DIY, make your own chemical-free hand and body lotion.
At the end of our post on 5 natural ways to keep your skin beautiful, we note how important it is to moisturize. Now, take a good squint at the ingredients on your moisturizer’s label. There’s petroleum in one form or another. Alcohol. One or more kind of parabens, a preservative that has a weak estrogen-like effect.
Mercury – the American Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about high levels of mercury in skin products, as of this past March. To enhance the fragrance, phthalates; chemicals that may act as hormone disruptors.
To top the soup off, there’s retinyl palmitate, derived from Vitamin A and which may increase skin cancer risk when the moisturized skin is exposed to the sun.
Yes, commercial moisturizers are so lovely and fragrant. But as with so many industrial products, you pay for fast satisfaction with your health. We’ve written about scary things in skin-care products in the past, and here’s an extensive list. It’s so easy to avoid the chemicals and make your own silky, fragrant moisturizer that it’s silly not to. All it takes is four ingredients, a small jar and some ziploc bags.
Natural Hand and Body Moisturizer
Makes 2 cups
Ingredients:
1 cup good-quality water or strong, strained herb tea. Suggested herbs: chamomile, marigold, lavender.
¾ cup sweet almond, avocado, or olive oil
3 tablespoons grated beeswax (or use shea butter if vegan)
5 drops essential oil of lavender or other favored essential oil (rose, jasmine and ylang ylang, while expensive, are heavenly)
Equipment:
A standing blender or a stick blender
If using a stick blender, you will need a jar or bowl with a 3- cup capacity.
1 small jar for daily use, washed in very hot water and absolutely dry
Small zip-loc or freezer bags
Rubber spatula
An improvised double-boiler: one smaller pot on top of a larger one containing water half-way up the top pot.
Put the beeswax and the oil in the smaller pot. Bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat to allow the wax to melt gently. When the wax has incorporated into the oil, remove the pot from the hot water and set aside.
Put the water in the blender jar or bowl. Blend it for a few minutes to agitate it.
Slowly add the wax/oil mixture to the water, blending meanwhile. Keep blending until you have obtained a smooth emulsion: this may take several minutes.
Blend in the essential oil.
Cover the cream with a clean cloth. Allow it to cool to room temperature.
Use the spatula to fill the small jar for daily use. Transfer the bulk of the cream to as many small zip-loc bags as it takes. Seal the bags shut and freeze the cream. Thaw it out as needed to replace the contents of the small jar.
Notes:
Wash and dry the jar thoroughly before filling it with newly-thawed cream.
The fragrance of the essential oils made fade with freezing. In that case, add a drop or two – no more – to each thawed batch.
As there’s no preservative in this cream, store the jar for daily use in the refrigerator. Very refreshing to apply cold cream on a hot day!
This cream is considered too heavy to use as a facial moisturizer, but some people use it as such and like it.
More on natural beauty from Green Prophet:
- 5 Things To Avoid To Keep Your Complexion Beautiful
- 3 Natural Masks and Cleansers
- “Scentual” Natural Perfumes
Author: Miriam Kresh
Miriam Kresh is an American ex-pat living in Israel. Her love of Middle Eastern food evolved from close friendships with enthusiastic Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish home cooks. She owns too many cookbooks and is always planning the next meal. Miriam can be reached at miriam (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
Lovely, lovely, lovely. Thank you so much.