Make Your Own Moisturizing Lotion Bars!

So once I’d made my own scrub, I decided it was time to make my own moisturizer. I turned again to Wellness Mama for a recipe. There are slight variations depending on the ingredients you want to use, but I made mine like this: Ingredients:

1/4 cup beeswax

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/4 cup shea butter

1/4 tsp Vitamin E oil

Equipment: ice cube tray, mason jar, measuring cup, double boiler-type apparatus of some kind (you’ll see I used my veggie steamer), chopstick for stirring

Notes about the ingredients: The cheapest place for coconut oil is Costco. All of these ingredients can be found at your local natural food/health store. In the Montréal area, you can get all of this at Les Marchés Tau. I got my Vitamin E Oil at Shopper’s Drug Mart, in the skincare section. You can also use Vitamin E capsules and just cut them open and squeeze out the oil. Beeswax online can be found at the Voyageur Soap & Candle Company. If available, I would recommend getting beeswax in pellet form as this will melt down easier (and be easier to measure) than in a bar.

Process: Melt all the ingredients together. Pour into a mold. Let solidify. That is all!

 

I used my veggie steamer to make a “double boiler,” placing the beeswax in a mason jar. I put the beeswax in first because I figured it would take the longest to melt down. I was right!

 

Once the beeswax was almost melted, I added the shea butter, coconut oil and Vitamin E. This is what it looked like once it was all melted and stirred together.

 

Using my canning tongs to grasp the jar, I poured the mixture into my ice cube trays.

 

Within 10 minutes in the fridge, the bars were solid enough to pop out of the tray! I got 11 ice cubes.

Next time around I may pour the liquid into the smallest size of mason jars to make cute little Christmas gifts. You can use anything you want as molds! You can also add essential oils for fragrance, but I love the smell of beeswax on its own.

I will use my moisturizing bars for a couple of weeks and report back on how I think they work on my very dry skin. I’d also like to source out more affordable shea butter. At Tau it was $13 for a 207 ml container.

Update: In the fall and winter, the bars are just too solid to spread easily. I like using the moisturizing bars on my chapped heels, but as a regular moisturizer, I now use straight almond oil or shea butter.