“How do you get your lotion bars white? Mine are yellow.”
Renee Harris
Questions before you start?
A few questions came in related to buying and making your own skin care products for gift-giving: Question: I ordered ingredients from “From Nature With Love” and made my first batch this weekend. They turned out great! However, it’s very yellow. How do you get your hard lotion to be white? I don’t see an option for white beeswax at Mountain Rose either. Would love your thoughts!My Answer: It all depends on the source. While I recommend FNWL, I buy yellow beeswax in bulk from a local source for the products we make and sell, and the color is lighter. I personally think it’s because beeswax that is left at high heat too long turns darker in color. You can’t change the color that you buy once you receive it, but do make sure you don’t leave it melting at a hot temperature for too long, or it will darken even more. Personally, yellow-ish hard lotion bars aren’t unpleasant at all and I’d prefer that over using bleached beeswax.Question: The last time I purchased raw shea butter from a company online, I did NOT like the “natural variation” that happens to shea butter. It has a foul odor, and just isn’t the same as the other times I had ordered the raw shea butter from this same company. It didn’t act the same in the products I made with it either. Would a refined shea butter like the one you sell still work as well on my daughter’s skin?My Answer: There are a couple issues here: 1.) Raw shea butter has a very strong scent that can be a turn off for people, especially those who are not used to it. If you’re making your own gifts, I would go with refined shea butter. What we sell is naturally refined, therefore no chemicals are used in the refining process. 2.) Raw shea butter can leave a graininess in your finished product. 3.) It is always a toss-up with buying from companies online because these are natural ingredients that can vary from one batch to another. Read up on the reviews before ordering, and once you find a supplier you trust, stick with them. I’ve had some hit-and-miss with various suppliers over the years and it’s certainly no fun to be stuck with ingredients you can’t use. As for our shea butter for skin conditions like eczema, we have many testimonials that say it greatly helps relieve the symptoms, but I can’t call it a cure.Question: I was given some beeswax from a local honey farmer. Do I need to do anything to it before I use it in a recipe? I love your products and and I am so grateful that you are also willing to share your knowledge with us. Thanks, Patti.
Answer: Do you know if he filtered out the impurities? That would be any specks, even dead bees (I’ve seen it!) or anything that would make it “dirty”. If he hasn’t, it’s really easy. You want to use a double boiler system to melt it, and then pour it into another container using a paper towel as a sieve. You might want to make sure the bowl/containers you use for melting are not your favorite cooking ware. They can be thoroughly cleaned (best done while everything is hot/melted) with paper towels and then hot, soapy water, but it might be “waxy” after that. Pour the hot, melted wax into ice cube trays so you have nice 1 oz bars to use in your product-making. If you want to see the process in action, I found this video that gives you an idea : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV0YekuClt0
The beeswax should be hard, not soft, and he may have “spun” the wax to separate it.
I once received beeswax from a local farmer and it was super soft. It had other honey residue mixed in so it didn’t work for the products (although with some tweaking, it could probably have been used for lip balm since some people add honey to their lip balm recipes.)
Kerry’s success story: Thought I’d shoot you a photo of my first Hard Lotion! The silicon bottomed oversized ice cube trays from Wal-Mart worked great. I had a silicon star tray from a soap making kit & that also worked great! Still haven’t figured out the packaging yet, but will send pix if that comes out cute. 😉 All of these were made using the recipe for 1 batch. Plus it made the 4 lip balms as well.
Good job, Kerry!
Interested in an easy, fool-proof start to your gift-making DIY project? Start with our Lotion and Lip Balm DIY kit, and make at least 10-15 gifts with it.
Full disclosure: I do occasionally use my affiliate link when I link to From Nature with Love, as I did in this post. They’re a company I can stand behind to recommend to those who are looking for small bulk purchases. Mountain Rose is the other company I’ve ordered from and also recommend.
