A Blog About What I've Done So Far. . .

Hey everyone!!

So as promised in my last post, I figured I would kind of just go through what I've experimented with so far and how I felt about it...

Let's start with the first thing I made, body wash!

Alright, so basically after researching some other recipes, I decided to give body wash a try. Here's what i put in it..At this time I didn't have any vitamin E oil (or anything) for preservation so I didn't want to add any water.

1 cup castille soap
2-3 teaspoons of almond oil
...That was a basic recipe that I found off the internet with a few tweaks, but here's what I added...

2 Tbsp Shea Butter
1 Tbsp Beeswax ( I have beeswax pastilles, as explained in my last post, so I just packed it real good in the spoon)
15 drops lavender essential oil
10 drops eucalyptus essential oil
5 drops peppermint essential oil (i actually added these first into the castille soap mixture but I ended up adding more after I cooked it a little.)

I don't have a double boiler so I used a sauce pan. I started using glass bowls sitting on top of the pan after this. Just a note, some research I did says that you need to actually use a double boiler or a heat safe bowl suspended over the water in a pan, and not in the water. I've seen some blogs put the measuring cup inside the water a little for this, and I just have to mention that if you arent careful it could be dangerous. Beeswax doesn't boil, it just heats up until it catches on fire. Suspending it in a bowl and only using the steam to heat it is much safer than submerging a measuring cup partially into some boiling water (it kind of defeats the purpose of a double boiler, wouldn't you say?) Anyway...


I mixed the castille and the oil first, because at first that was going to be all my recipe was going to consist of to start with, but I then decided to add the other things. I melted the Shea and the beeswax on the stove and then added in the castille soap and oil mixture...

Yeah it kinda looks like milk or something. Felt like making gravy, sort of. I am thinking after more research if I should have let the shea/beeswax congeal a little and then add the soap mixture while beating with a mixer to see if it would have gotten thicker. but oh well..I also had a thought to add more beeswax next time for thickness..but I am not sure.....

It doesn't look very thick at all right here (as you can see I re-used a container) but once I let it sit in the fridge all night it thickened to a buttermilk consistency. I ended up using it soon after this and there were little specks of either shea or beeswax where it crystalized inside the mixture, I mean it was still usable because the pieces melted but they still made me a bit sad. I refrigerated it since I had no preservatives at this time (more on that later) It was still very runny so it just kind of spilled out of the spout of my container. I was still sad about this, but hey better luck next time.

As for the performance, my skin actually felt kind of awesome. In the shower, I felt waxy and the water repelled off of me but once I dried off and all my skin felt very soft and nice. Not to mention it smelled really good.

I gave a sample to my mother in law and my sister in law but I haven't heard back from them yet to see what they thought. I am keeping a journal with all of this inside. My formulation, my initial thoughts on it, how i feel after I use it, what I want to do different next time if anything, and then i write something the next day about my final thoughts about it.

Alright so on to the next thing. I started infusing some oil. I infused Calendula petals in my almond oil, and Lavender petals into some grapeseed oil...

Yes, one is a queso jar and the other is a glass peanut butter jar, Haters gona hate. I haven't been able to get any mason jars yet since I'm so poor right now. Lol. The calendula was easy to follow the "Folk method" which is to fill the jar halfway with dried plant material and fill the jar the rest of the way with oil. The lavender...not so much. They basically look and feel like little seeds and so were very dense. When I tried to fill the jar halfway with the lavender and pour the oil over, they all floated to the top in a dense fog as you can see here and the oil just didn't want to cover it all. I ended up having to spoon some out to give a little room for the oil to cover all of it. As I researched infused oils, the important thing is to check it every day to make sure it doesn't smell bad and to shake it up a bit...Make sure your jars and your herbs are bone dry when you do this because any water can make your oil go rancid.And if any part of the herb is not submerged in the oil, it can cause mold.

You're supposed to infuse it for a couple weeks (3 to 6) but I wanted to use the oils to make some things for my mom whom I'm seeing this weekend, so I got to infuse it for barely 8 days. Next time, I think I am going to try the heat method, which is do the same thing in a crock pot but leave it on as low as you can make it for a couple of hours. I read older crockpots don't get so hot, so I was thinking about going to a thrift store to see what I could find (those places have all kinds of hidden gems..)

It probably isn't infused enough to get the properties of the plants here, but I was just too excited. I don't have any pictures of when I strained them but holy shit that was a pain in the ass. I have some metal hand strainers that I tried to use to strain it into a bowl since I have no extra jars and I don't have any cheese/muslin cloth like they say you should have (and after my experience, I strongly recommend finding some..)..There was lots of particulates inside the oil due to the fact that they were smaller than the filter....so I wiped out these jars real good and put a funnel on top with a coffee filter inside and got to putting them back in the jars (you SHOULD actually use a new jar for this to prevent contamination, but like I said, no jars right now! baha)...Coffee filters suck for this. They are too dense to let the oil pass through, and I just made a big mess. Wish I had pictures. The oils are strained, but the lavender still has quite a bit of particulates inside it, so I am just making sure I strain it as I use it now.

So now that that part is over, let's go to the next thing I made.

I made a shea butter hand cream. I decided to call this a night cream due to the greasiness, and then just a night hand cream after I couldn't handle the full body greasiness. So here was my first batch..this was made before my infused oils were done so I used plain grapeseed..

2 Tbsp shea butter
1 1/2 tsp grapeseed oil
2 caplets vitamin E oil (I had some at this point...you want to pierce the caplets and squeeze it in. you can squeeze it onto a spoon to save some time)
20-30 drops lavender essential oil
10-15 drops peppermint essential oil

So I melted the shea and grapeseed in a glass bowl over a boiling water bath (but of course, turn the heat way down when actually melting things)...then i took it off the heat and added the essential oils and Vit E then put in the freezer to congeal a bit. So I cleaned up the kitchen and took a shower..then started mixing my stuff by hand (I didn't think to use an electric mixer)...

 

 

I added so many pictures of this because I wanted you to see the consistency changes here. Starts out kind of like frosting, then kind of like batter from the heat of the friction (shea butter melts at the drop of a hat so far in my experience) ..and then at the very last I decided to treat it like mixing alginate (an impression material used in dentistry) and started pushing it to the side of the bowl. I didn't know exactly what it would help but..why not...

 That first amount made approximately 1 oz. This is one of those one oz jars that I got from MRH ...It's hard to see the consistency but again it's kind of like cake frosting. The oil and shea wouldn't stay combined but it really isnt a big deal to stir it up before I use it..)

Okay so I have to say my first batch of this I felt was a failure at first. It made an awesome hand cream,  but that was after I decided a full body pampering was out of the question. I used this on my body, and even though it felt kind of good sitting on my skin like that, I was just ready for it to come off since it just didn't feel like it was absorbing at all and I didn't figure anybody else would like that either. 

I ended up making a second batch after I strained my oil infusions, I made a bigger batch with a slight modification..

4 Tbsp Shea butter

1 1/2 teaspoon calendula infused almond oil

1 1/2 teaspoon lavender infused grapeseed oil

4 caplets vitamin E

30-40 drops lavender essential oil (I have to mention I am almost out of this wonderful goddess nectar..)

10-15 drops peppermint

This made close to 2 oz so I put it in two containers. One for my refill, and one for my mom to try on her face under her eyes. Shea butter may feel greasy, but it absorbs well in the skin and (supposedly) doesn't really clog pores and supposedly it tightens skin. We will see. I am too afraid to use it on my face, maybe if I feel more adventurous...

I made it the same way as before, and as with the other batch it was not staying emulsified. The oil and shea kept separating. it was no problem to stir it up a bit though. 

I don't know what happened, but the difference it made is pretty big! It dries faster, and doesn't feel as greasy for as long. Either way I think this is my favorite creation so far.

Alright so on to the last two things that I made...

I decided, hey, let's make some freakin chap stick. So I got to work.. Mountain Rose has a youtube video on how to make lip balm, so I watched it (again) just for giggles. So you should use 2 oz of beeswax for every cup of oil used (for lip balm..salve making you want to use 1 oz per cup). I didn't want to make that much chapstick for my first go, so I halved their recipe...Here's my formulation...

1/2 cup oil (I used 1/4 cup of my lavender grapeseed and 1/4 cup calendula almond)

1 oz beeswax (I finally got a kitchen scale for like 8 dollars and measured some out. I forgot to put it in a measuring cup to see exactly how much this is. I would strongly recommend getting at least a simple kitchen scale because trust me you'll be glad you did..)

1/2 teaspoon of essential oil (I used lavender and peppermint again :))

I set up my tubes, you want to make sure they are screwed all the way down and ready for you.

I didn't know what to expect with the amount this would make. So I just laid out a ton of them.

I melted the beeswax first and then added the oil. You want to do this so your infusion doesn't get "cooked out" of your oil. I know my oil probably isn't really infused as much as it should be, but, just saying, incase yours is. It will kind of look like egg drop soup when you do this, but just let the beeswax remelt into everything and as soon as it does, take it off the heat and add your essential oils. 

You have to pour fast. I was able to make 14 tubes. I bet I could have made more even, but it hardened up inside my measuring cup (I poured the mixture out of the bowl over the saucepan and put it in there to pour in the tubes) I want to invest in one of these for the next time I do this.

So some most of the lip balm hardened in such a way that it kind of sunk into the tube instead of sitting on top. I read you can fill it up just part way, wait a sec, and fill it up some more to get that perfect little top, but i felt like my oil was hardening so fast I didn't have time to do it. 

I ended up having quite a bit left in my measuring cup once i scraped the beeswax off of it..

The chunks there met the 1/2 cup line. So I took some more calendula almond oil and poured it in until the oil met the 1/2 cup line. I decided to make a Leftover Lotion (I guess I'll call it that..) I totally winged this and had no idea what would happen.

So I remelted the mixture with the oil, added some vitamin E (about 3 caplets..theres no system or method to how many i put in..I really just guess) I added more essential oil (geranium and eucalyptus this time) since I think the other scent was "cooked out" of it and stuck it in the freezer. This congealed faster than the shea mixture for sure, so I took it out and beat it with an electric mixer.

I have to say I beat the hell out of it. It kind of looks like lemon pudding or something. Notice how I still haven't added any water to a recipe yet? More on that in a minute...

So I was able to scoop that leftover lotion mixture into 3 of those 1 oz jars..

It was hard to show you the consistency, but it's very thick and creamy. I'm happy with it.

The downside of this chapstick and lotion venture with the beeswax is that the smell of the beeswax is so strong that I couldn't get rid of it!! So everything smells like freaking plastic. The lotion feels alright, haven't really got to test it..but the chapstick feels just like my Yes to Carrots one so I guess it's a good thing, but it doesn't really have a smell except of beeswax :(

Cleanup was a bitch, I don't forsee me making any beeswax products for a while. I bet even though I ran the dishwasher, I'll probably have to scrape that shit again and run it again because I'm sure my dishwasher has wax all up in there. I tried to clean it the best I could but it was just so hard to clean. The Shea is so much easier for me to work with and it held the essential oil scents much better, even though it too has a scent of it's own..it's actually kind of pleasant.

Alright, so, I was going to tell you guys why I didn't add any water to any of these.

I've been doing some research on "natural" preservatives such as grapefruit seed oil, rosemary extract and vitamin E. The only *real* way to KNOW that these things work, is to use them and monitor the bacterial levels with a microscope. I'm not a microbiologist, so I wouldn't know what the hell I was looking at. You can have contamination without the product actually going (smelling) rancid. I don't feel safe using these natural preservatives until there is solid research, so with careful consideration I decided that I would use a synthetic preservative in my formulations (once I get it, that is..) I saw a brand called Liquid Germall Plus, a water soluble preservative. I figured I would use that just to be on the safe side. It may contain chemicals, but it's less than half of 1% of the total formulation and at least it's paraben free. I used vitamin E in what I've made so far, which is more an antioxidant but I am hoping my products will stay somewhat shelf stable for at least a few weeks. I made small batches hoping it would get used up soon just in case. Here is a link kind of outlining preservatives..

Alright so there you have it. What did you think of all this madness? Leave me some comments or send me an email!

Have a great evening and blessed be! )O(

"Quick" Overview of My First Round of Supplies

I figured that anytime I get new supplies or anything I will take a little time to explain what it is and what it is used for.

I received my shipment from Mountain Rose Herbs at the beginning of this week and boy was I excited...

This is what I got...
Emulsifying Wax - Used in lotions and creams to bind oil and water together. I haven't gotten to use it just yet but I plan to. I am assuming that you use it similar to how you use beeswax, which is used 1 oz for every cup of oil, but I am not sure yet. The kind from MRH is vegetable based and as natural as it can get, I mean since it is processed quite a bit they can't tout it as natural but they can sure try, haha. This is a 1 pound bag.

Beeswax Pastilles (Pellets) - Beeswax is good in lotions, creams, salves, lip balms (basically a hard salve) ...it can be used as an emulsifier or a thickener when used correctly. too much and your preparation would be too hard and not enough and well, it doesnt (seem to) do anything. This is one pound of pastilles. By the way, the beeswax on the site is way cheaper than a lot of places. Michaels (the craft store I went to previously) wants almost 17 dollars for a pound block of beeswax..at mountain rose they only want around 10 or 11 dollars.

Castille Soap - Castille soap is a good type of soap for just about anything...any home made recipe that needs soap of some kind uses castille, so I figured I would try it. It can also be used on its own as a hand soap, face soap, body soap, also a soap for home cleaning. It doesn't quite lather too well but lather doesn't mean clean at all, usually the sulfates used to cause the lather in commercial products are just a placebo and have no actual use in the product except to make us feel like it's working. I had never used castille soap before this, by the way. I haven't really used any of this stuff before.

Sweet Almond Oil -  I chose this oil because of its supposed light and non greasy feel that is perfect for lotions.
Later on I was at Wal Mart and found a bottle of Grapeseed oil so I picked it up also. Grapeseed oil is awesome for your skin, I was actually surprised that a department store had it. I will show you what I did with these two oils a little later. The container is 16 oz.

Shea Butter - Funny story about shea butter actually, there was a point that I thought I was allergic to it. Back when that Olay cream ribbons body wash came out my mom got the shea butter kind, and when I used it I got rashes really bad. After that I was too afraid to use anything with shea butter in it. Recently I realized that my favorite chapstick has that evil stuff in it and I had never had a problem with it, nor anything else that had sneaky shea butter in it, so I figured, well I guess I'm okay. Shea butter is so good for your skin and it isn't as thick as cocoa butter so it can be used to make creamy consistancies according to what I have read. I will tell you about my experiences with it so far a little later. That tiny little jar is 4 oz.

Dried Calendula Petals -  Calendula is touted to be really good for your skin. Before this venture I had never heard of it before but so many herbal videos and sites and tutorials say it's a good herb for oil infusions since it decreases redness, helps with burns, disinfecting wounds, ect. I had never smelled it before so when I opened the bag I didn't know what I was expecting. It wafted out and it smelled of warm honey. Now, some people like the smell of honey, but it isn't my favorite. Kind of comes on strong but if you step away it isn't so bad. I started my infused oil with the sweet almond the day I got this ( last monday), more on that later. The bag pictured above is merely 4 ounces, the smallest bag you can get at MRH, and the bag beside it is 8 oz of lavender, for comparison. I didn't use much for my first infusion so if you plan on buying some, don't fret, 4 oz is plenty. Random fact: Calendula was used back in olden times to dye cheese and butter,

Dried Lavender Petals - I got 8 oz of dried lavender for some reason. I have to say it's enough to pamper a small army. I probably should have got 4, but it seems like Mountain Rose's prices aren't that much different for smaller or bigger sized things, I guess to get you to buy the bigger one, but I guess that's alright. Lavender is one of my favorite scents so I figured I would find a way to use it all. I even made an infusion just now because I read a lavender tea is good for nausea. It kind of chilled me out surprisingly and my nausea stopped. You just take a few teaspoons of the herb, boil about a cup of water and dump it over the herb and let it steep for about 12 minutes. The taste, is kind of to be desired, even with honey, but, it smells pretty good. You should probably drink it fast.I also put some lavender into grapeseed oil for an oil infusion...but more on that later as well. The petals were surprisingly fragrant. I've seen dried lavender at stores before that didn't smell quite so strong, so I suppose the supplier is pretty swell.

I got some essential oil as well to play with...

I don't know how well you can read that but I got Eucalyptus, Geranium, Lavender, Peppermint, Rosemary and Tea Tree.

I had never played with essential oils before but I have to mention that they do not smell the same as things scented the same way that you can buy. These oils are purely extracted from the plants with no extra fluff. They are also not the same as fragrance oils. Most of these have kind of a warm smell..The lavender and peppermint are absolutely awesome together. Eucalyptus and Tea tree, not surprisingly, have a much sharper and cleaner scent.

Eucalyptus is a great disinfectant. Used in a diffuser supposedly has the ability to disinfect a room. It has other uses as well that can be found all over the internet, so I won't bore you with it here.

Geranium can be used as an insect repellent and also for various uses on skin..

Lavender is a disinfectant, and also great for stress relief and sleep issues. Lavender can be used directly on skin when other essential oils cannot be used that way.

Peppermint is, well peppermint.

Rosemary is good for dandruff and oily skin! But you can NOT eat it in food like you can dried rosemary leaves. You can't ingest any kind of essential oil unless otherwise noted on the bottle by the manufacturer..I am not sure why but I assume it's because of what it was extracted with, I suppose.

Tea Tree is also good for oily skin and dandruff but it's also excellent as a disinfectant around the house.

You can pretty much find information on all this stuff in a million places online which is why I didn't go through much detail.

The rest of that stuff pictured..the bottles, the white jars, the chapstick containers and the tins are all empty containers I bought for experimenting. Now that I have started experimenting, i wish i would have bought empty plastic bottles instead of jars, but oh well I will know for next time. Buy these things online because they are ridiculously priced in stores.

Well, that's all I've got for this post. Later I will talk about what I have done so far in the last week or so, I figured it would be better to split it up!

Also no worries, I will post when I make that bath salt for those cute baby food containers also :)

On a separate note, the summer solstice just passed. This holiday is revered by pagans everywhere mostly known as Litha or Midsummer and is usually celebrated by dancing around bonfires and staying up all night. Alas I did not get to properly celebrate it ( I can't pull all nighters anymore haha), but this is a good time of the year to re-dedicate yourself to your faiths so that is what I decided to do. You should think about where you stand with your faith and if you feel like you have strayed from it, renew yourself! You'll feel better and less depressed. Or, if you don't have a faith, that's cool. Either way.

Anyhow hope this one wasnt too bad... Hoping to do my next one this comming week. I have already made a few things. I started two oil infusions, calendula in sweet almond oil and lavender in grape seed oil, I've made a body wash and a shea butter body cream. That will be next time :) see you later! )O(

Adventures With Baby Food Jars!

So, before I even began to dabble into my new hobby, I already had a friend that wanted me to make something for her.

She wanted cute little containers of bath salt for her baby shower. I was going to home make the bath salt. I read it was fairly easy. I agreed to do it even though I hadn't had experience with anything yet.

Buying empty containers is pretty expensive. My sister in law's mom was saving baby food jars for me since they are made out of glass. I decided, well, it's a baby shower..Why don't I put those baby food jars to good use?

These are the two sizes I had, for comparison. We figured the bigger ones would be better for party favors, because the amount of bath salt you can put in there would basically be the amount you would use in one bath.

My plan to use the color scheme she wanted (Pink, Lime, and Aqua) consisted of dying the salts and layering them inside the jar, and also painting the lids (Which I have no experience doing). She needed 15 containers, so I decided I would paint 5 aqua, 5 lime, and 5 pink lids. To be honest, I didn't own any paint since I haven't painted since the 11th grade and I didn't know exactly how to go about painting these lids. I researched it a little, and I read that you can use a primer and then an acrylic over the top. So That's what I decided to try...

Those are the shades I decided to buy. The blue I got was kind of a sky blue so I ended up mixing it with the green to get the aqua color I knew she wanted.

 I laid out the lids on some newspaper and got to work...

I ended up spraying two coats of primer and allowed it to dry for the rest of the night. What made me sad about the primer is that it didn't seem to spray evenly so some of the lids have small cracks or rough areas. I tried to sand them down just a bit, but I couldn't do it too hard without removing the primer (as shown by the metal rings poking through the whiteness)

Notice how you can still see the expiration date of the baby food seeping through the primer. Don't worry about this, I noticed that when I began to paint them, it didn't come through the acrylic.

While waiting for the lids to dry, I decided to tackle removing the adhesive from the jars themselves. They had been ran through a dishwasher and everything, but the adhesive was still in tact. My sister-in-law and I tried using acetone nail polish remover first, since I didn't have any specific adhesive remover and I didn't want to go back to Wal Mart (again)...That didn't seem to do anything but make the adhesive spread around, so I decided to try my favorite weapon, vinegar and baking soda...

 I filled the sink with water and just put some vinegar and baking soda in it, I didn't bother trying to measure it. I let it soak for a while and it really helped break the adhesive down so it was easier to scrub off. I decided to drain the sink and call it a night, so the next morning I decided to tackle the jars again and since they were dry the adhesive was back to being an asshole. So, I took a brillo pad and hoped for the best...

I'd like to say it worked for the most part, so I washed the jars again in the dishwasher and then plan on boiling them to sterilize them closer to the time I make the salt itself.

Alright so here is the interesting part...painting the lids...

That was after only one coat each. I decided to just make a couple of them start to finish, so just in case she didn't like the colors it would be easier to fix. I put two more coats each on them. After you paint over the primer like that, it gives the lid kind of a rough, matte finish. I had bought some spraypaint gloss overcoat that I was going to spray on them to make them smooth and shiny..

So I put those bitches in a box and took them outside for ventilation and went to town...

Look at that disgusting yellowing of the paint. This was after allowing them a couple hours to dry. I don't know if the paint had a reaction with the gloss, or what. Either way I was very discouraged and upset at this point.

Because I didn't want to ruin the rest of the lids, I had an idea.

I decided to paint some top coat for nails on some of the other lids to see how it fared...

I enlarged this picture so the texture is easier to see. The left side is paint only, it's very rough and matte. The right side has the nail gloss on it. it makes it kind of smooth, and I feel like it looks better on the jars than the matte colors.

Too sad to even bear to look at the mess I had made in the box, I decided to continue what I was doing over here.

After a while I decided to face my fear and look back into the box again. Nope, still fucked up. So I picked up those lids and painted over them to see if it would even work. I didn't know if the spray gloss was paint-over-able...but I figured if I had to toss those messed up lids anyways I'd rather try it than start over with four new lids pre-primed. Behold, I was able to paint over them and re-gloss them with the nail topcoat.

Here's what one of each color looks like finished:

I was kind of proud of myself at this point, which was a good contrast from the way I felt earlier after I thought my whole plan was in the shitter. I sent her that picture to make sure that the colors would be alright. She said she liked them so I decided to go ahead and finish painting them.

You get the idea. I used big and small jars to hold the lids on while I painted them, incase you are confused on why there is two sizes there.. The last 3 pink and lime ones are still drying but they are almost done. So yay, the lids are done! I assumed it would be the hardest part of this project, but I haven't even made the actual bath salt yet. I am waiting on a shipment from Mountain Rose Herbs that contains an essential oil kit and some other raw materials and so I decided to wait until then to even think about the bath salt. I bought some soap colorant from Michael's (a craft store) to match the aqua, pink and lime color scheme so it should be easy to get the colors I need without having to mix the primary colors to get what I want. I read you can also use regular old food coloring for this, but I haven't tried it.

Alright so that is done, but I did try one more thing for shits and giggles...

That uncolored and unprimed lid (an extra one) just screamed for me to do something to it.

I had an idea to try. No primer, no acrylic, I decided to use fingernail polish straight up. I don't even know why I own fingernail polish since I lack fingernails. So anyway...

That was after one coat. It is still fairly transparent but overall the coverage is pretty cool...Here is what it looked like after three coats...

Sorry, it was kind of hard to see due to the lighting, but I think you can still tell the coverage is good. I think I will try using just fingernail polish in the future. Overall, the acrylic came out alright, but it was such a huge pain in the ass that I feel like the fingernail polish would be more convenient if I can get a shade I want. The primer made the lids look bulky and the texture, though smooth from the gloss isn't completely flat feeling. 

Anyways, hope you might have learned something tonight! I am tired. I am not sure I want to paint any lids again for a while. I will stick to buying jars meant for crafts or mason jars! It may be more expensive but is it worth it?? So far I would say yes, even though keeping other glass containers out of landfills is a pretty good idea.

Do you have any experiences like this? Do share them in the comments!!

Introductions!

Hi there,

Kuri here, just figured it would be a pretty good idea to introduce myself.

First of all, I appreciate you coming all the way out here to read this. There are thousands of blogs out there. Hope I don't bore you too much with my rambles. I do that quite a bit, just saying. So thanks :)



Alright so now that that is out of the way, we can get onto the more exciting information...



I'm 23 years old, pagan, been married for over 4 years, have no children, and have an exciting career as a dental assistant for the public health service. Since this is basically the only things I have going on in my life, I figured, to hell with it..I need a hobby of some sort. No, my new hobby is not blogging. Bahaha :).

I actually decided to dabble in the world of herbal body care and medicine as well as aromatherapy. This blog will be all about my experiences with the crafts I partake in, the good..and the bad. I noticed that some of the blogs that I read never shows you the do-overs, the oop'ses,  or the "uh, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing so I'm winging it.." types of things, and that is what I want to do here. My goal is for other people to learn from me. I am just as new into this type of crafting as anybody else who probably decided to read this blog, so why should I write it like I know exactly how and what and where?  I encourage the readers of this blog to write about their good and bad experiences as well, either in a comment section, or heck even make a blog of your own and tell me what it is so I can follow it.


All I got to say is this will be fun :) Have any questions? Leave it in the comment section or shoot me an email. You can actually reach me at quirky_rikku@hotmail.com, I use it way more often than a gmail account.

Thanks for stopping by! :D