Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Beauty in a Blender?

More catch-up.

In January, I posted about wanting to have less toxicity around the home--both in personal care products and in household cleaners.

I now routinely make lots of my own stuff--shampoo (a herbal infusion with a base of Dr. Bronner's Pure-Castile Peppermint Soap ), hair rinse (1/3 cup cider vinegar to 1 cup water), laundry soap, and floor cleaner (white vinegar and water).

My source of recipes for shampoos, rinses, toners and moisturizers is Secrets of the Spas: Pamper and Vitalize Yourself at Home (Life's Little Luxuries), a fun recipe book that uses ingredients that are accessible and wholesome.

I have wanted to make a facial moisturizer for some time, and today my Jason 100% Shea Butter ran out, so I had to get to work.

The hardest part was to grate beeswax. I could find it only in the form of a candle, so I bought one and grated it up in order to melt it for the moisturizer.

Here it is on our ugly faux-wood computer desk: I grated it while I waited for pages to l-o-a-d on my dial-up connection.

Then I melted the grated beeswax with lanolin, added olive oil and aloe vera, and finally blended it all with some rose water.

Et voila.

7 comments:

Beth said...

You can buy beeswax blocks (pure) on ebay for quite cheap. Just FYI.

Bridget said...

Cool! Let us know how/if it does what it's supposed to.

Stephanie said...

so how is it?

Elizabeth said...

Hi, everyone and thanks for your comments.

Beth, I'll be sure to look at eBay next time I make a batch. I never thought of eBaying beeswax!

Bridget and Ms. T: , I refrigerated it for an hour, and it now has the consistency and look of cold cream.

It smells good (like rose water), and it feels like a high quality night cream. It may be a bit heavy for daytime (I'm not sure), but I just slathered it on my face, and it feels rather luxuriant.

The only thing I'll do differently next time is to make sure the beeswax is COMPLETELY melted. I was in a hurry (too excited) and didn't let all the wax gratings melt completely, so I have some grain-sized wax lumps in the cream.

Taoknitter said...

How clever you are! I have been getting such a kick out of all your "green" posts...love it all. I may have to try this one!

Anonymous said...

I'm very intrigued by your homemade shampoo. Once I washed my hair with Dr. Bronner's straight. I washed out all the oil and my hair felt like corn husk hair. Now my hair is naturally very oily and to have no oil in my hair was eery! So I'm curious how a shampoo mix with a little Dr. Bronner's works.

Elizabeth said...

I actually add a little bit of oil (1 teaspoon) to the shampoo. I use sesame oil, which is a natural sunscreen. The shampoo is mostly a herbal tea (rosemary tea), so the Dr. Bronner's is heavily diluted; as wacky Dr. Bronner says, "DILUTE! DILUTE!"