Here are some of my notes about something I have an increasing interest in. I even have a go from time to time ;).

I'm a dabbler. Jack of all trades, master of none. I'm trying to use old-fashioned, and preferably 'green' where possible, products around the house, for cleaning, bathing, etc.. I use baking soda, vinegar, soda crystals and essential oils for cleaning, mix up washing powders for a cheaper, yet still effective wash, and I'm a fan of 'Stardrops'! :) I've made some soap, creams and lypsil, though I'm very much a novice, so I am, and will be, in the 'tweaking' stage for some time. This is my place to record my progress.

I'll keep notes here on what I've done, how effective it was, what needs changing, plans for the next 'batch', etc..

Ingredients:

• Handful of Dead Sea Salt
• Approx. tablespoon Epsom Salts
• Few sprigs of Rosemary
• 'feet-size' bowl of Hot Water
• Yellow Soft Paraffin BP or Vaseline
• ~3 drops Peppermint Essential Oil

This is just one of many soothing foot soaks you could try. It depends of course on what you have to hand, what you like the smell of, etc.. When I did this I had a summer cold, which, on top of being tired and a bit glum, made me feel like I really needed a bit of pampering. I hadn't had a cold in so long, but the cold sore which was almost gone should have been a warning.

Put about 4 large sprigs of Rosemary in a 'feet-sized' bowl, together with the Dead Sea and Epsom salts. Pour some hot water (I used just-boiled) onto it and leave it to stew for a few minutes: this helps the infusion of the herbs, like making a cup of tea. Gather together whatever accessories you think you'll need: nail scissors, nail file, pumace stone, one of those rubber-ended things for pushing back cuticles, 'grease', a pair of clean socks, etc.. When you've got everything to hand where you're going to sit, add hot/cold tap water till it's okay to put your feet in, then sit and watch TV/read/listen to music/whatever you like, whilst 'stewing' your feet. Oh, I added some glass pebble-like beads too, so that I could play with them (and the rosemary! Mmm, lovely smell) with my feet, thus getting a little massage too. I took my feet out after a while and trimmed my toe nails, and gave my feet a good rub with the pumice stone, then put them back to 'steep'. I probably soaked my feet for about 40 minutes, adding more hot water from time-to-time (don't kick the kettle over!).

Once thoroughly soaked, dry your feet then take a big dollop of 'grease', and liberally apply to feet. I added about 3 drops of peppermint E.O. to my 'grease' (careful to get the drops on the grease, not my skin, since you shouldn't add most e.os directly to the skin). Cover with socks. Leave overnight. Hopefully, you will have lovely, soft feet in the morning :)

Notes:

• Be careful with Essential Oils. Some of them can be dangerous if used incorrectly, in fact very few of them are completely safe! For instance, peppermint oil shouldn't be used whilst pregnant.
• Any salts will do, even table salt.
• I happen to have Rosemary in the garden, but a few drops of essential oil will do fine. If you don't have any, use bubble bath.
• Get everything before you start, otherwise you'll be having to stop, dry your feet, etc. and it won't be as relaxing/theraputic.
• If you don't have any vaseline-type substance, just use whatever cream you have. I think the greasier the better though, then it can soak into your feet whilst you sleep (or do housework if you want)...
• I've also heard of people putting plastic bags on their feet before socks.. sounds odd, but it probably kind of 'sweats' it in..? Obviously it's going to be pretty slippery though, so take care!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 teaspoon l-ascorbic acid powder
• 3 1/2 teaspoon distilled water
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vegetable glycerin
• You will also need an amber or dark blue glass bottle. Make sure it's serile, clean, dry and cool.

Put the l-ascorbic acid in the bottle

Add the distilled water

Swish/stir until powder completely dissolved

Add the vegetable glycerin

Put the cap on the bottle and mix well. Pop it in the fridge, and use early. I've gathered from reading that you shouldn't be using it after 5 days, and definitely not if it's started to go yellow. What I plan on doing is using each day till it's gone, not exceeding 5 days, then giving my skin a rest from it for a few days. Eventually I'll have some kind of regime, whereby I will use this serum for something like 4 days every fortnight, then products like Rosehip Oil, the 'OCM' (Oil Cleansing Method: Oil mix using Castor Oil - see further down. I have been fairly lucky with my skin, considering I rarely pamper it, so I don't feel the need to be putting stuff on it every day. The ageing process may change that though!

Ingredients:

• 50g Coconut Oil
• 40g Caustic Soda (I used Jeyes 'Kleen Off')
• 100ml liquid (I used Orange Flower Water, though the Caustic probably burns off the smell)
• Mandarin Essential Oil (1 tsp.)
• Cinnamon (pinch)

This was my first ever attempt at making soap.It went fairly much to plan. There was a slight hiccup at the beginning.. I'd mixed the 'Lye' and then I put the coconut oil in a pan on the scales, then poured in all the Olive Oil on top......... I then went to turn the hob on and realised the gas had run out...... So far, not so good.. Anyway, determined that this WAS going to happen today, or it'd be another week before I'd have the house to myself, I took a step back and tried to think logically (not easy!). I therefore 'fished' the coconut oil out of the pan and microwaved it gently (medium power) in a plastic bowl. I checked it after a few seconds and it was virtually liquid, so I added the olive oil to it (the olive oil had a few little lumps of coconut oil in it from my mistake), mixed it up, and popped it back in the microwave. It was all liquid within no time, so I then continued as normal.

I mixed the oil and lye when the oil was around 95^oF (bought a brewing/cooking thermometer) and the lye was just under 100^oF. I don't have an electric blender, so it took just over 40 minutes to reach what I think was trace. I was stirring and stirring and thinking it would never happen and I'd done something wrong, at the same time telling myself it was getting thicker and it could take up to 60 mins., when I realised that it was at trace - it left a 'trail' when 'poured' with the whisk, which stayed visible for a while. I then poured it into a little box (like one of those that the chunky power adapter comes in with electrical thinggies) lined with the bag from a cereal box (cleaned and cut). It was rather 'wrinkly', but snuggled it up in a towel in a cupboard and left it till the next day, when I got it out, cut it up, then wrapped it back up and put it back for a few weeks (6-8?). I was quite pleased with it. It made about 4-6 bars which lasted a good while, since we tend to use anti-bacterial hand-wash stuff for hand washing, and shower-gel-type stuff for body washing.).

I need to tweak it a bit though next time, since, as my other half says, it's a bit 'snotty', and it also lacks any smell - it just smells like.. soap! It was intended to be 'orange and cinnamon' but you can't smell either. The cinnamon does give it a nice, 'speckled' look though, which I like. The other thing I did wrong too was use the wrong container to set it in, resulting in some odd sizes of soap.

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon BeesWax
• 1 teaspoon Coconut Oil
• 1 tsp Cocoa Butter
• 3 tsps. Sunflower Oil
• 3 capsules Vitamin E (optional)
• Chosen Essential Oil
• Colouring e.g. Mica, lippy 'dregs'

Also, a glass bowl, jar or similar, suitable for melting/mixing oils in pan of simmering water. If you're anything like me, you'll get in a mess, so also have spare containers, tissues, etc. on hand.

For now, I'm just going to write what I did. I haven't even used the lip balms I made properly yet, i.e. over a period of time, but by the look of it so far, they seem to be okay. Of course I'll update later as to how they performed, etc.. This recipe is a 'mish-mash' of recipes/info. I came across whilst reading about making your own lip balm, but the most helpful sites I came across were Naturally Balmy, Pretending Sanity, and facts-about-chocolate.com

Anyway, I basically melted the solids. I made rather a hash of the whole thing, ending up melting the coconut oil in a jar sitting in a pan of hot water on the stove, melting the beeswax then adding to the jar, melting the cocoa butter and adding that, etc.. Disorganised and amazing I ended up with three reasonably good-looking lip balms! I then kind of split the mixture into three which was even more messy, due to the beeswax's determination to be solid! lol. Due to being disorganised and making up my three lip balms ad hoc, as it were, I'm not sure exactly what I added to what after this point, but I did use 4 chocolate drops/chips, melted into about half of the mixture, and approx. 3 drops of peppermint Essential Oil. I'm pretty sure these are the contents of at least one of my 'end products', then another has a bit of an old lipstick in it too, and the third is what's left, plus a bit of cocoa butter (I'd taken too much out of my 'stash' in the first place. Hehe).

I used empty Nivea lip balm tubes which aren't suitable for pouring liquid into, due to a hole in the bottom of where the lip balm sits, so I poured about a third of the mixture into an empty lipsyl tube and left it to set, then I kind of.. 'mashed' the remaining mixture into the two Nivea tubes. Don't look at me like that: I told you I made a mess! :P I put any leftover bits in a lip balm pot for next time (I find tubes/sticks much more convenient than pots), and cleaned up my lip balms and associated mess. I popped them in the fridge, and have had a little try of each of them. I'm very pleased so far, especially since making some a couple of weeks ago without using bees wax.. not the best time of the year to NOT use something as SOLID as beeswax! I didn't need to use them up; they just ran away! Doh!

Be careful with Essential Oils. It's easy to get carried away and think they're the ansewr to everything: small, neat, little bottles; smell gorgeous, wonderfully useful properties, etc.. but they can be dangerous. Check out your favourites before you put them on your skin for the next few months! For instance, I've read that you shouldn't use citrus oils on your skin as citrus oils are photosensitive. I need to research more on what this means, since I love the smell of lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit.. I'll be surprised if it's a bad thing to use, since many face/lip/skin products contain citrus products, but it's tweaked my curiosity.. Also, would orange essential oil have the same result as orange extract..? I'll update later.. Just be cautious. If you read something somewhere, look it up elsewhere. Don't just trust one source. /rant :o

The most simple way of colouring your lip balm is to use a bit of an old lipstick you have. What I will be using in future is mica powder, probably from one of the places I get my mineral make-up. I tried a bit of a pink-ish mica eye colour powder I got from Lily Lolo last time (in my failed 'runny' batch) and it wasn't bad. I've ordered some samples of blusher (and other powders :D ) from them, since they're only 49p. The blusher colours look more suitable for lips, and Lily Lolo don't seem to sell samples of their eyeshadows for some reason.. Ouch. I wanted another 'Bondi Bronze' bronzer, as it's really useful: a hint of it in your foundation as a blusher, a little more if you're sun-kissed, and it's gorgeous as eyeshadow. It's £12 for 8g though.. a bit much. I'll make do with another sample, which to be fair should last ages - spilled my last one! The 10g for £2.99 from Naturally Balmy is looking very tempting, though I'm not really a 'red' kinda gal..

Hair Conditioner

Mayonnaise! No kidding. Mayonnaise is a great conditioner for dry hair. Buy some cheap mayonnaise and, depending on the length of your hair, apply about 1/2 cup of mayonnaise (around 2 tablespoons or so) to dry hair. Massage it into your hair really well and then cover your hair with clingfilm or a plastic bag. Leave for about 15 minutes. Rinse thoroughly and then wash as usual. I tried it the other day: left it on for about an hour, and my hair was lovely and soft and silky afterwards. Honest! :)

Washing powder

Make up 3kg using 1kg cheap bio, 1kg of your usual preferred washing powder (Tesco's 'best', Daz, whatever), and 1kg of Soda crystals (found somewhere in the household cleaning/washing section of the supermarket). A cheap way of making your normal powder go a lot further with no loss of results.

OCM

The 'Oil Cleansing Method' is a great way to deep cleanse your skin. I've never had much of a problem with my skin, but it's definitely changing as I'm getting older. I've tried the OCM a few times, and it does leave your skin feeling beautifully clean. Having said that though, I could get similar results from simpler methods, such as simply steaming, or a good wash with a gentle cleanser/baby wash/etc.. I can't claim to have tried used this method properly though, since I do it occasionally when I fancy it, rather than regularly, which would give a more accurate indication of it's usefuleness/appropriateness for me personally. Read up on it, and give it a try. It's not for everyone, but most will see some kind of benefit. Here's a link to get you started ;)

I can't remember the exact mix I last used.. it had Castor Oil in it of course, and the other oil was probably Rosehip. Possibly a little Jojoba in there too.. not sure.. I've got some Grape seed oil under the sink, so that'll be used next time... Here's another link about OCM. It's a long thread on MSE, but gives a good indication of the kinds of methods people use and the results they get. Good luck :)

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval"
~ Mark Twain ~