Homemade Lemon Lavender Lotion

I found a great basic lotion recipe at Wellnessmama. It is very simple and I had already bought all of the ingredients, except the beeswax, for making my peppermint deodorant. Luckily, I found local beeswax for a great price at Abundant Life Natural Foods in Hilo.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup (1 oz) beeswax
• 2 tbsp Shea butter
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Vitamin E oil
• 5 drops Lavender essential oil
• 10 drops Lemon essential oil
• tsp Vanilla Extract

Instructions

1. Place beeswax in a jar.
2. Fill a medium sauce pan with 2" water and place over medium heat.
3. Place jar in water. Allow beeswax to melt.
4. Add Shea butter, coconut oil and olive oil cover loosely.
5. Stir or shake regularly to combine the ingredients as they melt.
6. Remove from heat. Stir every 15 minutes as the mixture cools. 
7. Once the lotion is cool, add the Vitamin E oil and the lavender and lemon essential oils.
8. Place lotion into small (8 oz) jars.
9. Use within 6 months.

I found another lotion recipe at A Sonoma Garden that had more in depth instructions. I made my lotion using a combination of the instructions from both sites. When I was done, I created the instructions listed above based on my experience. I think it is better to melt the bees wax alone first so you don't have to heat all the oils and butters up to the melting point of the wax.

I put a bit to much lavender in the first batch (7 drops) so I decreased to 5 in the written recipe.

Lotion cooling on the lanai.