetics formulated with oils and waxes, like lip balms, softens the product. However, in my experiments, too much oil made the makeup greasier, less opaque, and less enduring.

Too much wax, on the other hand, can make a solid makeup that is hard to apply. Using beeswax and candelilla wax didn’t cause me issues, but adding too much hard wax like carnauba wax can make the makeup brittle and difficult to apply.

Feel free to experiment with the ratios to soften or harden the makeup, keeping the following in mind:

• To create softer makeup, increase the oil-to-wax ratio and add more clay to reduce shine and enhance opacity.
• A 1:1 ratio of oil to wax makes a pretty good consistency

Storage and application

I used empty chapstick tubes for storing and applying our DIY Halloween makeup. They’re inexpensive and make the makeup easy to apply. You can either reuse an old chapstick container or buy them cheaply in bulk. You can use cardboard tubes to avoid plastic.

Another option is to use small tins or jars if you plan on applying the makeup with your hands or a makeup brush.

You can also make pencils for drawing finer lines, but in the case of making homemade makeup pencils, you’ll probably need to add some carnauba wax to make a more solid pencil that can be sharpened without breaking.

Not just for Halloween makeup!

While I formulated this recipe to use as a homemade costume makeup, I found that it works well as a homemade lipstick, blush stick, and general cream makeup.

Now that you’ve learned how versatile it can be, are you ready to make some?

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This post was originally published on October 17, 2017. It was rewritten to make it more clear and concise in 2024.