Your Very Own Lip Balm

Making your own lip balm is so easy and cheap and fun to do! Whether it's kool-aidy sweet or subtle and sophisticated, this is a great recipe that will protect your lips from the weather as well as the nasty side effects of petroleum jelly. It's reassuring to know the ingredients of the products that we rub all over our bodies!

Here's all you need for this project!

2 oz Coconut Oil

2 oz Shea Butter

.7 oz White Beeswax

.5 oz Castor Oil

1/8 teaspoon mocha powder

10 chocolate chips

I like to use my crockpot...for everything. It's relaxing to me. But, if you're in a hurry a double boiler will work just fine. I put a Pyrex measuring cup into about an inch of hot water in the crock pot and measured out my beeswax. (I knew that Weight Watcher's food scale would come in handy some day!)

I added the coconut oil and Shea butter, stirring periodically, until it was all melted in.

Added the Mocha Powder for color and flavor and voila! Grown-up lip gloss. I also mixed some up with Crystal Light Raspberry Lemonade to make a Sugar Lip Scrub. I added some lip safe mica coloring with this to make it bright and pink. A nice little work-out for the lips!

Zero Calorie Peppermint Bark!

I've been making soap for awhile now. Cold Process soap using the lye and the fun moisturizing oils and butters. But I saw this recipe for a Melt & Pour type soap on the Soap Queen's Blog and thought it would be a fun wintery project. (Can I just interject that the Soap Queen is my new found hero and I stalk everything she creates and writes!) I'll just point you over to her tutorial because it's frankly, wonderful! :)

So, I decided to make some melt & pour soap that looks and smells luxuriously like Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark!~I gathered the necessary ingredients, mostly from Bramble Berry Soap Supplies, but was able to get the rest of the items at Hobby Lobby.

And of course, a peppermint mocha to jump start that Holiday Cheer!~

Lots of mixing, heating and melting, scenting and voila!~Calorie Free, but not very tasty!

So, this was lots of fun and a quick fix for a craftaholic like me but then it got to be a bit of a pain. First I had to individually wrap each piece to keep it from sweating. Unlike the soaps I normally make, melt & pour obviously makes little sweat beads if not wrapped tightly until used. eh...ok. But the yummy smell was still overtaking my house. I had to break into the real chocolate chips to satiate my hunger pains.

Then when I woke up this morning it looked like this. Dang! Not so pretty! I guess when she recommends the non-bleeding red instead of just using food coloring it's not just for sales.

Fortunately, with melt & pour soaps you can always remelt and remold. I love "do overs!" Yeah! No waste!~We'll turn this melty blog into something fun! And for now, I'm going back to my old fashioned soap making!