Lavender, Frankincense, and Patchouli!

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chapped skin, cosmetics, creams, essential oils, foot cream, frankincense, lavender, patchouli, rough heels, skin care

These are the three essential oils in my Rough Heel and Elbow Cream.  And they are all lovely oils to work with.

Lavender is a wonderful and very versatile essential oil. It is steam distilled from the flowers of the plant. It’s very healing for the skin with antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Most people find lavender a very calming and soothing scent. Lavender is a gentle oil suitable for all skin types. It is a great supporting oil, helping to boost the effectiveness of other EOs in a mixture and therefore, lavender is found in many skin care products.

Frankincense and Patchouli are more commonly known for their wonderful scents as incense and in perfumes. They are also great EOs for skin care!

Frankincense is often associated with the three wise men and their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It is an astringent EO with rejuvenating properties. It is great for chapped, rough skin.

Patchouli is another astringent EO that is good at healing inflamed skin. It helps stimulate cell regeneration and, like frankincense, is great for chapped skin and those cracked heels we all loathe.

And with the combination of frankincense and patchouli, you end up with a lovely light woodsy scent!

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Rough Heel and Elbow Cream Part 2!

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coconut oil, cosmetics, creams, Fractionated Coconut Oil, grapefruit seed extract, Shea Butter, skin care, tocopherols

As mentioned last week, I’m going to talk about some of the ingredients in my Rough Heel and Elbow Cream. I like to keep things simple and easy. LCO creams are based on the basic cream recipe from my teacher, Jan Benham. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, creams and lotions “are simply oil and water with an emulsifying agent that allows the oil and water to bond together.”

For the water portion of the cream, LCO uses distilled water so it is free of any irritants.

For the oil portion, I use a mix of Fractionated Coconut Oil and Shea Butter.

Fractionated Coconut Oil (FCO) is a lovely oil to work with and I use it in a lot of my products. To obtain FCO, Coconut Oil is heated and liquid is removed. And no I don’t know exactly how it is done but I do know that the end product is clear and odorless. It does not leave the same slick feel that some oils tend to do and I also find it absorbs into the skin nicely. It also will partially dissolve in water, which makes it a great bath oil (and yes it is the main ingredient in my bath oils).

Shea Butter comes from the nut of the African butter tree. I get mine from http://www.sheaessence.ca who in turn gets it from Ghana. Shea butter is very moisturizing for the skin.

The other thing to consider with creams (or lotions for that matter) is how do you make it last? It is easy to make a natural cream that you know you are going to use up in a few weeks at home. But when you are looking at making something to put on the shelf and sell to the public you need a preservative.

Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) is a natural preservative, with antibacterial and antifungal properties. One of its active ingredients is ascorbic acid, commonly called Vitamin C. This is extracted from the grapefruit seeds and pulp.

Tocopherols (more commonly called Vitamin E) is another ingredient that helps to preserve cosmetics while also adding its healing benefits to the mixture.

I shall leave things here for today. Next week I’ll talk about some essential oils! Have a great week!

June is here and the weather is warming!

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emulsifying agent, grapefruit seed extract

Welcome to the beginning of June! While it wasn’t all that warm here for May, it looks like we may finally be in luck for some warmer weather. Which means we are continuing to creep towards sandal wearing temperature. And that means showing off your feet! This month I’m spotlighting my Rough Heel and Elbow Cream.

Lotions and creams in the most basic terms are simply oil and water with an emulsifying agent that allows the oil and water to bond together. An emulsifying agent is something that is soluble both in fat (in this case oil) and in water and it allows the oil to disperse evenly among the water. The thickness of the lotion or cream changes depending on the ratio of water to oil.

All Lazy Cat Oils lotions and creams use lanette wax as the emulsifying agent. It is plant based, derived from coconut. There are many different kinds of lanette wax available. LCO uses an SLS-free lanette wax.

The process of making lotions and creams is fairly straight forward. You melt and mix your oils and wax, heat your water, and add the water to the oils. I love that part – nothing more fun than watching two clear liquids come together and seeing it turn milky white on contact!

As the month continues, I’ll write about some of the individual components for my Rough Heel and Elbow Cream. As an overview, it contains distilled water, lanette wax, fractionated coconut oil, shea butter, grapefruit seed extract, vitamin E, and the essential oils of frankincense, patchouli, and lavender.

Rough Heel and Elbow Cream is my feature product for the month of June and is available for $10 instead of the regular $12.