Luke treated me to a cosmetics workshop at Cantika Zest Spa, Bali. This place is a little slice of heaven, set in the middle of a forest bordered by rice fields, they hand pick almost all of the ingredients in their very own garden. It’s total bliss.

A very Welsh welcome to a very Balinese spa

A perfect soundtrack of birds tweeting, ciccadas playing and water trickling down from the spring

The cosmetics are made from a combination of flower water, rice, nuts, coconut oil, beeswax, egg white, leaves, fruit, vegetables, clay, oatmeal and essential oils of your choice. The fun bit is working out how much of each ingredient you need.

Ok so maybe I ended up with less coconut than I should have had but I was hungry and roasted coconut is delicious.

Flowers are soaked over night to create beautifully scented water used in many Cantika products.

This ended up as a face scrub, I also made a moisturiser and a face mask. All of which smell and feel amazing.

If you fancy making your own face scrub here is a rough guideline:

• Roughly half a palm full of uncooked rice that has been soaked in water over night.
• Cut up a small Pandan leaf into thin strips, alternatively you can use lavender or even apple peel.
• Chop up 3 or 4 fatty nuts, macadamia or almonds would be perfect.
• If you were making a body scrub you would add ginger and clove at this point.
• Using the finest section of a grater, grate small amounts of carrot, cucumber, coconut, raw corn and apple (you only want the juice created from these)
• Add quarter of a palm of oatmeal, alternatively you can use boiled potato.
• Throw all ingredients into a pestle & mortar and grind up until it looks a bit like a Thai green curry paste. 

Voila!

I then got taken for a facial where the products I made were used – purely to check that they worked 😉

I loved this workshop so much and can’t wait to experiment making my own cosmetics at home.