Face, Hand and Body Cream

When I was pregnant with my second child I became somewhat obsesssed with creating the perfect face cream for myself. I tried lots of different experiments and, only when I had the perfect combination of ingredients did I feel I was ready to have the baby (some people get all their curtains washed, I meddled with oils in the kitchen!). Anyway, I have relatively dry skin and this is the only moisturiser I use. It is really simple to make with a few basic ingredients that can be bought online or in your local supermarket. It is also cheaper than store bought stuff, and the bonus is you know exactly what you are putting on your skin.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp liquid oil. I mix this up, but keep them light (caster oil, for instance, makes a very sticky cream). I usually use 1 tbsp olive oil, one tbsp of avocado oil and one tbsp of jojoba oil. However to make it lighter and more cheaply, 3 tbsp of olive oil male a lovely cream that is full of vitamin E. I sometimes swap the olive oil out for sweet almond oil if I have it on hand.
1 tbsp organic beeswax
2 tbsp water You can use tap water here, or I sometimes use perrier water if I have it on hand. Or you can use rosewater.
1/8th tsp bicarb of soda
1/4 tsp lecithin (can be bought online easily - it's an emulsifier, and you will find it in the list of ingredients on the back of your favourite chocolate). I use an amount the size of a pea!
Few drops vitamin E (optional, but it does help to preseve the cream so useful especially if you are in a very hot climate)
Few drops of gentle essential oil. I used to use geranium until I developed an allergy. Now I just use lavender oil. If you are making it for hands/body and NOT the face you can add in some citrus and maybe tea tree but I would not recomment using those on your face. These are again optional but help to preseve it and give it extra skin conditioning properties.

1) Add the oil, beeswax, bicarb of soda and lecithin and melt on a double boiler until there are no chunks of beeswax. Use a metal bowl if you have one to speed up the colling down later. If not a perspex bowl is fine.
2) Add the water and stir (it will immediately cool some of the oil but a quick stir and the mix will be homogenous again).
3) Take off the heat and with a spoon or mini whisk beat it until it thickens up and goes opaque.
4) Add the vitamin E and essential oils, stir, and spoon into a 50ml jar (you can use one saved and thoroughly cleaned from a store bought moisturiser).
5) You can use straight away but I usually leave it to fully cool down. This usually lasts me a good couple of months as you only need a tiny amount. I have never bothered to refrigerate and have never had it go bad, but if you are in a hot climate (I wish - I'm in the U.K!) you might want to keep it cool.

I also used this, with lavender, on my babies bottoms in lieu of nappy cream, and I also use it on cuts and scratches as the vitamin E and lavender are great for healing in a non-stingy way!