H is for Hands

What’s the first thing you think of when you think 4th of July?

No, not fireworks...

Not grilling...

It’s natural beauty products, duh! On the 4th of July here in Michigan, we had a discussion about this very topic. My mom and aunt were talking about how my grandma used to go to this place called Merle Norman because (pre-Clinique) they had the only hypoallergenic makeup around. Even nowadays, the search for makeup that doesn’t irritate our skin still endures, and we spend a lot of time talking about chemicals in what we use.

Not to get on a (natural, chemical-free) soap box or anything, but I was doing some fancy “internet research” about the topic, and I couldn’t get the image of us essentially rubbing lighter fluid all over our faces, arms and legs. Using natural products makes a lot of sense to me, really. When I stopped using a face cream with chemicals, I no longer felt a burning, tingling sensation every time I put it on. Now, I don’t know a lot about biology or chemistry, but that has got to be a good thing.

ANYWAY.

Back to the fun part! I have been longing to try this Creativebug homemade apothecary tutorial by Amy Karol from Angry Chicken for months. And in the intro to the lip balm section, Amy speaks my soap box-y mind. She says, “You use it next to your mouth, so you want to know what’s in it... because you’re kind of eating it.”

The ingredients are so simple, and so delicious: Cocoa butter, shea butter, sunflower oil, vitamin E, and an essential oil for scent. I used tangerine, and a bit of lavender for some of the hand creams. The mixture of the scents of shea butter, cocoa butter and tangerine is quite delightful! And, it is SUPER easy to buy empty lip balm tubes (I did not know that a week ago) and violà... Homemade lip balm.

So please enjoy the making of his "handy" little cream!