Saturday, July 25, 2015

School, work, chores, oh my!

I've been trying to work on schoolwork, and I have the beginnings of the first assignment done, I just need to flesh it out more. I will be working on that tonight.

Right now, I'm waiting for the lotion ingredients to melt in the crock pot.

I love lotion. My skin tends to not react well to sun (or heat) and so it gets dry and painful. Lotion helps. However, I am really trying to move away from the lotions that contain a lot of fillers and alcohols. So I'm trying a new recipe for home made lotion. I've made lotion before, but it was many years ago and it was in a double boiler on the stove.

I'm trying the crock pot today. :D

I threw in my beeswax pellets (I LOVE that they make pellets now. The last time I did this, I used a block of beeswax and while that may be cheaper, it took about a zillion hours to melt.) I also threw in equal amounts of shea butter and coconut oil. (I was a touch short of coconut oil, so I used olive oil to fill it out.) I then added a little bit of scent. I'm going for orange and vanilla today.

If this works as well as the double boiler did (eventually), then I will probably also make a small batch with eucalyptus in it. That would be nice for helping to prevent bug bites, and for putting on skin that is unhappy because of heat.

This is a large batch, it's roughly 1 pound of each ingredient. But future batches don't have to be so large. I wanted this one to be large because I'm almost out of lotion. :D

My buzzer just went off, so hopefully the wax is finally melted. If it is, I have molds ready and standing by.

I am going to make star shaped bars and squares. I have 2 trays of square silicone ice cube trays. They are small and will make small bars. The stars are actually silicone cupcake cups that I really do not like as cupcakes. The corners make it really hard to get them clean. Since the other choice was going to be to get rid of them, I like the idea of repurposing them over to lotion molds very well.

And really, if I needed star shaped cupcakes, that would be okay. All my ingredients for lotion are food grade. I refuse to use anything that is not food grade.

Ultimately, these lotion bars will cost about $0.50 or less a bar. Versus the $16-$20 per bar from most places.


Edit to add:

Lotion is all out of the crock pot now. I have 11 large star shaped bars cooling, I have 30 cubes (that may get cut in half to make them easier to manage) and I have a large shallow block that is probably 4 inches by 6 inches. I obviously need a couple more molds, which I knew. I was trying to get a set of Star Wars molds, but missed them. Darn it. :) Later. Because Han Solo in Carbonite lotion makes me giggle.

Edited to add even later:

I have lost the knack of the scenting. And I think my combination of oils was a bit off. The texture is amazing. The lotion goes on smoothly and melts at a touch. But there is almost no scent of orange or vanilla. I used nearly a half ounce of each and it should be very strong at that amount. And I think the combination of coconut oil and shea butter isn't as pleasant as I am used to. I need to investigate different providers.

However, the lotion feels amazing and even if all I do is use it on myself before bed, it's totally worth it. and other people may not find the scents the same way I do. I know that I smell things differently than a lot of my coworkers, so some of them may like the lotion bars.

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