Happy 2014!!! Linking up with Blog Hoppin' Day 2

I am linking up with blog hoppin' for Day 2. 

When I am not making graphic art or making teaching products, I like to make my own bath and beauty products. My favorite things to make are facial creams, foundation, and deodorant.  I am the weird person that spends hours blocking people from that can of spaghetti sauce in the grocery store as I read the ingredient lists, lol! Just joking, I am courteous and will move out of the way, but the truth is I read all ingredient labels.

Here are some pics from making my favorite facial cream named Pomegranate Rose. It includes complete luxury oils such as pomegranate oil, pumpkin seed oil, evening primrose, mango butter (yes, that exists and is completely made from mango kernels!), apricot kernel oil, and more! The only unnatural thing I put in it is a non-paraben preservative at 1% because bacteria is not a good thing at all and will grow in any product made with water in it.

Just like teaching, it takes some know-how, preparation, and a plan.

Instead of just using water, I like to make a tea to use in my lotion. Here I am brewing up a rose tea. I also add aloe vera to the water. Both are known for being soothing to the skin. Lotions are usually around 80% water. I want this to be a cream, so I used less water than that. 

Lotion has four main ingredients: water, oil, and emulsifier to blend them together, and a preservative. I will have to heat these oils up to around 140 degrees and melt the emulsifying wax and mango butter in it.

While I use regular kitchen stuff to make the lotion, I actually have separate everything for my hobby that was purchased for the purpose of making bath and beauty products. Sanitation is very important. I also spray everything down with rubbing alcohol before using anything and wear gloves. 

The ending result! I top them off with roses and they make awesome gifts!

Now this is the part I do not like about my hobby….the MESS! I think it takes just as long to clean it up as it does to make the lotion. That big batch took only about an hour to make.  Even though it was messy, the pomegranate rose facial cream was well worth that mess!

Now for the resolution part, see I have been bad about making stuff lately because I have been busy with TPT…I even ran out of my handcrafted deodorant! Alright, before you back away from me, I did buy some from the health store. The ingredients are not as good as my formula because they put propylene glycol in it (which is a petroleum ingredient….see you even have to watch what is in the stuff in the health food store!) So my resolution is to make a years worth of deodorant before my purchased deodorant runs out and make a bunch of batches of soap because I am running out of that. Yeah, you might want to back away from me after that because I won't be buying drug store soap (they put lard aka left over beef waste in most of those, yuck, and sorry, lol, if I just grossed you out.) Also, I am running out of things to give people, so need to make more of just about everything this year.

Do you have any resolutions for crafting and creating this year?