Homemade Lotion

So, my second excursion into homemade beauty care came about because I finally scraped the bottom of my Vitamin E Body Butter. I also finally looked at the label for that and was disappointed to find it had wheat germ in it. *sigh*. Luckily my order from Mountain Rose Herbs came just in time and so my quest to make homemade lotion began.

I started with a basic recipe from Wellness Mama...

I decided to do two batches, one with coconut oil and one with almond oil as the base. I haven't quite found any essential oil that I really love the smell of, so I decided to do one batch w/ just a touch of lavender.

I followed the directions but found that my oil/water mixture didn't quite emulsify very well. In both batches I poured the mixture back into the double boiler and reheated it, stirring vigorously, which seemed to work okay.

I ended up with:

One small jar of almond oil lotion and one of coconut oil/lavender lotion. They both rubbed in really nicely and smelled great. Unfortunately, in the morning the coconut oil one was really hard and we ended up throwing it away. The other one was still fine.

Because I was less than excited about how that recipe worked out, I went back over the blog w/ the recipe and all the comments to make sure I wasn't missing something. I also did a quick Google search for other recipes that might possibly work better.

I found a really cool one for hard lotion and lip balm that I really want to try once I find the right type of containers. I figure it would be perfect for hand lotion in my purse. Then I stumbled upon this really simple recipe which called for just oil, water and beeswax. Not really that different from the other one, but I thought it was worth a try.

Once again, I assembled my ingredients:

Beeswax, almond oil and some sweet orange essential oil for scent

And this is what I ended up with:

It definitely emulsified better and I love the slight scent of the orange. We'll see how it holds up over time, but for now the girls and I have a pretty decent supply of lotion!