The next time you need conditioning lotion for your dry, winter parched skin, you won't have to go to the grocery store. You can make your own lotion in the comfort of your home kitchen.You will save a lot of money over store-bought lotions. Interestingly enough, lotions are mostly water!
There are a great variety of wonderful skin-loving recipes for lotion that can be accessed on the internet,. My favorite source for lotins is Majestic Mountain Sage, located in Utah. You can also find supplies on their site for your project!
Wholesale Supplies Plus, an Ohio based company, always has great prices on their empty lotion bottles and they carry lotion-making ingredients as well. Make sure to order caps when you are ordering your empty lotion bottles.
Here's what you will need:
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Large sterile pyrex cup (16 oz is okayt). -
Ingredients from a lotion-making recipe you've selected. These include oils, butters, stearic acid, emulsifying wax and preservative. These ingredients come from online suppliers as listed in this article or you can also find them on eBay. -
Digital scales to weigh your ingredients. You can find reasonably priced scales at Sur Le Table in the Clay Terrace Outdoor Mall, located just north of Indianapolis. Please select a scale that will allow you to weigh your ingredients in grams. Virtually all of the lotion-making recipes on the market use the more precise gram measurement vs. the ounce. -
New bottles and caps. You have your choice of dispenser caps or pumps. I prefer to make 4 ounce lotions with dispenser caps as the cap price is more affordable.
Heat up the water for your recipe in the microwave using a sterile pyrex cup that has been sterilized in the sani-wash cycle of your dishwasher. This part of the lotion process is called the water phase.
Turn on your scale. Put an empty glass blender container on it. Tare your scale to read 0.
Remove water from the microwave and pour into glass blender container. Does your water measurement match the amount you put into the microwave? The heating process can result in a few grams evaporating. Replace those at this time with cold distilled water. It should not affect the hot water temperature greatly.
If your recipe calls for citric acid, add it at this time to the water.
Using your empty pyrex cup, measure the the ingredients for everything else in your recipe except for the citric acid and preservaitve. This is called the oil phase. Put this pyrex cup in your microwave for about 2 minutes. The solid components of your recipe will melt down completely. Do not overheat. Watch your microwave. Two minutes seems to be the standard for melting down these ingredients.
Remove from the microwave. At this time, add the preseravitve. Of all the preservatives available, Phenonip seems to work the best.
Pour the oil phase that now includes the preservative, directly into the water in your blender container. Add the amount of fragrance indicated by your recipe. Put the lid on your blender container and blend for about one minute. The solution will turn white and resemble warm milk.
Lotion thickens as it cools, so it is important to pour your newly handcrafted lotion into lotion bottles before the lotion cools.
When your lotions are cool, you can design labels for them. I like to buy clear transparency sheets from Walmart. I print my labels backwards onto the rough side of the transparency sheet, and then run it through my printer. An inexpensive Xyron Labelmaker will turn your clear transparency into a clear label.
Cellophane bags are available from Michael's and Hobby Lobby should you decide to give your lotions away as gifts.
If you have any questions or comments, please write in. Happy Lotion-Making!
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