Category: Crafts

After doing my post on green cleaning, I started thinking about how much money I was saving by not buying commercial cleaning products and how much safer I felt my family was without being exposed to all those chemicals. I started thinking of other ways to cut chemicals and unnatural products out of our lives and decided a great place to start would be some beauty items. I’m not fancy, I’m mostly a chap-stick-and-mascara-hair-in-pony kind of girl, but I’m a sucker for a smelly lotion or delicious lip balm.

So I started hunting around Pinterest and blogs that boast natural or raw living ideas. I came up with 4 products I wanted to start making and one afternoon, I got to work.

I ended up with lip balm, body butter, sugar scrub and lotion bars.

LIP BALM
The lip balm was one of the things I was most excited about. I seem to go through it at an extraordinary rate. I get tired of shelling out the money, even for my cheapy Vanilla Lip Smackers (I know, but I can’t help myself! I swear I’m 30, not 13.), and I really cringe to hand over $3 or $4 for something a little fancier.

To make the lip balm I used:

-2 TBSP beeswax
-4 TBSP natural oil (I used Safflower, but I’ve seen Sunflower used as well. I assume Olive Oil would also be a good option)
-a few drops of Strawberry Flavor

I simply melted my beeswax and oil together in a bowl in the microwave until melted. Added some strawberry flavor to it and stirred well, then dumped it in my pots. I found these pots at Hobby Lobby for $.79 each and they hold .5 ozs. I only got 4, but ended up with enough lip balm left over to make probably 2 more. I put what was left into an old baby food container and gave it to my 4 year old.

Cost break down:
$1.12 for beeswax
$.33 Safflower oil
$.35 strawberry oil
——
$1.80 for 4 pots

I had leftovers, but I just did the math for what I had here. Each pot of lip balm cost me $.45 for half and ounce. My lip smackers run $1.49 these days and are .14ozs each.

Mine – $.90 per ounce
Others – $10.43 per ounce

BODY BUTTER

I LOVE body butter. It’s so silky and smooth and has an amazing ability to soften any part of your body, no matter how rough. I have this weird thing with my feet and I have to slather them with lotion before I go to bed every night. If it’s not good lotion, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and they’ll be too dry and I’ll have to lube them up again. I love body butter for this exact reason–it keeps them nice and hydrated all night and most of the next day. The thing I don’t like about body butter? Its price tag!

To make the body butter I used:

-1 Cup shea butter
-1/2 Cup coconut oil
-1/2 Cup almond oil
-a few drops of lavender oil I had on hand

I put all the ingredients into a large bowl inside a pot of water on the stove and simmered until it melted. Once it was all liquid, I put the bowl in the fridge. It was taking too long to firm up, so I stuck it in the freezer instead. Once the liquids had turned back to almost a solid state, I used my hand mixer to whip them. The consistency is something like icing and it smells heavenly!

I put my body butter into these jars. I grabbed them 50% off and gave one to a friend. Each jar was 8oz (they’re not stuffed, but nicely filled) and is perfect. You have to be careful not to get this body butter too warm or it’ll “melt” back into a liquid. If that happens you’ll need to melt it all, freeze it again and re-whip it back into butter.

Cost breakdown:
shea butter – $13.44
coconut oil – $2.48
almond oil – $4.24
——
$20.16 for three 8 oz jars

Mine – $.67 per ounce
Others – $2.14 per ounce

SUGAR SCRUB

At first I wasn’t going to do any kind of scrubs or bath salts/bombs because they’re very common. But my feet need the TLC, especially going into the winter. I try to sit down once or twice a week and scrub them with a good scrub and a pumice stone to keep them soft and crack-free during the winter. And this sugar scrub is so good, you could eat it. Literally!

To make my sugar scrub I used:

-1 Cup of regular granulated white sugar
-1/2 Cup coconut oil

This takes 30 seconds to whip together. You just stir the coconut oil and sugar to incorporate. If you want to add a few drops of essential oils, you can, but I preferred the coconut smell so I didn’t add anything.

Cost breakdown:
Sugar – $.50
Coconut oil – $2.48
——
$2.98

My scrub fit nicely in a cute jar I grabbed at Hobby Lobby. The oil didn’t really change the amount of sugar, just made it wet, so it’s about 8 ounces.

Mine – $.37 per ounce
Others – $2.06 per ounce

Lotion Bars

I really enjoy lotion bars because of their versatility. I prefer to keep one in the bathroom and right after a shower, while my skin is still full of moisture, I slather it on and let the oils really soak in. You’re left with incredibly soft and silky skin that’s not greasy or slimy feeling.

To make my lotion bars I used:

-1 Cup beeswax
-1 Cup shea butter
-1 Cup coconut oil

Again I made a double boiler on my stove and threw all the ingredients in together. The beeswax takes the longest to melt but with stirring frequently, it wasn’t too long. Once all the ingredients were liquified and mixed together, I poured them into molds. I bought a soap mold, but apparently I needed to grease it first because my bars got stuck inside! I had to warm it up a little to get them out and they warped!

The rest went into a silicone cupcake mold I have and they came out perfectly.

Cost breakdown:
Shea butter – $13.44
Coconut oil – $4.96
Beeswax – $4.50
——
$22.90 for ten 2 ounce bars

Mine – $1.15 per ounce
Others – $5.13 per ounce

Since converting to a more natural beauty regimen, The Hubs and I have been experimenting with alternative uses for coconut oil. He’s always loved to cook and eat with it and I’ve really been swayed by its moisturizing and protective abilities. Did you know you can use unrefined coconut oil for:

-Cooking
-Sun screen
-Moisturizer for your whole body
-Protecting baby bottoms that have rashes
-Defrizzing curly hair
-WD-40 substitute

and so many more! Check out this list of 52 uses for Coconut Oil. At the bottom of the page is a link to 70 more uses, so check them out, too! We can’t sing its praises enough!

These are just as amazing as the store bought versions without all the nasty, unnecessary chemical additives. So break out your natural ingredients and start making beauty products today!

Sounds silly, right? I mean, it’s only January! Well, after talking to you guys on Facebook, I realized many of us are in the same procrastinate/leave your stuff for the last minute boat, and many of us spend the days leading up to Christmas in a total sewing panic. And honestly, I’m tired of it! I want to do a handmade Christmas every year, and every year I bail at the last minute. Well, NO MORE!

So I decided this year I was going to spend all year making my Christmas gifts so that when the holiday rolled around I’d have this stack of handmade goodness to choose from. 15 gifts sewn in December seems like an overwhelming number doesn’t it? How about 1 a month instead? That sounds totally reasonable!

Every month I’ll post one Christmas project (maybe more!) and a tutorial to go along with it. We’ll have a little linky party and keep each other accountable to knock out our holiday sewing list early. I thought the 25th would be an appropriate date! I’m going to blog about my projects, but if the gift is for someone specific, I’ll leave that detail out so they don’t know it’s theirs (the ladies in my family read my blog (hi girls!)). I’m also going to do some home decorating things, maybe my girls Christmas pj’s, stuff like that.

So join me, will you? Have a project ready to share by the 25th of this month and we’ll kick off our best handmade Christmas yet!

When my Grandpa was in the hospital, I felt very restless. There wasn’t anything I could do for him, but I needed to stay busy to keep from dwelling on the situation. When I sit at my sewing machine, my mind wanders and I do great brainstorming. But for those 2 weeks every time I sat down I found myself crying minutes later. I preferred to lose myself in tv, but then my hands were anxious to do something.

A few years ago I’d tried to teach myself to crochet so I could make a cute little toy for Sofie. It ended disastrously and I packed my yarn and crochet hooks away. But, I decided, this might be the right time to break them out and try again. That first night I made this hat!

I followed along with a really helpful tutorial on YouTube.

To figure out how to do each stitch, I preferred the video tutorials by The Knit Witch (scroll to the bottom of her videos to find the basic crochet, double crochet, etc).

Once I finished the hat, I decided to try my first written tutorial. Why not jump in with both feet, right? So I made a little flower to put on my hat.

Imagine my delight when it fit Chloe perfectly!

After that, I was hooked. (pun intended!) I started finding other patterns to follow and was crocheting a hat a day. I loved learning a new craft, especially one I adored so much, and it kept my hands busy during the saddest period in my life. Next I made a few hats for Ella, but they’re all still too big for her, so I’ll show them off in the coming months.

Then I tried one with a brim for one of my nieces. But since I was still new to the art and figuring out gauge and yarn size, it came out a LOT bigger than I’d expected!

As you can see, it swallowed Sofie’s head whole! So I gave it to my sister instead of her daughter!

Then Grandpa died and I completely stopped crocheting. I’m not sure why I stopped, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore. But a few weeks ago, realizing Ella was about to be here, I picked up my hooks and got busy again. I fell over myself when I found this capelet and knew Sofie just had to have it. It’s big on her, but that just means she’ll get lots of use from it!

                          

I think this is the only thing that excites me about the weather getting colder. I’m eager to try out some new patterns I’ve found and maybe make some of my own! I think my family might all wind up with something crocheted in their Christmas gifts this year!