The History of Ghastly Good

It is our pledge to use organic cold-pressed oils, Pure, Carrageenan-free Aloe Vera, herbs, flowers, citrus, berries, and apple cider vinegar used in Ghastly Good's products. The herbs, flowers, berries and citrus are from nature and trusted certified organic companies for purposes of healing skin ailments and to get rid of wrinkles and acne.  

We also pledge never to use emulsifiers, imitation fragrances, parabens or any synthetic chemicals or preservatives that interfere with hormones, contribute to forming cancer or just plain age your skin in the long-run. We rely on the vinegar, citrus and your care of it to preserve our tonics! 

Miracle Facial Tonic is handmade and  every batch is personally tested and used by the maker. For more information, click on "Shop".

I developed the Miracle Facial Tonic line because of what I learned about beauty products and how to care for your skin from the modeling world, things seemed foreign to me and it was a wonder how scientists could make things that weren’t from nature.

I thought, “It has to come from nature or how could they make something up that wasn’t from earth”? The answer was in the processes that they did to create a chemical, changing the molecular structure of things… Making them unknown to our bodies and unable to breakdown, causing all sorts of havoc! 

Cosmetic companies also use things that are greasy like petroleum based products. We read today that petroleum based products give an instant softness, but creates long-term damage to the lower layers of our skin… 

Thinking, “How awful! There has to be a better way than this”! I asked my mom about how they took care of their hygiene without running water. My mom told me that her family used to capture rain water or snow then mix it with homemade cold-pressed oils and vinegar and how they would shine and look so healthy. 

After I heard this, I bought a little French book of the old ways, adding to the herbal research that I had been doing for years already (as I had been researching how to create your own herbal tea from the forest to heal ailments. Again, from asking what our family used to do.)

My great grand-parents immigrated here from Eastern Europe and some specifically from the Carpathian Mountains in Bucovina, which is split between Romania and Ukraine today. Being a mountain dwelling family, they learned how to care for themselves from nature and passed that knowledge down to us. My great-grandma was even the town healer in northern Minnesota! 

I fully believe that our bodies can heal themselves if taken care of properly with nutrition, stress management and exercise. Then, I wondered, “How can we do that for our skin”?  I wanted to create a well-rounded super-food for our skin so that it could heal itself! 

In 2010 I added organic cold-pressed oils to my tonic and fell in Love! They are a mild but powerful way to offer nutrients from nature to our skin that our bodies understand. They are simple for the skin to absorb, hence easy to for the skin to eat!  They are exactly what I needed for Miracle Facial Tonic ~ what I call “Skin Food”!

Steeping my tonic was the easiest thing to learn and it was like making cold-tea right out of my garden and the forest, but finding the right organic Aloe Vera to use was a bigger issue than I thought!  All organic Aloe-Vera is not created equal! I use Carrageenen-Free Aloe Vera.

For the next 7 years, I kept researching and cross-referencing herbal healing with herbal studies from the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic’s. I chose the most proven oils to use in my tonic. Eventually, I perfected the ratios, creating what I feel, is the perfect formula, with my favorite ingredients to feed our skin! 

I made it available to the public in 2017 after my friends and family hounded me enough to "get it out there". So, I went with my 82 year-old dad, who is a wildlife artist, to an art show to help him set up and tear down and decided to get a booth of my own next to him. We had so much fun, especially at the German Fest in Otsego where we Polka danced most of the day instead of sold stuff!  I kept going to shows with him and now I go on my own.

I decided to brand Ghastly Good, so I drew the logo to reflect a lot of the ingredients in the tonic and now I keep trying to figure out how to let people know about this wonderful product and someday, I hope to have this be my FT job, as I am an accountant during the day and all I want to do is be in the outdoors.

The rest is history!

Thank you for learning about me and Ghastly Good, LLC!   

Love, Tara