homemade kohl

Indian women have been holding out on us. I hardly wear eyeliner, but now that I react to most all of them, I felt challenged to find or make one I could wear. After reading these sites on Indian eyeliner, I couldn't wait to try it:

wildturmeric: Homemade kohl/kajal:   Any makeup for women will be incomplete without applying eyeliner. We call this traditional eyeliner kohl/kajal. Though I am not a p...

Wise She khol how-to

This was my setup:

That's a small cast iron pan under the bread pan. I switched out the cups for shorter mugs since I wanted to get maxim soot on the pan. Next time I'll do this outside, because it smokes. A lot. In hindsight, I should have know that, since the goal is to produce soot. 

That's rice bran oil in the pan, but any veggie oil will do. I used an oil soaked rag held up with a bent paperclip as a wick (emergency light, anyone?). My rag was burning out before my allotted 20 min, so I tossed a bit of paper towel in to produce more smoke. 20 min produces a scant amount of soot, but it was enough for a trial. I used a chopstick to scrap the pan and stir in a bit of rice bran oil. Later added a smidgen of cornstarch in an attempt to lighten it, but that doesn't do much except extend the product (although the initial product was quite satisfactory if you like black liner). Applied with edge of toothpick, since that's what I had on hand, and swiped my lashes with the edge of the toothpick to mimic mascara. Results are quite dark and satisfactory, at least as good as commercial eyeliner. If I were making more, I'd used a drop of lavender or rosemary oil as a preservative.

I'll have to experiment and see if I can achieve brown eyeliner, my preferred color.

So far I've got lotion, foundation, liner, mascara and tinted lip balm, and I hate to admit it, but they are better than what I used before the allergies rocked my world.