Homemade peppermint lip balm recipe

As I shared with my parents, grandma, and aunt tonight, one of the other homemade beauty products I made yesterday was a peppermint lip balm. I gave one to each of my colleagues in the front office today, and gave samples to my mom, aunt, and grandma. My colleagues fawned over it, and I myself have to admit I'm a little obsessed with it, as a lover of all things Chapstick and lip moisture.


Becky's Balm
1 tbsp beeswax
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp. shea butter
2,500 IU Vitamin E (about 6 capsules)
1 tsp hardened honey (optional -- don't use liquid honey, as it will make the mixture too runny)
Containers (I bought bead containers from Michael's)
5-8 drops peppermint essential oil

For color: use the tip of a lipstick (I didn't add color to this batch, but I will in the future!)
For fragrance: squeeze out flavored lip gloss (I used Bath & Body Works Caramel Latte)

Bring water to a boil in a small pot. Lower heat to a simmer. Melt beeswax first in a double boiler. Add coconut oil, cocoa butter, and shea butter, melting the ingredients together slowly. Add your lipstick/gloss & essential oils to the mixture, if desired.

Carefully pour (or funnel) the mixture into the containers.

Cool completely to harden. Decorate cap with stickers or embellishments and close lid.

Voila!

For an easy alternative, if you don't have any flavored gloss or essential oils, substitute the shea butter for cocoa butter. You'll have naturally chocolate-flavored balm!

My bathroom makeover: homemade body butter

No, I'm not signing up for some pricey spa makeover...I'm redoing my bathroom my own way - the natural way!

As I mentioned before, I placed a huge order with an online apothecary wholesale distributor in order to start on the adventure of making my own beauty/bath supplies. I've been mixing up all sorts of sugar and salt shower scrubs with natural ingredients in my own kitchen (and thus, had to buy a jug of olive oil to replace what I stole from the cooking cabinet), but now I finally have ingredients like shea butter, beeswax, glycerin, and essential oils.

In three days, I've made enough body butter, soap, and lip balm to last a year for myself - but of course, I'm giving away most of it as gifts to everyone I've been babbling to about these ideas the past few weeks.

And I'm going to babble some more. Because these products are AMAZING. The skin salve I made is to die for...I slathered my feet in it and wrapped them in thick winter socks overnight, and the next morning I literally felt like I had new skin. I tested a small amount on my hands when I was still "cooking"/mixing the concoction, and an hour later I was still ogling over how soft the back of my hand (normally rough and dry) was.

I still have some experimenting to do in the fragrance department, and since everyone needs something different out of skin products - some have oily skin, some have dry, some need intensive treatments for elbows, heels, etc. and some just want something with which they can pamper themselves - I am still tweaking all the recipes I find to make the perfect product. I'd love to be able to sell these...!

So for my first "presentation", I am sharing my body butter recipe. There are a ZILLION variations out there (I counted), and I have researched the benefits of all these ingredients in order to find the best combination. So far (mind you, I'm still in the test stage), this one's a sure winner:

Becky's Butter
1/4 cup shea butter
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp sweet almond oil
2 tsp beeswax
2,500 IU Vitamin E (or about 6 capsules, punctured and drained)
3-5 drops essential oil (so far I am using lavender, but I want to try vanilla next)

FIRST: Set up a double boiler - or do as I do: fill a regular cooking pot with about 2 inches of water, and bring to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer, and place an old coffee can inside the water. Mix the ingredients (oils, fats, and waxes) inside the coffee can.

Melt the beeswax inside the coffee can first. Add shea butter, coconut oil, and almond oil and melt together, stirring gently.

Once all oils are melted and combined, remove from heat and add Vitamin E. If you are using capsules, find an old pair of pliers or even tweezers to puncture them - and make sure you hold the capsule low into the can; they will squirt oil everywhere!

Finally, add essential oil drops. Mix well. Pour into containers (I use mason jelly jars in this demo, but I also use clean baby food jars for smaller portions.) Let cool until hard.

Makes about 6 oz.


Benefits:
- Shea butter is one of the most therapeutic oils in nature, as it contains a high level of nonsaponifiable fats and plant sterols - which literally regenerate the skin. Aside from being generally soothing to dry, cracked, or irritated skin (it is a fantastic remedy for sunburn), it renews skin cells with vitamins A, E, and catechins (antioxidants also found in green tea). There have also been experiments conducted on the power of shea butter to prevent tumor development, as well as prevent damage to skin done by UV rays.

- Coconut oil is antifungal, antibacterial, and antimicrobial, among other things. Its "healing powers" include delaying wrinkles, tightening saggy skin (improving elasticity), and is beneficial to people suffering from eczema, psoriasis, and dermatitis.

- Beeswax is anti-inflammatory, which helps soothe and calm skin. It is also antibacterial and antiviral, as well as a moisturizer and humectant (it draws moisture in and locks it in). For this reason, it also acts as a wonderful barrier to protect the skin from severe conditions and elements (which is why many doctors suggest using a beeswax-based lip balm in winter.)

- Vitamin E acts not only as a skin conditioner and protectant, but it also lengthens the shelf life of the butter. It has heavy antioxidant properties, and can/should also be taken internally to boost DNA protection.

- Lavender essential oil is relaxing and soothing, with de-stressing powers that help to calm the muscles and nerves. Therapeutic grade oil can also be used to cleanse cuts, bruises, and other wounds.

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To give this away as a gift, it's more fun to decorate the lid. So I did!

I'm giving one of each to the ladies in my office:

Voila! The perfect body butter for pampering, soothing, and improving the health of your skin in the long run. I will never buy another commercial lotion again.

Crafts, Gifts, and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Projects

So for the past few weeks, I have been bouncing around from Michael's to Wal-Mart to the Dollar Store, online apothecary web sites, and the new web site I talked about earlier - Pinterest.

With its zillions of user-uploaded ideas for craft making, homemade bath and body products, and do-it-yourself around the home projects, I have become completely enamored. As an environment enthusiast, animal lover, and admittedly, a bit of a purist, the idea of making my own body butters, shampoo, soaps and body wash, pet food, enzyme cleaners, laundry detergent, and other everyday items is extremely appealing. Not to mention the fact that I simply LOVE learning creative new ways to repurpose items around the house - which is, essentially, recycling after all!

I have ordered a whole slew of raw materials from an apothecary web site, which will jumpstart my homemade bath products (and gifts!) - and I have "pinned" a hundred ideas for repurposing and home decoration when I get back to the Netherlands. But to get my feet wet in the crafts, I started with tutorials I found on Pinterest.

My aunt Lynnie's birthday was today. Blending ideas I found with research I've done on the current craft trends (aromatherapy, skin care, etc.), I filled a gift bag with various items I handmade for her over the past few weeks.

1. This is more of a housewarming gift for her and my uncle's new home in North County - they have a pale green/white accent theme in the decor and walls, so I tweaked some gift ideas I read about and made this little decorative object. It's just a plain flower vase with a silk daisy I got at Michael's - I held the flower against the glass as I filled the vase with sand, then topped it off with a tealight. Voila - an easy, but cute, trinket.

2. A Post-It mounted pad! I took a plastic photo frame (I chose one with a magnet on the back) and cut out a piece of scrapbook padding to slide into the insert. I adhered a Post-It pad to the front, then chose embellishments -- the possibilities with this are endless, but I chose a blue ribbon and a little decorative label for my aunt's.

3. Coasters! To match the green theme in my aunt's house, I chose a sheet of scrapbook paper with green polka dots and a distressed cream background. I found ceramic tiles at Home Depot, and cut out squares of the scrapbook paper, leaving a thin border around the edges. I adhered the scrapbook paper to clean tiles with Mod Podge, and then applied two additional coats on top of the paper to seal it in. I found a finishing spray in my dad's garage (this one was matte, but gloss should look better) and sprayed it on top once the Mod Podge had dried, and then applied felt pads to the bottoms of the tiles. Voila, drink coasters!

4. This is one of the endless bath/body product ideas I've found -- all of which are customizable to personal preference, and versatile/flexible enough for personal tweaking. This particular "recipe" is almost entirely my own - guided by my research in skin care and aromatherapy, of course. I mixed one cup of ground oatmeal (thank you, Magic Bullet!) with one cup of coarse sea salt, and four tea bags (about 3 tbsp) of peppermint tea (sans the bags). This concoction yields a moisturizing, exfoliating, and refreshing foot soak - perfect for relieving sore, achy, tired, or even stinky feet. It has dual uses too -- after you pour it into warm water, you can exfoliate your feet with the sea salt before it dissolves, then let the mixture soak into the water and dissolve slowly, which creates a relaxing bath. I'm going to make some for myself, too! Oh, and the jar is a recycled Starbucks Frappuccino jar - decorated with, you guessed it, scrapbook paper and Mod Podge, while the cap is painted white with acrylic paint.

5. My favorite gift in my aunt's goody bag today -- I am even making one for myself. This is a homemade aromatherapeutic hot compress! I bought leg warmers at the store (personally chosen cute designs, of course), and sewed one end closed. Then I filled the tube with rice, alternating a tsp of ground ginger with the rice as I went, and then sewed the other end closed as well. Pop the whole thing into the microwave for 30-45 seconds, heating up the rice and ginger, which creates a powerful ache/pain relieving compress. There are several variations of this, including other ground/powdered roots or spices, or even essential oils. I liked the benefits of ginger (relieving muscle and joint pain to reducing inflammation, aiding in digestion, soothing nausea, and minimizing headaches, to name a few) and chose that for my aunt's compress. The only downside? The leg warmer I selected is a bit more porous than I first realized, which means the ginger powder seeps out a bit. Trial and error, my friends.

And thus begins my journey through crafts and homemade DIY projects -- we'll see how long it lasts! ;)