Our Permaculture Life: Make your own hand lotion: a silky smooth lotion bar for those who love gardening with bare hands.

Make your own hand lotion: a silky smooth lotion bar for those who love gardening with bare hands.

I love gardening with bare hands  - feeling the soil and sensing it's moisture, being able to gently handle seedlings and seeds, rubbing herbs with in my fingers to release the scent. 

Gardening is a sensory delight. I've tried gloves of all sorts, but always end up bare-handed, and usually bare-footed again in the garden.  I just feel so much more connected.


But I have to admit, my hands do get sore sometimes. To help prevent my hands from getting sore and to rehydrate them afterward, I have made this lotion to use before and after doing a big gardening session. 

Morag's Natural Moisturising Lotion

Ingredients:

Method:
  1. Melt the oil, wax and butter together in a bowl over boiling water. 
  2. Stir gently until melted and mixed. 
  3. Turn off the heat and add the essential oil. 
  4. Pour into forms
  5. Allow to set (5-10 minutes)
  6. Remove from forms and store.


These are shelf-stable. I am storing mine in a container on the bathroom shelf to use after I wash my hands. 

Just a little is all you need. As you begin to rub it into your skin it melts and is absorbed. 

I used an old ceramic bowl to melt the butter, oil and wax over boiling water.

Pour and allow to set before removing mould and storing.
Today I was having fun today experimenting with various forms to make little samples - little paper cups, big paper cups, waxed paper in mini-muffin pan. They all worked wonderfully. 

These paper cups make excellent forms for the lotion. The little rounds pop out and if handle carefully, the cups can be reused over and over.

More than just a hand lotion, these are great as an all-over body moisturising butter. Excellent too for rough elbows, knees and feet.

I am constantly fossicking around in the garden - tending, planting, harvesting, playing.... I don't mind the dirt under my fingernails, and the short gardeners nails, but when I get cuts or skin cracks they hurt. These little bars of soothing lotion are super at preventing this.




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