Making my own body care products

[Pappy&Me]

Is baby oil a product petroleum ? My mother in law is 80 and has beautiful skin, she has always used vaseline . I know it's petrolium based .

Thanks for the recipes . I will try all of them . We keep olive oil for most cooking . I hear cold pressed is the best .

Anyone have a good body , foot and hand lotion recipe ?

[Gandalara]

Originally Posted by Pappy&Me

Is baby oil a product petroleum ?

It's made with mineral oil, which is a byproduct of petroleum.

[molochai2580]

Originally Posted by Pappy&Me

Is baby oil a product petroleum ? My mother in law is 80 and has beautiful skin, she has always used vaseline . I know it's petrolium based .

Thanks for the recipes . I will try all of them . We keep olive oil for most cooking . I hear cold pressed is the best .

Anyone have a good body , foot and hand lotion recipe ?

Here's the recipe for lotion that I got to work:

4 tbsp emulsifying wax
4 tbsp oil (I use almond, but you could use any kind)
12 ounces distilled water
a few drops of vitamin e oil
essential oil for scent (if you want)

Melt the wax and oil in a suacepan. add vitamin E oil and mix well. Boil water (I always start with more water than needed to account for evaporation). When water is boiling, pour 12 ounces into a mixing container. Add hot oil mix. Allow to cool a few moments, then blend with a hand blender for about 2 minutes. (My hand blender came with a mixing jar so I just use that, since it has ounces marked on it.) Add 2 drops essential oil to final container per ounce, ie: 8 oz bottle 16 drops. This gives a nice scent without being too overpowering, you can adjust as wanted. Let lotion cool a bit before pouring into bottle, since you don't want to deform the bottle. Leave uncapped to cool. Recap and shake every 5 minutes to help mix lotion as it cools.
You could also add about 4-5 drops of tea tree oil to help preserve the lotion and a very small pinch of citric acid (very very small)

[cobolt]

Jojoba oil is the closest to the human's natural skin oil. You can also mix this with sweet almond oil and put a drop or two in the bath tub. If you don't want to deal with the bath tub ring, just put a few drops of either or both oils in your hands and rub over your body after you bathe/shower while still wet, let it absorb, then pat dry. THe problem with petroleum based lotions (mineral oil) is that it just coats the top of the skin with that layer of oil. Nothing absorbs into the skin so when you feel soft, you're just feeling that oil barrier on your skin. So all these advertisements about "vitamin e' Blah blah getting into your skin is BS if the lotion uses mineral oil.

[in_newengland]

This is really informative. I started trying some recipes last fall but got side tracked. A few questions--I bought lanolin because I thought that was most natural for humans. I can never find it in cosmetics anymore probably because so many people are allergic to it. For ME, it's one of the few things I am NOT allergic to.

A long time ago I used to buy a product from Revlon that contained lanolin and lecithin and it was THE BEST moisturizer I ever had. Believe it or not, I still have the little jar that it came in and it's called European Collagen Complex exceptional beauty cream. I've always tried to duplicate this cream but never have been able to.

Another question if anyone knows--last year when I was researching making cosmetics I read that all these collagen claims are false because what you need is an acid and whatever else they put into the cosmetics makes the acid unstable or unusable. They went on to say that you could just use MILK or Orange juice--anything acidic will help produce collagen. What I'm wondering is.....can I make a product using milk or orange juice (or vinegar or...) and somehow make it stable? Make it into a cream so it would be less messy than trying to put a liquid onto your face? Does this make sense?