Natural beauty…

Beeswax is known for its healing properties. It locks in moisture, fosters skin cell growth, and helps protect skin from damaging environmental factors. It is naturally anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and anti-allergenic. Basically, it’s fantastic.

When I started researching how to make beeswax lotions it turns out that it’s quite a messy process. So I was pretty excited when I found this recipe that can be mixed, melted, cooled, and stored all in the same container! I’m really am amateur when it comes to making lotions, but I think this one came out great.

Beeswax Lotion… (original recipe from A Sonoma Garden)

Ingredients: Beeswax pastilles, coconut oil, olive oil, vitamin E oil & lavendar essential oil

Ingredients

• 1 cup Olive Oil
• 1/2 cup Coconut Oil
• 1/2 cup Beeswax
• 1/2 tsp. Vitamin E Oil (or 5 capsules cut open and squeezed out)
• Optional: 20 drops (approx.) Essential Oil
• Note: If you want to put your lotion in a pump-bottle reduce the beeswax by a few tablespoons.

Directions

• Combine olive oil, coconut oil and beeswax into a pint sized canning jar.
• Put jar into a saucepan and fill pan with water until it comes 3/4 of the way up the canning jar (be careful not to get water into the oil mixture!)
• Put on the stove over medium/low heat
• Heat and stir occasionally until melted
• Let cool to room temperature (you can put into the refrigerator to speed up the process)
• During the cooling process, put a fork in the jar and stir vigorously every 15 minutes
• Once at room temperature, add Vitamin E and essential oil

Extra directions (When packaging for gifts)

• Spoon into jars and secure lid
• Heat on the stove just enough to melt a little (place closed jars in a pan with water)
• Remove jars from water
• Shake vigorously (this smooths out the lotion)

Melting it all together! (I doubled the recipe)

Waiting for it to cool (I put it in the fridge to speed up the process)

Finished product

To gift: Put in individual containers and heat up just a little.

We often forget that “reuse” comes before “recycle”… The packaging issue.

When making my first lotion recipe I thought to myself, “I don’t want to go buy mason jars… so, what do I use?” I happen to work where there are lots of baby food jars available. So I saved them from work along with other jars around the house (peanut butter and jam jars work great) and used those as my lotion jars.

Note: To remove the label from my “reused” jars I soaked the jars  in warm water with dish soap then used a straight-edge razor to scrape off the glue.

Baby food jars + ribbon + tag = homemade gift