A Homemade, DIY Eyeliner Recipe

We love a sultry cat-eye, but not if it involves chemical liners that leave eyes red, irritated, and cracked. Luckily, there’s a nontoxic eyeliner that’s easy to make at home. The secret ingredient? Almonds.

Along with raw almonds, grab a lighter, some tweezers or small tongs, a butter knife, and a bowl or dish.

Holding the almond with the tweezers, light the pointy tip on fire. Burn the almond until about half of it is covered with black soot.

Still holding the almonds in the tweezers, scrape the soot off the almond into the dish with the butter knife. Be careful not to get any chunks of raw almond into the pile, to avoid getting any particles in your eyes.

Once you’ve got a large enough pile of almond soot, use an eyeliner brush to apply the powder to your lash line. The soot will naturally mix with the oils on your skin, but you can add a little almond oil or water to the mix if you prefer a liquid liner.

Not quite ready to get your pyromaniac on? No worries—you can make almost any powder into liquid eyeliner by mixing it with a bit of oil. For brown eyeliner, try mixing cacao powder with some almond oil. Experiment with different colors, too—spirulina powder will give you a vibrant teal hue and acai powder will create a fun purple.

Photo credit: Paul Delmont