Adventures With The Sage

Supplies and Ingredients
White Granulated Sugar
Grapeseed Oil
Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
Lemon USA Essential Oil
Spearmint Essential Oil
Container for mixing
Scale
Spoon
Transfer Pipettes
Containers and caps

Since Jordan wanted a Mint Lemonade Fragrance, I needed to blend a fragrance to match her desired scent. Her first idea was Lemon Sugar with a little Spearmint Essential Oil for the mint note. I made a test with 20 drops of Lemon Sugar and 1 drop of Spearmint in a Clear Glass Dram. After I let the blend sit for an hour, I smelled it and decided that we needed to add a sharp Lemon note, because the Lemon Sugar didn’t have the tang we wanted. I added 5 drops of Lemon USA, which is our sharper Lemon Essential Oil. That fixed my Lemon notes, but there was only one person on staff who could pick up a faint mint tone to the blend. I added 1 more drop of Spearmint. I still couldn’t smell mint so I started with a new Clear Glass Dram and added 20 drops of Lemon Sugar, 5 drops of Lemon USA, and 4 drops of Spearmint. The mint note was stronger and I could finally smell the mint. This blend was very polite and I thought it was very good. I still had to go back to the drawing board to see if 8 drops of Spearmint would overpower the Lemon or not. I got a new Clear Glass Dram and tested again! I added 20 drops of Lemon Sugar, 5 drops of Lemon USA, and 8 drops of Spearmint to this dram bottle and let it sit. Wow! This blend I think was the best! There was a great balance between the mint and lemon. We didn’t want the mint to overpower the lemon, which it can do easily.

Now I have a small dilemma. I need to fragrance a batch of sugar scrub, but I don’t want to sit here all day and count out drops of fragrance oil. This is when we converted the the drops to percentages.

Fragrance Blend in Percentages
60% Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
15% Lemon Essential Oil, USA
25% Spearmint Essential Oil

I needed to make 1 oz of the fragrance blend for scrub testing, so I usedthe percentages to calculate how much I needed to blend enough for 1 oz.

Fragrance Blend in Weight for 1 oz
0.60 ounces Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
0.15 ounces Lemon Essential Oil, USA
0.25 ounces Spearmint Essential Oil

During my testing several of the staff fell in love with this fragrance blend, so I was able to persuade the New Products team to come up with pricing for this yummy blend! I currently have a price of $4.50 for 1 fl oz of the Jordan’s Mint Lemonade blend. We will release this blend shortly, so if you can’t wait you can blend it yourself. If you want us to blend this for you, check our New Products section.

Now the fragrance has been blended, we can work on making the scrub. Jordan is planning on using Grapeseed Oil as the oil in her scrub, so we just need to mix a scrub that meets our requirements. We started with 8 ounces of Grapeseed Oil and then I started adding sugar and stirring until I had a very thick sugar scrub. I ended up using 16 ounces of sugar, which means that our sugar and oil ratio is 2:1. This ratio is one of the easiest ratios to work with on sugar scrubs.

The recipe and complete directions are below.

Scrub Recipe
8 oz Grapeseed Oil
16 oz White Granulated Sugar
.24 ounces of Mint Lemonade Blend (Using the fragrance oil at a 1% rate)

Weigh the oil into the mixing container. With recipes that you weigh like this, I like to add my fragrance oil to the fixed oils before I add the sugar. Now, add the sugar and stir thoroughly. Fill containers with mixed scrub. Stir the scrub mixture frequently while filling the jars to keep an evenly filled jar.

This recipe makes about 16 fluid ounces of sugar scrub. I used a 2 oz jar for my container and I filled 8 jars.

Next week is all about finishing up the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

This problem can be solved by making a Blooming Bath Oil. What is a Blooming Bath Oil? A Blooming Bath Oil is a bath oil that has an emulsifier mixed with the oil, so the oil mixes with the water instead of floating on the top of the tub! This bath oil will separate into layers, so you just need to shake it up before pouring into the tub. Think of a vinaigrette salad dressing, because the oil and vinegar must be mixed together before pouring over your salad. Who would want just oil on their salad when they were expecting the vinaigrette mixture? This is how a Blooming Bath Oil works, because you don’t want just oil in your tub.

Today we are going to make a Blooming Bath Oil with Sesame Oil and Polysorbate 20. I’m using the Sesame Oil because it is an oil that is light on the skin, yet rich in great nutrients for the skin. The Polysorbate 20 is going to be used because it not likely to foam very much.

Collect needed items:
Polysorbate 20 (You can use Polysorbate 80 if you desire)
Sesame Oil
Fragrance or Essential Oil of your choice (I’m going to use Rose Fragrance Oil)
Scale
Beaker or other container for mixing (optional)
Containers for finished product (I used the 2 oz Clear PET Oval Bottle, Size 20 and 20 mm Black Non Dispensing Caps)

Recipe
1 ounce of Polysorbate 20
4 ounces of Sesame Oil
.06 ounces Rose Fragrance Oil

Weigh all ingredients into mixing container, or if you wish, you can weigh directly into a bottle of your choice. Stir ingredients together if you measured into a mixing container or you can cap and shake the bottle if you filled a bottle.

Notes:
If you don’t want to use Sesame Oil but you want to use a light oil, I would recommend giving Rice Bran Oil a try.

These Blooming Bath Oils will be included in the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

Next week is all about fun with Melt & Pour soap! Swirls, toys, shapes and curls! Great fun for an afternoon with the kids or for some peaceful time by yourself.

Collect needed items:
Water
Hydrovance
Liquid Germall Plus
Hydrosol of your choice (I’m using Rose Hydrosol)
Fragrance or Essential Oil of your choice (optional, I’m using Bulgarian Lavender Essential Oil)
Clay of your choice (I’m using French Green Clay)
Scale
Transfer Pipette
Spoon
Mixing Bowl
Containers for finished product

Recipe:
35 grams of Water
5 grams of Hydrovance
0.5 gram of Liquid Germall Plus
10 grams of Rose Hydrosol
5 – 10 drops of Essential Oil if desired
49.5 grams of French Green Clay

Weigh liquid items into mixing bowl and stir briefly. Weigh clay either directly into liquids or into separate bowl to be added to liquids. Stir. At first the mixture will look like pancake or waffle batter with all the bubbles. Don’t worry! Walk away from the mixture for 5 to 10 minutes. If you keep wanting to check the mixture, then do something else like roll the laundry, run a load of dishes, check your e-mail, walk out to the mailbox, dance a crazy person around the house, etc.

Now come back to check and stir your mixture. There aren’t many lumps or bubbles as there were before. Clay needs time to absorb all of the water. Just ask any good mud pie maker about giving clay the necessary time to absorb water.

The mask is smooth and ready to put in jars.

Wait a minute! Yesterday I forgot to share how to fill the jars. Simply fill a disposable plastic pastry bag or a zipper-style storage bag with the mixture. Cut off the end of the bag and squeeze the bag to fill the containers. Warning, this method will need strong hands. You can use a rubber scraper on the outside of the bag to scape everything last bit out.

Notes:
You can use various essential oils or hydrosols for different users. For example, you can make a mask with Tea Tree Essential Oil and Peppermint Hydrosol for acne prone skin and you could also make a mask with Bulgarian Lavender Essential Oil and Rose Hydrosol for mature skin. You can make any blend you can think of. If you don’t want to use a hydrosol, then you can simply replace the hydrosol with water.

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!

Collect needed items:
Water
Hydrovance
Liquid Oil of your choice (I’m using Sunflower Oil)
Emulsifying Wax
Stearic Acid
Clay of Choice (I’m using Pink Kaolin)
Liquid Germall Plus
Fragrance or Essential Oil of your choice (I’m using Lemongrass Essential Oil)
Scale
Transfer Pipette
Mixing Spoon
Mixing Bowl
Containers for finished product

Recipe
56.34 grams Water
4.12 grams Hydrovance
9.39 grams Liquid Oil
3.47 grams Emulsifying Wax
2.07 grams Stearic Acid
23.46 grams of Clay of Choice
0.66 grams Liquid Germall Plus
0.05 grams of desired fragrance or essential oil

Weigh ingredients into your container except the clay, preservative and essential oil. Microwave for short bursts of time until the oils are melted. Mix ingredients together thoroughly and let cool until thickened. Add clay, preservative and essential oil, then stir. You may need a rubber scraper to scrape the sides of your container. Once everything is mixed together, fill your containers and then enjoy a relaxing time!

This clay mask is not as drying as most and will work well for most skin types. If you have extremely oily skin, try a different mask recipe, without additional oils. I’ll give a quick one tomorrow.

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!

Edit:
Whoops! I forgot to mention that this mask will be in the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets! Don’t forget to enter the drawing!

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!