Adventures With The Sage

This brings me to today’s topic, the cuticles. We all need to care for these precious cuticles, but sometimes a hand cream isn’t enough. If you have ever had a manicure, or a pedicure, you know that the cuticles have their own special oil or jelly. Keeping the skin soft enough to
avoid ripping is important, otherwise you might get an itchy trigger finger.

What is the difference between a cuticle oil and a cuticle jelly?

Cuticle oils are fluid, jellies are semi-fluid. Both are useful, and preference is the only reason you would choose one versus the other. If you tend to not like oily hands then a jelly is more in line. If you have very dry skin and feel like a bit of oil would help stop evaporation from the skin, then an oil is probably better. For typing or gun handling activities, I prefer a jelly because my fingers don’t slip around as much. For activities like driving, riding, hiking or sleeping, the oil is nice.

I’m going to make the Cuticle Gelly recipe in our recipes section, and in honor of today, I’m going to color it green for Saint Patrick’s Day.

2 grams Carnauba Wax
30 grams Mango Oil
5 grams Sweet Almond Butter
5 grams Avocado Oil
8 grams Evening Primrose Oil
5 grams Cranberry Seed Oil
30 grams Sunflower Oil
8 grams Lanolin
5 grams White Cocoa Butter

1 gram Squalane
1.06 grams fragrance oil (I chose Lemon Zinger for a fresh and zippy scent
Touch of Blue Oil Soluble Lip Balm Color (optional)

Equipment

scale
microwave safe container
1/4 oz Dropper Bottles or Lip Brush Pen
spoon
transfer pipette

Weigh all ingredients except for fragrance oil, color and Squalane in to microwave safe container. Melt these ingredients in the microwave using short bursts of time. The Lanolin and Carnauba Wax will be last items to melt, so don’t worry. Do be careful though, you don’t want
to overheat the mixture. Once everything has been melted, add the fragrance oil, color and Squalane. Whoa! Wait a minute! I only added blue color. How do I expect it to turn green? The Lanolin of course! Lanolin has a light yellow/orange color. Once you add the blue color,
green magically appears after some stirring.

Once the everything has been mixed, you are now ready to fill your containers! Cap your containers and you are now finished. Don’t these bottles look fantastic!

This mixture leaves the finger nail and cuticle area feeling soft, smooth and velvety. No itchy, twitchy trigger fingers.

Next week is all about making the home air smell good. We are going to make room sprays and linen sprays! Don’t forget about the Monster Away Sprays for Kids!

I was playing around with the lip scrub idea and I thought why can’t I mix it just like frosting? After all, I make a chocolate frosting in my food processor occasionally and I love it on saltine crackers. My point is that the chocolate frosting still has a granular texture from the sugar and that is fairly close to what I want in a lip scrub. If you don’t know what I mean, imagine creaming butter and sugar together in the mixer for cookie until the butter is nearly white and the entire mixture is fluffy. That is the texture I’m looking for.

Back to the lip scrub. We have a food processor in our kitchen here at work, so I “borrowed” it for a while for testing purposes. I thought “If I can make candy in a plastic bowl and not have the flavor stick, I wonder if a cosmetic flavor would stick?”

I’m going to use the same recipe that I posted on February 20th. First things first, I weighed my ingredients into a beaker and then used a rubber scraper to scrape the ingredients into the food processor bowl. I put the lid on the bowl and pulsed the lip scrub until completely mixed. I did have to scrape the sides of the bowl twice to make sure everything was mixed.

Perfect! The mixing in the bowl meant I didn’t have to melt any ingredients and I love the fluffy look of the scrub. The best part in my opinion is that I washed the bowl and the flavor didn’t stay!

Collect needed items:
Macadamia Nut Butter
Macadamia Oil
Vitamin E Natural
Flavor of your choice, we are using Cucumber Melon Flavor Oil
Scale
Mixing container
Sugar
Containers for finished product

Recipe:

0.50 ounce Macadamia Nut Butter
0.25 ounce Macadamia Oil
0.10 ounce Vitamin E Natural
1.70 ounce Granulated Sugar
0.04-0.08 ounce Cucumber Melon Flavor (I used the most I could use2.25 mL in this example)

Notes:
If you have a smaller bowl that fits inside your food processor, I would highly recommend using that. If you would rather use a mixer, go ahead and use that. You are just wanting the sugar and oils to be beat together. The longer you beat them together, the smoother finish it will have. If you don’t like the feeling of a regular granulated sugar, you could use a ultra fine sugar (not powdered sugar).

Next week is our Cold Process Soap Follow Up Week! We are going to cover botanicals, milk soaps, curing, saving a batch, Lye Heavy Soap and Using the Lye Calculator.

Needed Items:
Macadamia Nut Butter
Macadamia Oil
Vitamin E Natural
Flavor of your choice, we are using Cucumber Melon Flavor Oil
Scale
Mixing container
Sugar
Containers for finished product

Recipe:

0.50 ounce Macadamia Nut Butter
0.25 ounce Macadamia Oil
0.10 ounce Vitamin E Natural
1.70 ounce Granulated Sugar
0.04-0.08 ounce Cucumber Melon Flavor (2.25 mL in this example)

Weigh the Macadamia Nut Butter and Macadamia Nut Oil together and heat until melted, about 30-45 seconds in the microwave. Mix well. Weigh and add the Vitamin E. Weigh sugar and add sugar to oils, mixing well until all sugar is incorporated. This scrub will be thicker than a typical sugar scrub, you want it to have a putty-like texture. Lastly, measure and add your chosen flavor oil. I used Cucumber Melon. The sweet smell from the sugar, combined with this flavor, created a tutti-frutti type aroma. I used the higher rate for my flavor which is equivalent to 3% flavor. I would recommend the lower rate for really strong flavors such as Peppermint or Tea Tree. Check our Flavor Oil catalog section for recommended usage rates. Store in small jars.

Exfoliating the lips is not a daily routine event. Exfoliating should take place periodically. After this scrub treatment you should apply your favorite lip balm. Exfoliation and lip balm, means smoother kissing in your future!

Next week we are going to work on cold process soap. Don’t forget the supplies you will need!

Needed items:

Scale
Mixing Bucket
Fine Dead Sea Salt or other salt of your choice
Sweet Almond Oil
Glycerin
Jojoba Oil
Avocado Oil
Sunflower Oil
Fragrance or Essential Oil, if desired
Containers to fill with finished product

Recipe:
1 cup Fine Dead Sea Salt
1 oz Sweet Almond Oil
1 oz Glycerin
1 oz Jojoba Oil
1 oz Avocado Oil
1 oz Sunflower Oil
Lime Essential Oil (as used for our blog tests)

Weigh liquids into mixing bucket. Add salt and mix thoroughly. Once mixed, the salt scrub can be put in the containers.

Notes:
I think this scrub would be a great foot scrub, but that could simply be because it reminds me of the scrub my aesthetician uses on my feet when I get a pedicure. The glycerin doesn’t blend with the oils, so don’t worry about the separation because you won’t even notice once the salt has been added. When using, mix well before removing the desired amount of scrub. When taking pictures, I made a mistake and weighed out too much Avocado Oil. Therefore, I had to double my recipe.

Next week we are going to work on cold process soap. Don’t forget the supplies you will need!

Items that we will need:

Sugar, or Salt if you prefer
Glycerin Scrub Base
Spoon
Fragrance Oil (We are using Red Clover Tea)
Scale
Mixing Bowl
Containers
Purple Raspberry Color in the dropper bottle from the Jan 12 2009 blog post

Add fragrance oil and color to the gallon of Glycerin Scrub Base. Recap the gallon jug and shake. You are going to need to shake the jug like you are a crazy maniac. If you can’t shake the jug like crazy, then find someone else in your house or the neighbor boy. You could make cookies like Andrea’s Valentine Sugar Cookies as payment!

After the Glycerin Scrub Base is mixed, add to the sugar and mix thoroughly. I like to add the sugar to the scrub base just because that way some of the sugar doesn’t get forgotten at the bottom of my mixing bowl. Stir until completely mixed. Once the scrub is mixed, go ahead and spoon into containers and cap. Yippee! We now have adorable scrubs to give out as gifts.

Notes:

I’m at the bottom of my bag of sugar and the bottom of the bag always has more sugar dust. This dust is easily dissolved by the scrub base and can make a syrupy layer at the bottom of the jar. To remedy that problem, I added 3 tablespoons of salt to the 8 pounds of sugar I used for the scrub. If you are using larger sugar crystals in this recipe then the salt can be omitted.

Next week we are going to work on cold process soap. Don’t forget the supplies you will need!

Ingredients that we will need are:

Sugar, or Salt if you prefer
Red Morocco Clay
Hemp Oil (Natural or Refined)
Sweet Almond Oil
Shower Gel & Liquid Hand Soap in One
Cranberry Fragrance Oil
Lime Essential Oil

Equipment that we will need:

Scale
Large Mixing Bowl or Bucket
Separate container for oils
Transfer Pipettes
Container to package finished product

Weigh dry ingredients into large mixing bowl and mix together thoroughly. Set the bowl aside. Weigh oils, liquid soap and fragrance oil into the oil container. After all the fluid items have been weighed, stir until blended. Add oil mixture to the dry ingredients and stir. Spoon into containers and cap. Tada! We now have a beautiful finished product.

Notes:

When I made my first test batch, I wasn’t sure how the Shower Gel & Liquid Hand Soap in One would work. I thought that the Body Polish would be really bubbly, but I was surprised when the the finished Body Polish gave slight suds when scrubbing. The original recipe makes approximately 10 fluid ounces. Now you can make just a jar for yourself, or a dozen jars for friends and family.

Next week we are going to work on cold process soap. Don’t forget the supplies you will need!

When making a sugar scrub, you need to choose the oil you want to use. Wait a minute! How do make a choice with so many different options out there? Our technical support staff helped me determine the three weight categories of fixed oils. The categories are as follows, light, mid-weight and heavy. How do we determine the weight of an oil? We figure the weight of a oil by the texture and feeling as the oil is rubbed into the skin.

Our personal evaluations gave us Coconut Oil Fractions, Colorless Jojoba, and Macadamia Nut Oils as our light oils and leading into the mid-weight were Rice Bran and Sesame Oils. The mid-weight oils are Almond, Apricot Kernel, Grapeseed, and Sunflower. The oils between the mid-weight and heavy are Golden Jojoba, Olive and Wheat Germ. That leaves the heavy oils which we determined were Aloe Extract, Avocado, Hemp, or Shea Oils.

Each oil you test will vary. I like to test new oils on the inside of my arm when I receive them. I write down in my notebook the feel of the oil. Did the oil feel light, velvety, or oily? What did the oil smell like? What date did I test the oil? The last question is important because an oil that I find nice and soothing in February will probably feel too heavy in August, the most humid month for us.

I’ve chosen Colorless Jojoba and Olive Oil for my comparison project. Now what about the sugar? You can use any sugar that you want. We usually recommend using a white granulated sugar. You can use either brown sugar or white sugar.

If you use brown sugar, I highly recommend that you use a fragrance oil that will work with the molasses scent of the brown sugar. Whoa! Did I just say something that didn’t make sense? Ok, try this. Imagine the nice warm smell of brown sugar and then someone adds a fragrance like Cool Water or Lilac. These fragrances simply do not mix with the molasses scent of the brown sugar.

Fragrances that work with the molasses scent would be some with spice notes like Apple Jack, Gingerbread & Spice, and Welcome Home. You could also use fragrances with vanilla notes like Warm Vanilla Sugar or Vanilla Cream.

Lastly, you could use fragrances with a simple citrusy note and create a wonderful baked dessert smell. For example, Raspberry would make a great raspberry oatmeal bar with a crumbly top or Cranberry for a cranberries and brown sugar glaze. I should stop because I’m making myself hungry.

Just try not to combine brown sugar with blue/marine scents or green/herbal scents.

You will need:

Granulated sugar of your choice (I’m using white)
Fixed Oil of your choice (I’m using Colorless Jojoba and Olive Oil)
Fragrance oil (I’m using Oatmeal, Milk & Honey)
Mixing Bucket or Heavy Zipper Style Bag
Spoon if you use a bucket
Transfer Pipettes
Containers to fill with finished product

Set out your mixing bucket. Measure 2 cups of sugar into the mixing bucket. Now we can add 1 cup of oil. Stir or knead the sugar and oil together. Once the oil and sugar have been mixed, you can add the fragrance oil. I added 2 mL of Oatmeal, Milk & Honey. After the fragrance oil has been thoroughly mixed into the scrub, you can now fill your containers.

See! I told you it was easy!

FAQ and Interesting Tidbits

Did you know sugar is a humectant? Now before you think I’m using some weird foreign language, a humectant is simply a substance that promotes the retention of moisture.

Next week we are going to work on cold process soap. Don’t forget any supplies!

Items that I used were:

1-Scale
1-Beaker
1-Small Transfer Pipette (for the fragrance oil)
1-4 oz frosted HDPE bottle
1-Frosted Disk Top Closure
1 ounces Sesame Oil
1 ounces Macadamia Nut Oil
2 ounces Sweet Almond Oil
.04 ounces Hinoki Wood Fragrance Oil. (You can substitute for any of our
fragrances).
Shake or stir mixture well to blend all of the oils together.

Now it is your turn to try this wonderful product on your clients, and hopefully it will work as well for you as it has for me!

–Kandie

Need ideas for spa related gifts for yourself and your friends? Next weeks blog will focus on spa gifts you can make.