Lavender Lotion Bars

It's the time of year when I'm looking for that perfect gift to show the people who teach my kids how much I appreciate them. Most years I try to personalize the gift by making it myself or with my kids. This year I made lavender raw sugar scrub and lavender hard lotion bars.  The sugar scrub is something I've made for myself many times but this was the first year I gave it away to others. The hard lotion bars were an experiment that turned out great and I'll definitely make more for my family.

Hard Lotion Bars

3 oz Coconut Oil

3 oz Shea Butter

3 oz Beeswax, grated

optional essential oils (max recommended is 5 drops per oz)

First I grated the beeswax since I had a big bar of it. Then I melted the coconut oil, shea butter and beeswax together in a small pot on low. The recipe called for a double boiler but I don't have one. I kept my burner on it's lowest setting and that worked fine.

After the mix was completely melted I removed it from the burner and let it cool a few minutes. Then I added about 10 drops of lavender essential oil. I poured the mix into my cupcake pans and it quickly solidified. I stuck the pans into my freezer which made it very easy to pop out the bars once they were cold.

Here they are, my fabulous Lavender Hard Lotion Bars! Once I explained what they were to my kids they each wanted one of their own. My 7yr old Braden has eczema so enjoyed rubbing his dry spots with his bar. My 10yr old Zane has dry hands from his constant hand washing and the bar is working better for him than lotion. Zane has sensory issues and doesn't like the feel of lotion so he much preferred using the lotion bar.

I wrapped up five of them for teacher gifts. I folded each bar up in parchment paper and then wrapped it in raffia and added a beautiful label made by my friend Karen.

Now my teacher gifts are ready to go! I used brown lunch sacks and placed one lotion bar and one jar of sugar scrub in each bag for each teacher. I had five teachers gifts in all between my three kids.

You can learn more about making hard lotion bars from The Lotion Exchange e-books and find ingredients at Mountain Rose Herbs or Amazon.