So @naturalmedicine and @ecotrain have teamed up again to bring us another awesome contest, wherein we post about some homemade alternative to store-bought body care, cleaning, etc. type products!

Today I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite things, that ALAS, I am allergic to now, and can't use anymore. Weep, sob, lament. Because I really loved these so much!!

hard lotion bars with mango butter

Hard lotion bars and lip balm - super easy, super effective product!

I live in Colorado, which is considered high desert - that is to say IT'S DRY. Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize is the name of the game here. I used to be one of those people who had lotion in seven different varieties just frikkin' lying around everywhere. In the bathroom, in the bedroom, in my backpack, in my desk or apron at work, in my locker at school - just everywhere. And lip balm! Don't even ask how much lip balm I would use.

Then I discovered homemade, and I was in love. It worked better than any of the Bath and Body Works or whatever random stuff I had before (possible exception for Crabtree & Evelyn Gardener's Therapy, which I got as a gift once and also fell in love with).

Hard lotion bars are like soap bars in texture, and you rub them on your skin like you are applying soap. The warmth of the rubbing/your skin will soften some off, like it does when you rub a lip balm on your lips. They last a lot longer than the other lotions I was using before, and are WAY more effective.

hard lotion bars with shea butter

Super bonus: they're incredibly easy to make.

Mix equal parts by weight beeswax, olive oil, and shea/mango/cocoa butter (your choice) - melt in a double boiler or crock pot. Pour into soap molds, cupcake tins with liners, or silicone cupcake molds. Allow it to cool and remove from mold. TA DA! That's it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

And only three ingredients - which you'd think would render me safe from allergies, but alas, I am wildly allergic to latex. In fact, what brought me to the allergist was a permanent nickel rash (that I didn't know what was causing it at the time and had been dealing with for months) and a newer one that had formed around my lips - from the lip balm, because of the shea butter in the lip balms, though I didn't know that at the time. I had already been rashing from band-aids (Band-Aid brand has latex) and had discovered the hard way that banana, avocado, and kiwi (all latex foods) threatened to swell my throat shut - but had zero idea about the butters having latex in them, too.

After I saw the allergist and got my massive list of allergy tests done, I checked out a book from the library on food allergies written by Johns Hopkins hospital staff. It said that often people with latex allergies react to some latex foods and not others, and lo - I could still eat mango (dried mango was my FAVORITE), so I tried the bars and balms again with mango butter. Nope, still rashed - and soon after, lost my ability to eat mango without any problems, as well. Sometimes the more you expose yourself to an allergen, the worse you get - that's apparently what I had done to myself. Damn.

I could try it with cocoa butter, but for that reason I'm afraid to - I can eat chocolate, and I LOVE chocolate - and it's on the "some people react, some people don't" list as far as the nickel allergy goes. I don't want to lose my chocolate! So I haven't used cocoa butter and made bars again.

Hang on, Phe, you haven't told us how to make lip balms

Just the same as lotion bars, only pour into lip balm tubes. TA DA! It's the best. Cry with me that I can't use it anymore.

I will add that I don't recommend putting it in a little tub like Carmex comes in - I tried that once, and it's so much harder than Carmex, you can't really scoop it out with your finger, and it's not super effective to sit there rubbing your finger on it, then rubbing that small amount on your lips, then rubbing your finger on it, then rubbing that on your lips ...so I recommend using tubes, or making tiny, tiny bars (like, using candy molds, perhaps) and keeping them in a little mint tin or something so that you can rub that on your lips directly. Or, you can use the same lotion bar on your lips if you want, but if you're sharing the lotion bar and you wouldn't share your lip balm, or you want something small to keep in your pocket ...you get the idea.

So what do I use now?

Yep, I'm back to store bought right now. This is the Walgreens version of Cetaphil - which the allergist recommended, except when I looked at it in the store, CETAPHIL HAS LATEX INGREDIENTS, WTF IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THE ALLERGY BRAND - and this one does not. Burt's Bees does also have shea butter, but it doesn't set me off - which goes to show how de-natured it is (the allergist even said this, and recommended it because of that), if you were thinking that BB was a really natural brand. That being said, I feel like sometimes it seems a little irritating, and I wonder if I'm not getting sensitive even to that, so am planning on tinkering with some coconut oil and evoo and beeswax and seeing what I can come up with that might be kind of a Carmex-type one I can put in a little pot. More experimentation to come!

But in the meantime, I hope the OG recipe of easy-peasy awesomeness does your body good! :)

OH - and if you're wondering what to store the lotion bars in - travel soap containers, mint tins, anything really depending on the size mold you use. Just don't put it loose in your pocket or bag. ;)

Steem on! :)

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