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(
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