Fashion Friday – DIY Lotion Bars

These homemade lotion bars are easy to make with as little as three ingredients and work great on dry skin; especially dry, cracked heals.  They are perfect for our sandal weather that we’ll be having for the next many months!  Here is what you’ll need:

-Decorative Molds or a Cupcake Tin (there are lots of cute cupcake molds or even ice cube trays)

-Double Boiler (or glass bowl on a pot of boiling water)

-4.5 oz beeswax

-4.0 oz shea butter

-4.0 oz coconut oil (tried a batch using olive oil instead and it works just as well)

Optional:

-Tea Tree Oil

-Mint Leaves

-Any Scented Oil

Beeswax and shea butter can be ordered off of Amazon if you don’t have any on hand or know of a store to get it from.  The beeswax that we found was supposed to melt easily since it was pre-cut into pieces, but still took a while, so I suggest finding some in small pieces or cutting it up yourself into small pieces.  The tea tree oil or any other natural oil can be found at Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, or any other natural food stores.

Combine the beeswax, shea butter, and coconut (or olive) oil in the double boiler and stir together the melted ingredients.  Pour the melted lotion into your molds and let cool completely.  For easy removal, you can put them in the freezer for a little bit before popping them out of your molds.

It’s that easy!  The bars are solid at room temperature, but then as your rub it against your skin, the warmth helps to melt the lotion and leaves your skin soft and soothed.  It works great to heal cracked heals and elbows!

You can get as creative as you would like with these.  The tea tree oil is a natural antiseptic, so your bars can double as a sort of hand sanitizer too.  The tea tree oil also has a fresh, clean scent.  Mint leaves were more of a decorative addition but putting a few in each bar.  Next time, I will try adding more leaves and maybe mashing them up to get the scent out of the leaves.

I’m sure all you creative mamas can think of many more fun things to add to your lotion bars and I would love to hear about it in the comments below!