Lotion Bonanza

Lotion is really expensive right? You know the best all natural beeswax and essential oil ones that are kinda thick and come in a jar? The ones that smell absolutely heavenly and leave your skin so soft you would think you've never done dishes/gardening/cleaning a day in your life? I thought I can make that at home! It's only got like 5 ingredients. YEAH RIGHT!

I've spent the past 3 hours getting failure after failure. Hubby even gave it a try and it didn't work. Every time I tried to do this, I would ended getting excited, and it looked good, no separated liquid, not chunky, OK good, pour it into a little tin and 5 minutes later I had a chunky lotion with a lot of water squishing out every time I touched it.

See the dark spots? That's the water that separated.

I started off with The Whip from Root Simple, but I must be doing something wrong. For her it works, for me it breaks. Every time. The first go round, I tried squeezing and kneading the lotion to work the water out, but I ended up pulling out almost all the water I put in, so that got tossed. My first batch was uncolored so it wasn't as pretty looking, but man did it smell great! We tried blending the first batch in a big beer stein I picked up for hubby about 5 years ago as a gag gift (it holds nearly 30oz of beer!) so at least we had a lot of fun with that.

The second batch same story. Looks great, smells great, managed to tint this one, and FLOP! Scraped that one into the trash too.

I pulled out my jar of beeswax lotion that I absolutely covet because it is the most amazing stuff EVER! Read the ingredients, and the only thing I wasn't adding was some sort of stabilizer  Hubby decided to try his hand at lotion making, and tried Epsom salts and a bit of borax. When he was all done blending, we had a measuring cup of foamy purple something, floating on top of gray brackish looking water. It didn't mix at all!!! Into the trash. But hey, at least my trash is going to smell like sweet honey lavender for a while.

OK, OK, I'm grumping to myself at this point. There has GOT to be something I"m missing. Handy old inter-webs told me that beeswax won't naturally emulsify with water like the oil does. The whole time I'm going about this thinking it'll work like making mayonnaise right? So start Googling beeswax lotion stabilizers. The two most common I found were glycerin, and borax. Well I didn't have any glycerin, but I have big old box of borax from making laundry detergent. A couple sites suggested mineral oil instead of olive oil, which for some reason I have that on hand too. It's a lot cheaper, and I've already used up about 3 cups of olive oil in the endeavor.

This was almost full when I started.

So finally I mashed together a few different recipes I've read, and at this point I have no idea which ones. So far it seems to have worked. 

My kitchen after my lotion making explosion. I still have to bake cookies!!

What I tried that finally seems to have worked (verdict is still out but no obvious signs of breakage yet *knock on wood*)

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/8 tsp Borax
• .75 oz beeswax, plus a pinch more, I think I may have used closer to 1 oz
• 1/2 cup mineral oil
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• Lavender oil
• 2 drops blue soap dye, and 4 drops red soap dye (it looks really dark, but turns out well when mixed.)

1. Mix water and borax and heat until almost simmering and borax is dissolved. If your soap dye is water based, add it to the water after borax is dissolved
2. Heat the oils and beeswax in a double boiler until melted. 
3. Add Lavender oil a few drops at a time until the desired scent is reached, then add a few more drops because it will be diluted when the water is added. If your soap dye is oil based, add it now to the wax/oil mix.
4. Pour the oil/wax into a warm mason pint jar, using either a whisk, or a stick blender, add the hot water a few drops at a time, blending until the water is fully combined before adding more, again only a few drops at a time. 
5. Once all the water has been incorporated pour the lotion into the container you're going to use to store it. Let it cool uncovered. 

Now to clean up the kitchen and get some cookie dough started for tomorrow. Not to mention make about 5 more scents of lotion. Rose, tea tree, honeysuckle, lilac, and vanilla, and I REALLY hope I'm not forgetting a scent. I'll need to make a run to the store for more mineral oil, and beeswax.

Aww, my hubby is cleaning up my lotion making mess for me! I love him! Better go help, since after all, it is my mess. Happy Crafting!