MIY – Cosmetics, Furniture polish, and everything else …… Make It Yourself!
Making plastic a thing of the past is a challenge – but it is also very revealing. Once we start to question the packaging, we start to look inside at the products.
We have been walking blindly into a world full of petrochemicals and all the vagaries of human greed in seeking profit which is inexorably intertwined with wealth and power. We have been so busy being busy that generations have grown up not knowing anything else but national, multinational, international and increasingly Global Giants. These corporations have one goal, profit. Frequently at any cost.
An Interesting Journey
Curiously, walking away from our mindless plastic covered purchases is a very interesting journey.
If you care, and I am sure that if you are reading these words you do, then you are about to take the first steps on a highly cathartic journey. This voyage will take you to every corner of the planet – literally!
You will discover that nothing is as it seems and even the “most innocent and purest of things” can be tarnished, and morally unpalatable.
Question Everything
Importantly, you will learn how to ‘Question Everything’.
I have spent a career supporting Lawyers. Lawyers never take anything at face value and always enquire. Best of all, when answers are provided, lawyers question the answers. In fact, they never stop asking questions until they are completely satisfied that they have all the information required to be 100% sure that the answers are HONEST but more importantly they are in fact TRUE.
The ingredients and tools to make simple beeswax polish
In Which We Learn To Compromise and Learn
Today is the first post in this series about Making It Yourself.
So, I wanted to start making Make Up and Skin Products for my personal use. As a gift I was given bars of very white BeesWax. Most of the BeesWax bars I have ever seen were a golden colour. I asked where the product came from and was given a UK business website. I then asked that company where their BeesWax was supplied from. ….. You have guessed perhaps? China. Now it is significant that an English supermarket withdrew non EU honey – specifically Chinese honey – from their shelves following a concern about the content of the product. Even Honey can be not as wholesome as its Winnie the Pooh Bear image.
So, to produce my own skin products I wished to use the purest of bees wax. Even this is going to be a challenge as bees may travel many miles in any direction from their hive to collect nectar and pollen. So to be organic, whether honey or bees wax, the hive will need to be in the middle of a very large organically managed area of land. See, it is not as simple as you may think.
So, having found that my pure white beeswax came from China, I then turned my attention to the pure, ‘food grade’ oil I had purchased online.
Remember about asking questions….. So I contacted the seller and asked what “Food Grade Mineral Oil” was made from. How naive was I? This is a highly refined by-product of the petrochemical industry. However, helpfully, he mentioned that the advantage of Petrochemical derived “Food Grade Mineral Oil” is that it does not go rancid. “Why not?” should have been my next question.
At this point I had a micro compromise moment. I had 20 bars of white wax of undetermined origin and quality, a litre of fossil fuel by-product and several wooden doors which needed a lot of TLC. The Chinese beeswax and FGM Oil would not damage the wooden furniture and so I continued with my experiment to produce bees wax based products for use at home.
Chemistry of Concoctions!
Patent Attorney’s are lawyers who need to know fundamental facts and about everything they work on from the basics upwards.
This is some very basic science:-
Bees wax is solid at room temperature. At a slightly higher temperature it becomes liquid. At a hotter temperature the wax becomes an invisible gas. The wax gas is highly flammable, after all, it is the vapour around a candle wick that burns, not the solid candle or the puddle of hot wax around the wick.
The reason for telling you this is because to use bees wax to make a polish, we need to melt it so in liquid form we can mix it with the oil. To melt the wax you need to be super careful. We do not want a chip pan fire – do we! Professionals may use a thermally controlled electrical device (no naked flames). The alternative for MIY’iers is to use or devise a double pan. The bottom pan contains hot water, the upper pan has our wax and oil. As the water heats in the lower pan, the upper pan which is in or ideally above the boiling water being heated by the steam also gets hot and the wax melts into the oil. Keep stirring the mixture until the wax is completely melted, then remove from the heat immediately.
Work quickly now because as soon as the temperature of the mixture starts to fall, the wax will again become solid. Keep stirring the liquid and add your own personal extras to make it your own product.
A small glass jar containing the simple polish and Fresh Spearmint, Oregano and Lavender leaves
So, your next question should be what ratio of beeswax to oil? This is where you need to experiment to find a final consistency to suit you. Obviously we do not want a solid product otherwise we would simply use the wax bar. Conversely, we do not want to use the runny oil alone. I started with a ratio of 1 part beeswax to 3 parts oil. The finished product was solid at room temperature but quickly melted when touched
Top Tip. While you are experimenting, use very small amounts of ingredients with the intention of making Test Pots. The jar above has one ounce of wax to 3 ounces of oil. Next on my list is to buy some super small measuring devices, spoons and scales and liquid droppers. Some of the ingredients in the next batch are going to have very strong scents and so only a very tiny amount will be required.
Naked or Perfumed?
I love the subtle scent of exquisite perfume. However, if everything has its own smell an enclosed space can quickly become a macedoine of aromas assaulting our senses.
That said, there are some really good reasons to add the extra dimension of scent to your polish. Essential oils can have beneficial results in addition to a pleasing aroma ranging from calming to invigorating. They can also have antibacterial properties.
If you choose to add fragrances in the form of essential oils to your polish, these are some of the widely used examples:-
- Lemon
- Eucalyptus
- Frankincense
- Lemon
- Lavender
- Oregano
- Peppermint
- Rosemary
- Tea Tree (Manuka Honey comes from bees visiting Tea Trees)
Every journey has a first step and thanks to the omnipresent Mr Google we have an endless resource at our finger tips – remember always to Question Everything and keep searching until you are 100% certain you have found the TRUE FACTS.
A glass jar of simple bees wax polish and a Lavender Flower
Claudia Bow 