Lip balm, lotion and soap, oh my!

I have been a very busy little mouse the past couple of days. Yesterday I got up and made a batch of almond lip balm. I even have the cute little lip balm tubes (very professional of me)! It turned out great! There are a couple of consistencies I need to figure out in order to make it the right hardness / silkiness etc. It may be a matter of packaging it into a different container to make this particular recipe work well. This is an extremely moisturizing lip balm, but it's a little bit mushy and I left a tub of it in our warm bedroom this morning and it kind of melted a little bit. Something that I think can be changed with a little tweaking. I will try to use the hand blender next time, I think that if it had been mixed a little longer at a more brisk pace it would have had a more consistent texture. Even though I added almond flavoring, it did not come through, the raw honey overpowered all the other flavors, next time I will make a batch without honey to see if the almond flavoring comes through then.

This morning I made a small batch of lotion (5 ounces total). It turned out great. I made it with unrefined, virgin coconut oil and it just completely reminds me of summer! I mixed it well with the hand blender and bottled it into 1 oz bottles. The consistency is great, creamy, luxurious and extremely moisturizing! When I first put it into the little bottles if looked like it was trying to separate, I shook all of the bottles really well and put 2 into the fridge, 2 in the freezer and left one out to see if temperature made them set up differently, I did not notice that one set better than the other. Over all I am happy with this product.

After that I prepped the kitchen to make some cold process soap. I admit I was a little nervous to be handling chemicals and Mr. Mouse assisted me in this little experiment. Really I think he was trying to assure that I would not cause an explosion which would leave us homeless and me without eyebrows. It was great to have an extra set of hands and eyes. I made a very simple 1lb batch which did not have any additional essential oils, colors or preservatives in it, I wanted to reduce the chance of outside variables. I read through a couple of books prior to doing this and the recipe I used is in "The Everything Soapmaking Book" by Alicia Grosso, this book is a great tool, I recommend it for anyone who is interested. My soap has to set up for 2 days, then I can release it from the molds and cut it. At that point it will be another 4 weeks before it is mild enough to use. Oh! I hate waiting! But I am very excited to see what the outcome will be. As for the actual making of the soap, we got through it without any major problems or accidents. I almost lost a finger but it was my fault, I forgot to unplug the hand blender before trying to get the extra soap batter out. (shame on me!)

Ok, well I must get my products out to my ever helpful and willing "lab mouses" to see what they all think. More on that later.

~CM