On a "not related to the lotion bar recipe" note, I was so glad I found Wholesale Supplies Plus. Pretty much every blog and video tutorial I read and saw with recipes for making cosmetics said they ordered theirs from Mountain Rose Herbs, which was actually the first site I found when looking for lip balm tubes, so one would think they have the best prices overall, but they don't! Wholesale Supplies Plus was cheaper on every item (much cheaper on some) and they have free shipping ($30 minimum order. If your order is less than $30 you still get charged $30 total). In fact, they seem to have a larger selection. Their customer service also rocks (sadly, in a week I've managed to send them 4 inquiry emails and they answered them all within 4 hours. I ask a lot of questions). Another feature that endeared them to me was that upon checkout they asked if they could round my order up to the nearest dollar and donate that spare change to the Life Center for Autism. I have a brother who is low functioning autistic, so this touched me in a personal way. I'll definitely be ordering from them again.
And now for your regularly scheduled recipe. If you don't know what a lotion bar is, don't feel sad. I'd never heard of them until about a week ago, but they sound awesome so I figured I would give them a try. Apparently they are concentrated lotion that looks like soap and is applied like soap (only on dry skin instead of wet). They are supposed to be uber moisturizing. All the posts I found about them talked about using them in the winter for extremely dry skin or for eczema, so here's hoping these aren't kidding around with the moisture!
The ingredients I used:
3.2oz beeswax
1.4oz olive oil (or 0.7oz olive oil and 0.7oz another oil, like jojoba. I just used olive.)
5oz cocoa butter (you can split this between two or three different butters if you like. The recipe I based the amounts off actually had 1/3 cocoa butter, 1/3 shea butter and 1/3 mango butter, but I only had cocoa butter in my apartment.) I bought unrefined cocoa powder which literally smells like a chocolate bar. I wanted to just bite in!
1tsp vitamin E oil
Short, simple and sweet, right?
Step 1: I combined the beeswax, olive oil and cocoa butter in a glass measuring cup. This was accomplished by putting the measuring cup on my kitchen scale, setting it to tare to 0, then adding one ingredient to the right weight, setting it to tare again, then adding the second ingredient to the right weight, taring it one last time and then adding the third ingredient. I put a pot on the stove with about two inches of water and set the heat to medium. I then put the glass cup in the water and waited for everything to melt. For those not in the "know", this is what's commonly referred to as a double boiler, if you've seen that in recipes and been confused. Traditionally it's a smaller put in a larger pot, but I didn't see a need for that. Using the glass measuring cup was much easier for me as I could pour it directly out of the cup into the molds later.
Step 2: after these ingredients have melted fully, take the measuring cup out of the double boiler and put it on a trivet or a surface that can hold hot items safely. Then I added the 1tsp vitamin E oil. I really have been wanting some unscented lotions (the fake scents in everything are starting to drive me crazy), so I didn't add any essential oils, but if you wanted to have scented lotion, this would be the time for you to add them.
Step 3: I poured the lotion into a mold. I had gotten some "lotion bars" that look exactly like deodorant sticks from Wholesale Supplies Plus, but opted not to use them this time because I got the cute idea off the web of putting them in papers in a muffin tin. My recipe filled up five muffin spots.
Step 4: let them cool. I let mine cool for about an hour on the counter and then, when I could remove the muffin cups from the tin, put them in the fridge for about a half hour. Here's what the finished product looked like:
I tried using one and it certainly moisturizes well. The oil makes your skin slick, but it doesn't quite feel greasy to me. What I didn't like was that the bar felt like it was melting in my hand while I was using it. I'm not sure if it just needs to cool overnight before I use it in the future or if it's just that soft. While applying it by hand, that was when I wished I'd have used the lotion bars. I imagine those would be MUCH easy for applying this type of lotion. But this is cute and small and solid, so I am hoping I can wrap them up in some fabric with a bow and include them as part of my holiday gifts for people.
Not only was this recipe super easy, it was super quick! I put rice in my rice cooker, started to put the materials together, then went and spent ten minutes on the web making sure I understood the ratios I needed, came back, made the bars and had them cooling a good five minutes before my rice was ready to eat.
If you try this recipe out, let me know what you think? If you had substitutions that worked or just know of some other great lotion bar recipes, please share with the class!
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