waxed cotton

These are too expensive for me to buy but great. Both brown and purple and then waxy.

From labour of love. They also have these and I think I like them...

potions

I made my first face cream and whatnot a few weeks ago. Magic. Honestly I was quite surprised that it worked. It is an actual real life moisturiser that I can put on my face everyday.

I have been using it and it is good, to begin with I thought that it smelled funny but after using it I quite like it. I think it's the honey in there that makes it smell peculiar. It has a herby-woody-floral scent? It seems pretty good for my skin although it hasn't fixed my forehead like the nyr one did. I will have to make another one and tweak my formulation.

I also made a oil for face cleaning and a body butter. I had coco butter and I thought that cinnamon essential oil would be nice but it has totally overpowered the choc smell. Next time. Not sure I like the whipped butter really, I think I'll just make a cream next time. The face oil is pretty nice. I have been trying the 'oil cleansing method' but haven't had any fantastic results yet. I can't quite reconcile the method with the advice dr hauschka gives about not putting oil on the skin at night. In theory I'd use face wash in the morning, toner and use my moisturiser, then before bed I'd do the oil cleaning and leave it at that. Maybe I should just ignore the dr.

I have been going to wise woman school to learn about herbs. We tried to make creams last week and it seems I was the most cream experienced. Our herb teacher is very good but making the creams from scratch is not something she does too much so I could share my limited knowledge. I'm really not that good but I guess the theory is fresh in my mind.

Nettles. Since being a ranger I do love my work gloves. Wimp.

I did homework to try out the lecithin as an emulsifier. I made some infused oils, please excuse the filthy cooker, it has been cleaned now. Calendula and cleavers, we learnt about cleavers although I can't remember what we learnt.

This is cleavers juice squeezed with my bear hands...

I tried 4 different batches with the lecithin, lecithin and bees wax, e-wax and the special emulsifier. I had to bodge in some stuff to thicken some of it as it was to thin and lotiony. I guess that is why I was experimenting.

So it's all done and I'll take it in to crone school next week and we'll look at it. I'm not sure about the lecithin. I might have to tell folks to go look at some proper e-wax and stuff as there was a bit of 'lets only be natural and use what we can get in holland and barrett' but as far as I can see we can be a bit less paranoid and actually use some proper stuff, even preservatives, god forbid.