Homemade Summer Lotion Bars With Healing Herbs
Lotion bars are simple to make, a great portable solution for summer months, and so worth the effort and money.
I’ve included skin-soothing herbs and flowers to make these lotion bars extra nourishing. And they truly are an amazing moisturizing option for the sun-kissed (dry) skin, and super healthy and soothing, leaving your skin silky smooth and soft.
I keep one on my nightstand and rub it onto my arms, chest, legs, and feet before I go to sleep - making the most of the fact that beauty products are most effective overnight because they penetrate better when you're at rest and work with the body’s higher state of repair mode. Plus the lavender helps calm the body and promote better sleep.
How To Use Lotion Bars
If you’ve never used a lotion bar before, it is basically solid lotion. It’s applied by rubbing the bar back and forth onto the skin. The warmth of the skin causes the bar to melt slightly, leaving a nice coating on the skin.
About The Ingredients
Calendula
Calendula helps to restore your skin from daily exposure to the weather elements and helps to regenerate when there has been damages such sun exposure, scar, irritation, redness.
With antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, Calendula promotes fast healing and regeneration of the skin. That’s the reason it’s used to cure many skin problems.
Calendula with its therapeutic properties profoundly hydrates the skin, nurture the skin tissues, heals damaged skin, and assists in bringing back skin integrity, glow, texture and grain.
Rose Petals
This iconic flower does beauty wonders on the skin. Rose petals contain natural oils and sugars that will lock moisture into dry skin cells and promote glowing skin.
It has extraordinary anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities.
Roses are rich in vitamin C, which is a powerful anti-oxidant for sun protection. Vitamin C will bolster the skin’s UV defense and steer away free radicals from skin cells and effective in providing instant relief to severe sun burned skin.
Roses have therapeutic benefits that relax the body and reduce stress.
Lavender
Lavender is well known for it's calming and stress relieving properties, but lavender is also a go-to for beautiful skin and soothing sunburns.
Lavender boosts the synthesis of collagen and heals skin tissues. It can help to reduce the sting of burns and decrease redness. With its antioxidant, pain-relieving, and anti-inflammatory properties, it’s the perfect choice to speed up healing, allowing your body to recover faster.
Cocoa Butter
Cocoa butter is high in fatty acids, which is why it’s often touted for its ability to hydrate and nourish the skin and improve elasticity.
Cocoa butter can replenish skin’s moisture and create a barrier to protect the skin from moisture loss. It’s absorbed well without leaving skin greasy and helps skin maintain its elasticity and tone.
Cocoa butter is also rich in natural plant compounds called phytochemicals. These substances may improve blood flow to the skin and slow skin aging by protecting against damage from the sun’s harmful UV rays.
Olive Oil
There are five very important ingredients in olive oil, which together and separately strengthens the skin's resistance to damage and aging.
1. Squalane, well known as ‘Nature's Facelift is a botanical lipid that mirrors human lipids in molecular structure and weight, making it a great choice for regenerative skin care and anti-aging products.
2. Carotenoids. Olive oil is rich in carotenoids, which are found in all green parts of plants, where they are able to convert excess light energy into heat. Without carotenoids plants would be killed by sunlight. Research has shown that the human body develops a resistance to the harmful rays of the sun because of the carotenoids.
3. Vitamin E is considered an antioxidant superstar in its own right. It protects cell membranes from oxidative damage and prevent collagen from being destroyed.
4. Polyphenols. Studies have shown that polyphenols applied to skin protects against UV radiation and improves skin cell renewal.
5. Oleocanthal. Olive oil soothes irritated and inflamed skin through oleocanthal - this chemical inhibits the enzyme cyclooxygenase, which causes inflammation in the skin and body.
Summer Lotion Bar Recipe
Although lotion bars are generally very quick to make, infusing the butter and oil with herbs adds some extra time. So you will need to plan.
Serves: about 6 lotions bars.
Props:
Silicon molds (I use cupcake moulds)
Wooden spoon for mixing
INGREDIENTS
1 cup beeswax pastilles
1 cup unrefined cocoa butter
1 cup extra virgin coconut oil
2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
3 Tbsp dried calendula flowers
4 Tbsp dried rose petals
3 Tbsp dried lavender buds
30-40 drops skin-safe essential oils (such as lavender, geranium), optional
Other herbs that would work in this lotion bar include dandelion flowers, plantain, and goldenrod.
DIRECTIONS
Place calendula, roses, lavender, cocoa butter, and coconut oil in the saucepan.
Warm over medium heat until oil and butter have melted.
Keep the temperature around 167 °F / 75°C for 1-2 hours (4-8 if you have the time).
You can turn the heat off when you’ve reached the temperature and turn it on again in cycles of 15-20 minutes.
Important! You must stay close by when the heat is on, because oil heats up very fast and can get extremely hot. If you’d rather not stay close by, use the oven method se below.
Strain out the herbs through a nut milk bag or jelly strainer. Squeeze out as much oil as possible.
Pour oil into a clean saucepan.
Add beeswax.
Warm over medium heat until the beeswax is completely melted.
Allow to cool briefly and add olive oil and essential oils if using
Pour into molds.
Leave to cool and harden, this takes about halft an hour or more, depending on the temperature of your home. To speed up the hardening process, place into the fridge.
TIP 1:
If using silicone molds, place on a cookie sheet before adding the melted oils, this will make the mold easier to transport if you plan to put it in the freezer.
TIP 2:
The Oven Method:
If you’d rather not stay close by while your herbs infuse.
Place herbs, coconut oil, and butter in a glass loaf pan.
Heat oven to 250 °F / 121°C
Once it gets to temperature, turn the oven off.
Leave herbs and oil/butter mixture in the warm oven for 3-4 hours.
If cocoa butter hardens before you are able to strain the herbs, simply rewarm until melted, then strain as directed below.
