Crafty Girl

Well, I had intended on laying off the Differin for a month, but after about 5 days I started breaking out like crazy. So I’m using the Differin again and my regular liquid cleanser (Dove for sensitive skin).

I have changed a couple of things though. Instead of a commercial moisturizer at night I’m still using the Jojoba oil mixed with lavender. That seems to work very well at keeping the flakies at bay but hasn’t broke me out. I mix a couple of drops of the Jojoba with a couple of drops of water and put that on after the Differin has dried completely. It absorbs very well and after a few minutes I’m not shiney at all. Also I’m washing my face with honey durning my morning shower. Weird, I know. But it seems to be working.

I’m also mixing in about 2 teaspoons of honey in my conditioner and putting that in my hair every morning. I have fairly wavy hair and it’s been looking better that it has all winter (more curly, less frizzy).

I discontinued using the Revlon Colorstay foundation and am trying Bare Escentuals mineral makeup. I read some horror stories on Makeup Alley but also a lot of positive comments. It doesn’t seem to make me too shiney or break me out (like some people complained about).

I’ve embarked on an experiment. I’m 35 years old and have had mild acne for my entire adult life. For the last 3 or 4 years I’ve been using Differin and it seems to help, but I still get several zits each month. Plus it totally dries my skin out in the winter so not only do I have oily skin…it gets flakey too. Blech! I just want good healthy skin.

So, I’ve been making my own soap (oil, water, lye…) for years and I decided to use it to wash my face the other day and then moisturize with jojoba oil mixed with a little lavender oil. I’m skipping the morning wash in the shower. After all, all I’ve done before my morning shower is sleep and work out.

The first thing I noticed was that my homemade soap was not powerful enough to remove the Revlon Colorstay foundation I wear. Hmmm…must think about replacing that. So I had to grab a wash cloth to scrub my face. But it’s been 3 days and nothing crazy has happened. I had a couple of very tiny whiteheads yesterday, but nothing major. I plan on sticking with this for a month. If there is no significant increase in the acne or decrease in the appearance of my skin at the very least I can stop purchasing a bunch of beauty products. On the other hand, I might get great benefits from it. We’ll see.

Next up…I’m thinking of abandoning commercial shampoo.

I’ve got three kinds of soap here, but only two batches. For the first batch I made two “logs” scented with lavender but added oatmeal to the second mold. I made this one about 2 weeks ago.

And then Sunday (same weekend I finished the Bulky Cardi and Bill was out of town) at 6 AM (I’m a very early riser, usually around 4:30 AM) after surfing the net for an hour or so I got the bug again. It’s scented with Sandalwood and Jasmin and has lots of “special oils”

So the I generally use a blend of coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, castor oil and then usually something special like shea butter or whatnot. Well, I have craploads of special fancy oils and I never use them. That is going to change. I really need to use this stuff up! So I found a recipe that was similar to my standard but had cocoa butter, avocado oil & apricot kernel oil. I have all of those!

I dragged everything up from the basement only to find I was out of my pre-melted palm oil. You see, palm oil is solid at room temp and separats into layers. In order for your soap to turn out correctly it needs to be melted and mixed thoroughly before using. I think they sell some stabilized version now, but when I buy I buy big (grin) and I’m not yet out of the 6 gallon bucket I bought about 2 years ago (second one though, so I do use lots of my main oils).

I went outside and started hooking up the turkey cooker and a big pot of water to give the oil a hot water bath to melt it. I unhook the propane from the grill (no tools necessary) and hook it to the cooker (crescent wrench necessary). Bill normally deals with the propane and propane excessories. I just make stuff. I pried off the lid of the bucket and discovered this is a completely brand new untouched bucket of oil. I get oil all over me hoisting the bucket into the water (there’s a clue here). Then I realized that I used to always put some kind of rack in the bottom so the water can circulate around and the plastic isn’t in direct contact with the hot metal bottom. Damn! Then I realized that it’s been so damn hot in the garage where I store said bucket that the oil is mostly melted even though it’s only 60ish degrees out that morning (hence the getting it all over myself). I got a long spoon and stirred it up and had no need to melt it. So I wasted about 1/2 hour and made a big mess doing all of that.

In the end I measured out oils for the soap I made that day and an entire other batch for next Sunday. The next one will use Emu oil, Almond oil and some other “special stuff”. I like to measure out more than one batch at a time cause there’s the same amount of mess to clean up if you are measuring 1 or 5 batches.

Oh! Good thing I was reading about the properties of different oils to refresh myself. This batch was really high in cocoa butter and can make a VERY hard bar so it’s something you want to slice as soon as it’s cool. I’ll post the recipe for this when I get home. I sent it to myself but then I deleted it. Silly me.

Edited to add the recipes…