We all have a million reasons to ditch store brought products in favor of natural ones. The main reason being the chemicals found in these products. Some people suffer from allergies or sensitivities to chemicals that are used in industrial products and using them irritates their bodies. The best way to make sure that you’re not using something that will damage your body other than making it with your own hands.
Here are 5 products that you can make at home with some simple and affordable base ingredients:
- Body Butter
- Lip Balm
- Lotion Bars
- Bath Bomb
- Hair Gel
It may sound as if it will be a complicated chemical process, but it’s something that you can make mostly with ingredients from the farmer’s market or the convenience store.
Body butter
Body butter is one of the easiest body products you can make at home. It can take the place of any moisturizing creams and hand creams. Usually, people prefer to use body butter in winter because of its thick texture, while they use body lotion for summer days.
Body butter can work miracles on dry and dehydrated skin, and with the right mixture, it can be great for massaging sore muscles.
The base component of this recipe is shea butter. We all know how shea butter works miracles on dry or damaged skin. Its moisturizing oily constitution helps condition the skin and smooth over dehydration.
Other than shea butter, you’re going to need a carrier oil of your choice. It could be olive oil, coconut oil, or anything you like to use. It depends on what you want the body butter to smell like and what goes best with your skin.
You’re also going to need essential oils of your choice, but make sure to read up on the instructions and use them with care. Don’t put more than the recipe indicates, and if you feel like the recipe is overusing them then it’s probably better not to follow it. This goes for using essential oils on everything not only this recipe.
Now that we’ve covered the main ingredients, we will move on to how to make it. All you’re going to need is some heat to melt the butter, a bowl, and a beater.
Yupp! You read it right, you’re going to need a kitchen electric beater. All you need to do is put all the ingredients in a kitchen bowl and beat them until they’re nice and creamy. And you have your body butter ready to use.
You can even color it with some natural or food-based colorants, it’s a fun project that doesn’t take much time or effort. You can make your body butter faster than you make a sandwich!
Here are a few favorite recipes that could help you expand your options:
Lavender Shea Hand Cream & Whipped Body Butter Recipe
Recipe 1
- 7 oz (198 g) shea butter, to moisturize and condition dry or damaged skin
- 2 ½ lavender flowers, for their soothing, anti-inflammatory properties
- 2 ½ oz (70 g) skin nourishing sunflower oil
- and a dash of purple Brazilian clay, a natural colorant.
Recipe 2
Measurements are by weight.
- 7 oz (198 g) shea butter
- 2 ½ oz (70 g) lavender infused sunflower oil
- 2 ½ tsp arrowroot powder
- ½ tsp purple Brazilian clay
- 30 drops lavender essential oil
- a few drops of ylang-ylang or litsea essential oil (optional)
Yield: fills around 7 two-ounce jars
Lip Balm
The thing about lip balms isn’t the recipe or the way to make them. That’s easy enough and the ingredients are available. The problem is, where to put it.
Lip balm usage is all about practicality and it must be in a form that can be carried and used throughout the day without being inconvenient or representing a risk of spilling or staining the other things in your purse.
My advice is to make sure that you have where to put your lip balm before you make it. There are a lot of small containers that you can find online, but if you have an old lipstick you can simply clean it out and use it instead, it’s much more practical.
In this case, the base ingredient you need is beeswax, it’s the element that makes sure that your mixture hardens enough to use as your lipstick.
You can use most mixtures of essential oils you want as long as you take care to research the amount and type before using it on your face. Some oils, like tea tree and cinnamon, should only be used in very tiny amounts or avoided all together.
As a moisturizer, you can use shea butter or any oil you see fit. After you chose your ingredients, it’s pretty much a matter of mixing them and making sure the mixture is completely homogenized.
Use heat if it doesn’t look like it’s mixing up well, but make sure to keep the heat to a minimum so you don’t damage the components of your mixture. Don’t use direct heat on it, for example, heat it with a bain-marie instead of putting it directly on the stove.
Also, don’t put essential oils before heating your mixture, some have very volatile properties and with some the heat can trigger reactions that could make them lose their effectiveness.
Here is a recipe for a base lip balm
- 1 tablespoon grated beeswax
- 1 tablespoon virgin coconut oil
- ½ teaspoon of organic raw honey
You can add any of these elements to your recipe for a little extra aromatic or medicinal purposes;
- Vitamin E
- Essential oils
- Fruit extract
- Chocolate powder
- Rose or some other herbal powder
Lotion bars
The lotion bar making method is similar to the previous two with the main ingredients being beeswax, oil (coconut, Argan, Olive, almond, etc.), and shea butter. Essential oils and herb-infused oils are optional.
All you need to do is put the mixture in a bain-marie and then pour them into silicone molds. You can decorate them with dried herbs and petals. They make for wonderful gifts and they’re easy enough to make and decorate according to your preferences.
Lotion bars are used as a solid replacement for body lotions, and they’re quite practical in the form of soap bars.
Bath Bombs
Bath bombs are the products in this list that are the most complicated to make. The ingredients are mostly available, but making them is more complex compared to lip balms and lotion bars.
To make a Bath bomb you’re going to need:
- baking soda
- citric acid
- Epsom salt/ sea salt
- cornstarch
- coloring pigment (optional)
- almond oil
- essential oils
- bath bomb molds/ silicone molds
Bath bomb making process is close to baking; first, you mix the dry ingredients (Baking soda, citric acid, salt, corn starch, and coloring pigment if in powder form). Then in a small cup, you mix the wet ingredients.
When it comes to mixing the wet and dry ingredients you need to pay attention, pouring the wet ingredients very slowly one drop at a time while mixing. By doing that, you minimize the reaction caused when the citric acid and the wet ingredients come into contact.
After that, you’re ready to mold, you can compress the mixture into silicone molds of any shape you want, or buy bath bomb molds made especially for that purpose.
Now you have your bath bomb and all you need is a warm bathtub and a book to relax!
Hair Gel
People with curly hair know the dilemma of using a lot of products, from conditioners to masks to shampoos. Today we’re going to talk about natural hair gel, a gel that you can apply after washing your hair to set your curls in place.
Flaxseed makes a gel-like substance that works as an effective hair gel. Pour about one part flaxseed into around three equal parts water. Let it boil on medium heat for about 10 minutes, while making sure that you constantly stir it to make sure the seeds don’t stick to the pan. The water’s texture will start thickening with the flaxseeds, keep it on the stove until you get a jelly texture similar to egg whites.
The last step is to separate the gel from the seeds. Use some light fabric for that such as cheesecloth, and make sure to squeeze every ounce of gel from them.
The gel can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 weeks, but with how easy it is to make, you can also just make small amounts for what you’ll use.
Warning
About Essential oils, I may have mentioned it before but I can’t stress this enough. Essential oils can be tricky, if you put the wrong essential oil or too much of it could harm your skin. So before you use them make sure to research the dosage and whether the essential oil you’re going to use can be used on skin or ingested (Depending on what you want to do with it).
If it’s just the essence and not an essential oil, then it’s different. There’s a difference between essences and essential oils. Essential oils are extremely concentrated plant extracts while essences are just the aromatic extraction of a plant or an aromatic component.
Sources: Soap Queen blog. The Herbal Academy, Inspired by Charm
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