Living Homegrown Podcast Episode 63 Homemade Body Care from the Garden Show Notes: www.livinghomegrown.com/63 This is the Living Homegrown Podcast, episode #63. Announcer: Welcome to the Living Homegrown Podcast, where it s all about how to live farm fresh, without the farm. To help guide the way to a more flavorful and sustainable lifestyle is your host, national PBS TV producer and canning expert Theresa Loe. Hey there everybody, welcome to the Living Homegrown podcast. I m your host, Theresa Loe, and this podcast is where we talk about living Farm fresh without the farm, and that can mean preserving, fermenting, small space food growing, and just taking simple steps toward living a more sustainable lifestyle. All of the different ways that we can live closer to our food, even if we have little or no garden space at all. If you want to learn more about any of these topics, or if you re interested in learning about my online canning Academy, where you learn how to can food safely and confidently at your own pace, they just go to my website livinghomegrown.com. I wanted to let you guys know that my Canning Academy is only open periodically, and I am opening it up this month, so if you have any interest at all in learning how to can food in a really fun and easy way, plus you learn my chef tips for making your canned goods taste as good in the jar as they did off the vine, then be sure
to check it out. You can just go to my website, and you go to / courses, so in other words, LivingHomegrown.com/courses, and I have information there you can get on the list to get more information about the course, and when you sign up, you do get some free canning information, even if you don t take the class. I highly recommend it if you re interested in learning how to can. All right, so, today s episode is all about making your own body care products, and I have a really great guest for you. I interviewed Stephanie Rose from the website garden therapy, and we go over some of the basics for making your own skin care products, and we dive into a couple of really simple recipes so that you can get started. I asked Stephanie to come on the show for a couple of reasons. First of all, she is incredibly talented, and I wanted to share her talents with all of you, and I ll talk about that in a minute. I also wanted her to come on the show because several of you have been asking for new ways to extend your garden experience beyond the kitchen. That s why last week I talked about using garden ingredients inside the home for fragrance, and this week we re talking about DIY skin care products. Just so you know, next week we shift gears again into a whole another farm fresh topic that is unrelated to this completely. I m just trying to keep you guys guessing here, and keep you on your toes. Now, I ve known Stephanie for many years, but we actually have met in person, and I ve had the pleasure of meeting her beautiful family, and she lives in Vancouver British Columbia. She s a writer, a blogger, and author, and an incredibly talented crafter. I have always been a big fan of her website, Garden Therapy, and I think you will too. In fact, if you go on Pinterest, you have probably seen posts from her blog, and from her website, because it s incredibly popular, and
it is all over Pinterest all the time. Now, Stephanie s story is kind of interesting because she was having a bit of a health crisis many years ago, and she started the blog Garden Therapy really as a personal blog, and then ended up mushrooming into the big garden craft blog, and eventually she went into healthy living, gardening, and all sorts of craft projects like natural skin care products that you can make yourself, and it has grown to have a huge audience because her information is top notch, and so inspiring. If you are at all interested in any kind of DIY projects, anything garden related at all, Stephanie is your gal, and I will have links in the show notes for everything that we talk about so that you can check it out. Now, aside from her fantastic blog, Garden Therapy, Stephanie also has several books out, and one of them is called The Natural Beauty Recipe e-book. If you are at all interested in diving into skincare products that you make yourself, this is a really great introduction to it. It has 45 easy to make herbal skin care recipes for the whole family, and I ll have a link to that in the show notes as well. She also has a book called Garden Made, and it is really all about seasonal projects from your garden. DIY projects for every season. If you re interested in making crafts from things in your garden, then that s the book for you. What I m having Stephanie talk about today is really just the general realm of skincare products, you know, like scrubs, and lotions, and bombs, and butters, all those kind of things, because just as it is important to know what s in our food, it is also important to know what we re putting on our skin. This episode is just a little bit of an introduction into that world as well. Now, as I interviewed Stephanie, she s going to be talking about some different recipes, and different ingredients, and everything
that we mentioned will be in the show notes for this episode, so you can get the recipes that we talk about, and a resource guide that Stephanie has put together, are all available through livinghomegrown.com/63. Be sure to go there. In addition, Stephanie has put together a free PDF recipe that you guys can download, that is also available in the show notes for a basic lip balm recipe. The basic how to, all the ingredients, everything that you need to be able to make the lip balm is all in the downloadable PDF, which will be in the show notes as well. Without further ado, let s dive into my interview with Stephanie Rose of Garden Therapy. Hey Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me here today. Stephanie: Thank you for having me. I m really excited about this episode, because we haven t ever really dived into this on my podcast, and I just think that making natural skin products at home is a hot topic right now, but your website, and everything you do is so much more than that, and I love your story, everything about it, so I just think it ll be really fun. What I d love for you to start with is, I know you grew up in the city, but you didn t always garden, and you came to gardening as an adult. Could you explain to the audience about how garden therapy came about? Stephanie: Sure, sure yeah, thank you so much. In 2006, I suddenly became ill, just overnight got sick, and couldn t get out of bed for the next 2 years. Wow. Stephanie: Yeah, if you can imagine what it s like to be confined in bed for 2 years, they kind of blew by actually, I slept a lot, I didn t really know
what was happening, but after 2 years when my mind started to wake up, and my body was really weak, I couldn t travel far, I couldn t do much, but I needed to find a way to start recovering, and building up my strength, both mind and body. I had a house at the time, and it had a barren yard, and it didn t really have much in it but some grass and some dead soil. I ventured outside, I dug in the soil a little bit, and would head off to the library and get... Actually at that time the library, I could just order books online, and they would deliver them to me, so I would get these armloads of gardening books which helped me start with the basics, and learn, and I would go outside and just dig a little bit, scratch in the soil, and start to build up my strength while using gardening as a way to heal. Over about the next 5 years, I mean, this wasn t a quick process at all, I probably read every book on gardening, canning, soap making, and anything I could get my hands on, cheese making, bread making. I studied to become a master gardener, I took tons of classes, I took everything I could on preserving, I loved soap making, so I dove right into that, it's a really, really fun skilled to learn. At the same time I transformed my garden, got strong enough to rebuild my body, rebuild my mind, and then I think it took about 7 years later I was able to finally think about going back to work. Instead of going back to the corporate office job, I thought, This is the kind of lifestyle that s going to keep me healthy, and this is what I want to continue doing. I started working as a full-time writer. Well, I imagine that doing all of that really kept you motivated, because I m sure that depression was going to be thinking and with all of this. This got you out in the sunshine, this kept you putting one foot in front of the other.
Stephanie: Well, I m not sure depression, but it was very isolating, I was very lonely. Actually, one of the things that my doctors had recommended was doing group therapy, and getting together with other people. I tried that, but I found I connected more with people who are gardening, and living this natural life, doing this. People who are canning and getting together to talk about almost back to basics and living a simpler life. That s because we are also awesome. Stephanie: Right? Right. Stephanie: I didn t learn that until later in life, thank goodness I did. My goodness. I started blogging as a way to connect with other people. Like I said, I joined the Master gardeners group, and I joined classes on preserving, so this was my group therapy. I also started a blog called Garden Therapy which I used as a way to showcase what I was working on. Over time, people would respond and say, I love that you re showing me these things that you re doing, but can you please tell me how you did it? I started converting it into more the instructions, the recipes, the DIY step-by-step so that other people could join in That s where, when it was time for me to be able to go back into the workforce, I decided I was going to put all my eggs in that basket, and see if I could make it as a writer. Luckily it worked out really well. I m happy to say that I m living a healthy life that involves my passions every day. Well, I have to say that you re a natural at doing the step-by-step, and the DIY instructions. That s one of the things I love about your website, and I ve been following you for years and years before we
actually met in person, and it was because your ideas are so creative, and innovative, but you re so good at laying out how anybody can do this themselves. You don t have to have a green thumb, and you certainly don t have to be skilled with a glue gun, you can follow your instructions, and really accomplish what you have shown in the picture. Stephanie: Well thank you. I think for me it was just because everything was hard for me when I was learning to recover, it was difficult to... It was exhausting just to take a shower, or brush my hair. Things have to be easy, and my hope is that, if these projects can get somebody else outside, and add little joy to their day the way... I mean, I transformed my life, but if it could even do a fraction of that for somebody else, then that s my dream come true. Yeah, it takes the focus off whatever is burdening you, and put your focus on creating something, or growing something. Because you cover the gamut, you have growing projects, but you also have a lot of DIY crafting projects, and what we re going to dive into today are the natural beauty products. How did you move from the garden into the natural beauty area? Stephanie: Well, I think there is such an easy connection where people think your growing food in your garden, and it s the healthiest food that you can eat. Growing it, it s not full of chemicals, you re not picking it up from something that s been traveling from different countries. The same thing goes for your natural beauty products. When I looked at renovating my life basically, I looked at renovating the food that I ate, and then I looked at the ingredients that were on all the beauty products, and I thought, Why am I slathering things on my skin that I can t pronounce? I would much rather find a way to get back to basics, and use things on my skin. I don t know
what it was that made me sick, the doctors are still stumped, it happened overnight, and it s a little bit scary to think that, that could happen again. I ve made sure that everything that goes in my body, and on my body, is the absolute purest that it can be. That s awesome, and yes, because we absorb it through our skin. Whatever we are slathering on there, we re observing and putting into our blood system, and into our body. That s a really, really good point. You always tote that we should be working with organic products, natural, or things that we can pronounce the name on, and not be putting chemicals on. You have everything on your website, and in your books, and everything in there are things that you know every single ingredient. It s very similar to what I talk about on my website, and in my classes about how, when we can our food, we know everything that s in the jar. Well, when you make your own beauty products, you know everything that s in that jar, and it's going on your skin. It s a perfect match for my listeners. Stephanie: Yeah, that s right, and you can feel really good about it. There s so many questions about what all the beauty products are out there, and what all the chemicals are, and regulation is not... It s not clear. It s really nice to know that if you could eat most of these products, then you can put them on your skin safely. Yeah, and some of them smell so good you want to eat them. Stephanie: Yes, like cocoa butter cream. Yes, I m just going to say, anything that smells like chocolate, it s kind of hard. Stephanie: Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. Okay, so we re going to dive into actually how you make some of these products, and I know that talk about this on your website, and in your books, you talk about how we should first, before we slather our whole body with something that we re going to make, there s some precautions, like you want to make sure you re not allergic to things. One of the things I think you have people do is test it on a little spot on their arm? Stephanie: That s right, yes. Well, test it on a small, sensitive spot like the underside of your arm, may be near your rest, or on the elbow, and then wait for about 24 hours to see if there is a reaction. In general, things like olive oil, and coconut oil, and beeswax are safe, but everybody is different, everybody has different sensitivities, and so it s good to take a little bit of precaution, and make sure that things are safe for you. Just because something s herbal doesn t mean that it s completely safe. When you re using something in a different way, it s a good idea to test it as well. Sure, okay. Also, that also includes if you want to make something that may be going to be used on a child, or a baby, you want to test a little area before you slather them, because maybe it worked great on you, but maybe they re allergic to almonds, and you are using almond oil, or something like that. You always want to be really cautious with kids. Stephanie: Yeah, with children, children are developing their systems when they really young, so they usually say with babies under 6 months old not to use any essential oils on them at all. Children under 6 years old have a long list of essential oils that they should still stay away from. I find generally something like lavender is really the only thing I use with my son, he s 3. Oils and waxes are usually edible grade, so it s not that much of a problem, but every person is
different. I still feel much better putting the natural products on children, then I would ever something store-bought. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, yeah. Okay, and speaking of essential oils, a lot of the recipes call for essential oils when I talk about essential oils a lot on my blog, and on this podcast, there is a difference, in case listeners don t know, there is a difference between a pure essential oil, and something called a synthetic, or fragrance oil. If you re looking for an essential oil, you re probably going to be buying the supplies either online from a natural body care supply company, or maybe from a health food store, and they would have the pure essential oils. If you go someplace and you see something that does not say that it s a pure essential oil, and it has a strange name, it is probably a synthetic oil, and we have to be careful with that, right? Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. There s lots of synthetic oils that are in sense, that aren t available in essential oils, so that could be appealing. Things like apple spice, and pumpkin. The essential oils have the healing properties there. An oil that s been extracted from a plant, and has just 1 to 2 drops can be really powerful in a recipe, and can be healing, really enjoyable to have in a recipe, much more than a fragrance oil which is a chemical sense that s been created in a lab. Got it, okay, good, that was a really good explanation. A lot of the other ingredients that you call all our things we probably, or could have in our home already, things like olive oil, and sweet almond oil is something that I ve used in body care products before. Jojoba oil, and coconut oil, cocoa butter is something else that you use, and shea butter. As we talk about the different recipes, we'll go through what s in them, and how people make them. Most of the things are actually
pretty easy to find. I think they weren t so easy to find maybe 15 years ago, but now with the Internet, and with so many people going towards making these kind of things, I think that there s some really great resources, and I just want to mention that in the show notes for this episode, you have a fantastic resource guide. As we re talking about the different ingredients, if there s anything that someone s like, I have no idea where to get Shea butter. For example. You have a resource guide that we ll link to in the show notes, and people can go there and find where to buy all the ingredients. That ll make it really easy for everybody. Stephanie: Yeah, it should. Making your own beauty products is so much easier than it sounds like it is, and it s just having your cupboard stocked with the right ingredients means that you can whip up a soap, or a lotion at the drop of a hat. It s nice to have those resources available, and then stock up at home. Perfect, yeah, and most of these things last for a long time on the shelf. Stephanie: That s right. Yeah, we can talk about that as we get into the oils. Okay, so you have a lot recipes for lotions and creams, and you talk a lot in those recipes, a lot of them have infused oils, oils that have been infused with a certain particular herb. I wanted to have you talked for a minute and explain what infused oils are, and how we use them. Stephanie: Great, yeah. The difference between an essential oil which is the pure extract of a plant, and in infused oil, is the infused oil is a carrier oil that has the properties of an herb infused into it. That comes from my background as a gardener, growing all different kinds of herbs in my garden, knowing how wonderful they are, how
they smell, and the properties that they can add, means that I want to find different ways to use them. To infuse oils, all you need to do is simply take a large amount of dried herbs, like calendula, chamomile, mint, you can even use tea as long as it s well dried, put it into a container, add a carrier oil, something like olive oil, coconut oil, or sweet almond oil, and then heat it gently and slowly so that the oils that are in the plant merge with the carrier oil. Then you ll strain out the herbs, and that oil will last as long as the oil would if it... it says on it's expiry dates for years to come. Okay, so if you had a olive oil for example, and it said it wasn t going to expire for a year or 2, then the infused oil should be the same, as long as we haven t contaminated it in any way other than just infusing it with the herbs? Stephanie: That s right, yeah. If you ve got clean, dry herbs, then it shouldn t be an issue. Okay, perfect. For a container we can use our Mason jars, right? Stephanie: Right. I know you use Mason jars all the time on your website. Stephanie: I do, yeah, there s a lot of different ways that you can use to infuse oils. You could do it in a double boiler on the stove, but you need to watch that. The 2 ways I like to do it the most, and especially if you re doing small batches, you can use a slow cooker, and fill up Mason jars with herbs, and a carrier oil, and then just set it in to the slow cooker, and let that run on low for 8 to 12 hours, and it ll infuse oils for you.
It s just warming up the jars, there is no water in... It s not like a Bain Marie where the jars are sitting in water in the slow cooker, they re just sitting dry in the slow cooker? Stephanie: Yes, they re just sitting dry in the slow cooker. Got it, okay. Stephanie: The other option would be to put them out in the sun. You don t need to put a lid on the jars if you re putting them in the slow cooker, and you can have a number of different oils infusing at the same time, you could have calendula and olive oil, you could have a lavender and coconut oil all infusing. Same with the sun, you would just put a lid on them and set them out in the sun, let that go for about 8 hours, and you should be able to open it up and really smell the fragrance of the herbs once that s finished. It s like sun tea, but with oil and herbs? Stephanie: That s right. Yeah, very cool. Okay, and it gives us another way to use our Mason jars which I love, so that s fantastic. Okay, so these infused oils, what we do it then as, we can just keep them on our apothecary pantry so that we can use them for other things. One of the recipes that I thought we should talk about, because it s perfect timing, is your after sun lotion. Tell us about that. Stephanie: Well, I made this after sun lotion because my nephews, who are 10 and 8 came over to the house one afternoon last summer, and they were so red, they were so sunburnt, they didn t have any sunscreen on and the 2 of them were just glowing and radiating heat. I looked at these kids, and I went down to my kitchen, and I got all my
supplies, whipped them up some after sun lotion, and then forced them to put it on. They were just beat red, it looked uncomfortable. I took parts of an aloe vera plant, I took the calendula infused olive oil, which I always have around, and made the salve. They slathered on their skin, and I ve been using it for years, so it was no problem to whip it up. I m freckly, I m pale and freckly, so any son, I want to be able to cool down my skin. It s not just for sunburns, what I really like about a salve like that, is it s very healing, helps to keep moisture in skin, and I find that... I don t get sunburns anymore, I m now wise in the ways of the sun, and having pale, freckly skin. When I head out, and even just get some skin, I find my skin gets a little bit rough and dry. I use this lotion just as in after sun, even if I don t get a sunburn, and it really helps to keep the moisture in, keep your skin soft, cool the inflammation, and heal any dryness and abrasions that might happen from being out in the sun. Okay, perfect. Well, the other thing that I like about this recipe is that, it s really simple ingredients. You have your olive oil, it uses olive oil infused with calendula, and then it has coconut oil, cocoa butter, Shea butter, lavender essential oil, and graded beeswax, and aloe vera gel. Now, I wanted to talk first of all real quick what calendula... I have a lot of calendula in my garden, and it s a beautiful plant, it actually attracts bees, so it s a really good one to have in your vegetable garden, but it has some really great properties, so it s very soothing to the skin, right? Stephanie: It is, yeah. It s been used by herbalists for a really long time for treating abrasions and cuts. It s considered an antiseptic, so it keeps wounds clean. It s considered anti-inflammatory, so it helps to bring down inflammation. It s hard to say when people are making at
home products what the results will be, but calendula is tried and true, something that comes out of your garden, and can t hurt your skin, can be very helpful. It s great, but if you don t have it, you can always buy it. You can buy it dried all over the place, and will make sure we have a source for that. The other thing I wanted to talk about though is aloe vera gel, because that I know here in the United States, we can pick that up all over the place in the pharmacy, and it is magical, it s like... I have it growing in my garden, so I can just go out and break off a little piece of this plant and rub it on a burn. You can buy aloe vera gel, it comes in a little tube, or any little bottle, and it s so fantastic for burns. I m glad you used that one. You ve also got in here the graded beeswax. That is there to hold it together, is that what it does? Stephanie: That s right, yes. Beeswax I use in almost anything that you want to firm up, because oils and fats can be very loose. To keep the recipes so that they are together, the more beeswax you use, the harder the solution will become. If you use a little bit more, you ll get more of a salve that could be used, or a balm, something that could be used as a lip balm, or something to heal cuticles. With a little bit less it becomes a looser solution that s easier to spread on the body. Okay, perfect. Them, I noticed in your books, and on your website, you talk, sometimes if people don t want to use beeswax, and we re talking about it s a cosmetic grade that you recommend, and we ll have links in the resources for that. If you don t want to use beeswax, there was another wax that people could use like if they were vegan, and they didn t want to use beeswax. I can t remember the name of it.
Stephanie: It s carnauba, but I m not sure exactly how to pronounce it. Okay, that s fine. Carnauba, or carnauba wax, yeah, and that was made from palm trees I think. If someone doesn t want to use beeswax there is an alternative that they can use. Stephanie: Yes, it s a much harder wax, it s very shiny. You have to look for cosmetic grade, because it can also be used in car polish I think. Yeah, we don t want that, yeah. Stephanie: No, you don t want the car polish one. Look for a cosmetic grade, but it s a much, much harder wax, and so if you add it to a lip balm, the lip balm will be much harder. It can t be replaced one to one with beeswax, you d start with half the amount of beeswax, and then just adjust the recipe to see if you can get the consistency that you like. Beeswax is my go to, it smells like honey, it s beautiful, comes from bees, but somebody who is vegan might want to look for a different wax, or if you want a harder solution. Okay, perfect. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that because I thought that was really interesting. I ve only worked with beeswax because I ve made lip balms, and different lotions, and I ve always worked with beeswax. It s very easy to find, it s very easy to use, but when I saw you mentioned that, I thought that was a good thing to bring up. Okay, and we ll link to this recipe so that people know exactly the ingredients to use. Once you have all your ingredients, can you explain how someone would go about making this lotion? Stephanie: Sure, yes, I can. Making any lotion or balm pretty much follows the same steps, whether you re making a lip balm, or something like this, a salve. I like using a Turkish coffee pot, which is a coffee pot that s quite small and has a long handle that you put on the stovetop, as opposed to something like a double boiler. Add all of
the ingredients in, and put it on about medium heat. Stir consistently until everything melts together, and then pour it into a container and let it cool. It s basically a melt and pour system, once you take all ingredients, you re going to melt them together, and then pour it into a container. Okay, so you don t have to whip it, it just melts together and you just stir it, and that s enough? Stephanie: Yep, that s enough. The Turkish coffee pot, they re kind of small, I ve seen them, they just have the little pour spout, they re metal, where would someone go about getting a Turkish coffee pot? You have sources for that in your resource guide? Stephanie: Yes, there s resources where you can buy it online. I got mine at a local gourmet, it s called the gourmet warehouse, found a store for it, you can find them, there s many antiques all over the web, so they should be able to be found in a thrift shop, or anywhere. Really what I like about it is the pour spout, because if I make a lotion, and I m putting into a small container, even a lip balm tube, it s just really easy to pour it in. Okay, and then I know you also have sources in your resource guide for different things we could pour it into. You have little cosmetic container sources. If we wanted to, we could just pour into a little 4 ounce jam jar if we wanted to? Stephanie: Yep, absolutely. Okay.
Stephanie: Yeah, I use a lot of mason jars for all of my beauty products. I like the plastic lids for things that go in the shower too, because it doesn t rust, so I have a whole stock of those plastic lids, the white plastic lids that fit the different size mason jars. Then yes, you ve got all your natural beauty containers on hand. Okay. Yeah, so it s really very simple, you just measure out the ingredients, you melt it in either a small pot double boiler, or a Turkish coffee pot, pour it and let it cool, and then you re ready to use. Stephanie: That s right. Now, how long does something like this last? I know the oils last as long as the expiration date. As long as you haven t contaminated these, do they last a pretty long time? Stephanie: Well, I think when you re adding an aloe vera, which will have some moisture in it, that it s going to take down the time that it will last. All the different fats that you re adding will all have different expiry dates. I generally try to use things within 3 to 6 months, and that s why most of everything that I have in the book is small batches. Again, keeping your raw ingredients stocked, and being able to whip something up quickly is a better way to keep fresh ingredients around... Fresh products around to keep the products that are made over time, perhaps boiling, you don t know. Sure. Yeah, you re making a small batch so you re just using what you need, and then... When you open it, I always sniff them as I m going, and you can tell when the oil starts to get a little rancid, for me that s always what happens first, I ve never opened one up and had anything growing in there, or anything like that. I ll open it, I can tell that the oil is starting to go rancid, just like oil does on your
shelf in the kitchen, and you can smell it and go, It s starting to go. It may not have the qualities that you want, but you re not eating it, so you re not so worried about something like that. Still, it s pretty easy to tell. You re right, if you're making small batches, and I noticed this particular recipe just makes up 2 ounces. That s a very small amount, just enough to use, and when you need to make up some more, you can make up a new batch. That s great. Stephanie: That s right, yeah, I think what you said is perfect, because if you notice that the smell is off a little bit, or fat bloom is something that you ll see in natural beauty products. If the consistency of the top of the product has what looks like little white spots on, that s called fat bloom, and that is also showing that the product is starting to spoil. Okay, that s good to know. All right, so that s really simple. Now, you had another recipe that I thought was fun for us to talk about for canners to do, because it uses citric acid in the recipe, and if you re a canner, you probably have citric acid sitting on your shelf, because that s what we used to acidify our tomatoes when we are canning tomatoes. It s one of the things that we can use to acidify tomatoes, and you can find it wherever you buy your canning supplies. They even have in the grocery stores. This particular recipe is for bath bombs, and I have done this with my kids when they were younger, I made bath bombs, we did them for Christmas presents. My kids got such a kick out of not only making these, because it s kind of like working with really dry Playdough, but also they just loved using them, and then to be giving something that they had made to members of the family, they just had a lot of fun with this. Tell us about what bath bombs are.
Stephanie: Bath bombs are made up of the basics of baking soda and citric acid together, and they have a chemical reaction that makes carbon dioxide bubbles when you pop into the bathtub. There really easy to make with, like you said, ingredients that probably canners have on their shelves right now, and once you put them together, then they do, they make great gifts, they're really fun to make with kids, and it feels nice in the bathtub, it s not just fun, but it actually feels nice, it s very soothing on your skin. Well, and the bubble action will release the essential oils that you include. You can make it fragrant like I think the one in your book is for lavender. When you drop it in, and it bubbles, it makes the lavender go into the air even more, so you get the benefits of the essential oils that you re using, you get the fragrance from them in the bubbles, plus the kids just love the bubbling action. You say this in the book, that if you buy one of these, if you go to a bath supply store, they do sell bath bombs, and they can be like 6 dollars for one bath bomb. It s crazy. When all it is, is baking soda and citric acid, and a couple drops of essential oil, and so to be able... You also tell us how we can color them. To be able to make these ourselves is a real money saver. Stephanie: That s right, and it s just really fun to do. If you re looking for something to make a bunch of Christmas gifts, or teacher thank you gifts, or office gifts, you can make a bunch of them, and it s a pretty fun way to spend an afternoon. It ll make your house smell fantastic while you re doing it. That s true, yeah. Well, okay. The other thing is that when I first was trying to figure out, how do people make these? Your first thought is, Well, they re molded. It s like a powder that s been molded into some kind of a shape, a ball, or some other kind of a shape. I
couldn t figure out until I finally got my hands on a recipe and looked, how you do it so that they don t fizz. Because as soon as they get the water, or liquid with the citric acid and baking soda, they ll fizz as soon as they touch water. The way you do it is with pure witch hazel, which is another thing that we can get at the pharmacy. Why don t you walk us through how someone would make a basic recipe of the bath bombs. Stephanie: Sure, yeah. A basic recipe would be, you re looking at 2 cups of baking soda to 1 cup of citric acid, so expand that however much you want. Maybe start with that recipe, because you have to work really quickly when you re doing this, so start with that, add some scents, and then work on another batch if you want to make more. I like to get a big metal bowl, add the 2 cups of baking soda, 1 cup of citric acid, and then I fill a small atomizer with witch hazel before you add the witch hazel. When you do the witch hazel, that s going to bring it all together. If you want to add essential oils, you can add 15 to 20 drops of essential oils in, in whatever scent that you like. If you want to color it, look for, I got a list of natural colors you can use, so things like ground sage, and spirulina for green, turmeric if you want to make yellow bath bombs, there s all sorts of different things that you could probably find in your spice cabinet to add color. You could also add herbs at this point, so rose petals, and lavender, and things like that would look really nice. Once you got your mixture all stirred together, you ll take the atomizer with witch hazel, and spray the surface, and mix with your hands. Keep spraying the surface and mixing with your hands until you get the consistency of wet snow. Those people who don t know what wet snow feels like, in case you re lucky enough to live somewhere where it s warm all year
round, squeeze it together in your hand, and it will retain the imprint of the inside of your hand. It ll stick together when you make a little fistful of it. When it sticking together without crumbling apart, then you ll quickly press the mixture into bath bomb molds. You can use any hard plastic mold. I don t like the silicone molds because I find that they re too soft, and you have to press quite hard, it will not retain the shape as well. If you use a hard plastic mold, something for candy, or bath bombs, then press it in quite well, and leave that to dry for a few minutes before you pop it out. It should be fairly easy to pop out, then let those dry for about 24 hours, and then they ll be hard and ready to go into the tub. Yes, I have never used the silicone, but I have used... They actually do make bath bomb molds, and that s what we used. I have seen on Pinterest, and you may have even done this, but I ve seen people at Easter time make these and use the plastic eggs mold. Stephanie: I did do that. Oh, you did? See, I knew you would. I knew it. Stephanie: I wrote an article about how it was hard. Oh really? Okay, well, I m glad I asked then. It s tricky because you have the two parts, is that the problem? Stephanie: Unless you find an egg that s split lengthwise rather than widthwise, it s a little bit harder to get the mixture out of the mold, to get the bath bomb out of the mold. I tried all different methods of doing it, and actually showed the results of crumbly, falling apart. I was able to get 12 really nice eggs out of it, but it was much harder than it should be. If you want to make the Easter eggs, they do make an
Easter egg bath bomb mold which cuts can lengthwise, and you can stick those together. Well there you go, okay. Let s just cut to the chase and go get that. Okay, perfect, I m so glad you did it. You actually tried it, because I would ve been... The next time we did this I would have been trying to fiddle around with one of those things. Okay, good. That s really good to know. Excellent information. Stephanie: Save yourself the headache and get the proper molds. Yes. Now, do you have a resource for the mold in your resource guide? Stephanie: I do, I ve been finding them a little bit harder to find when I found them, but if you can find a soap making store locally, they have all sorts of different kinds of molds. Even candy making stores, Michaels has endless candy molds. Anything that s hard plastic should work really well. I found a really nice candy mold that had all these shells and sea stars, and things like that, and I thought that was really nice for bath bombs. Oh, that s perfect. You could give someone a gift with different shapes. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah absolutely. Okay, that s fantastic. Well, Stephanie, I think that those 2 recipes are a really great place to start, and then we re also going to have, in the show notes, a complete how-to on how to make a basic lip balm recipe, which will be great. I just wanted to, in closing, ask you, what would you recommend, if someone is wanting to just dive into making these natural recipes, what would be your biggest
piece of advice for really being prepared, and diving into it full force? Stephanie: Well, for me, having just the essentials on hand takes away the barrier of being able to make the recipes. The recipes are so easy to make, so having basics like essential oils, unscented castile soap, olive oil which I infuse with calendula and chamomile, and I keep a big Mason jar of that on hand, beeswax, cocoa butter, and then herbs from my garden. Having all those things on hand means that at the drop of a hat I can make gentle cleansers, healing salve, moisturizers, lip balm, there s so many things that you can make when needed, and you ll never have to run up to the store and get things to cleanse your body. I've just recently put up a whole bunch of new recipes, because I m finding that I can use the existing recipes for different things. Having these ingredients around gives you an opportunity to play with them a little bit as well. Yeah, and it s very safe, it s very safe to play around with these, everything is very natural. You can even customize some of these too, maybe you want to use a particular essential oil fragrance, maybe you re more into lavender then something else, and so I think that is really nice, that we can play and feel safe, and you have so many fantastic recipes that we can test and try out for ourselves. I think that people will realize just how easy this is, it s even easier than cooking up something in your kitchen, it s so fast, and they re so good. Stephanie: It s very easy. I think for people who are starting off, it s really good to stick to a recipe, because you ll have the highest success rate, and then you can start playing with things. I wouldn t replace one
wax for another, or one oil for another until you get a feel of how things are working. In the book I try to list options. If somebody wants to replace essential oils with different essential oils, not really going to be a problem. Fats all have different properties, waxes all have different properties, and the ways that they were put together, and the recipes are ones that I know are proven to be successful. Start with that, and then begin to play. Good advice, yes, because once you know what it s supposed to be, and what it supposed to look like, and feel like, and smell like, then you ll know, when you make any kind of change what you need to do to make it work. Stephanie: That s right. Yeah, very good. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the show, I think this will be really fun for people to want to dive in, and give it a shot. I really appreciate how generous you were with all of your information, and your recipes, and everyone s going to be able, if they go to the show notes, they re going to just be able to dive right in. Thank you very much. Stephanie: Thank you for having me, this is really fun, I had a great time, and I can t wait to hear it. If anybody has any questions about specific recipes, they re more than welcome to email me. My email address will be available as well, so I answer emails all the time. I m happy to get any questions, and give any feedback, and help walk through the process. Fantastic, thank you so much. There you go, that was my interview with Stephanie Rose of Garden Therapy. Now, remember, everything that we talked about is in the show notes for this episode, including a free, downloadable PDF, instructions, and
recipe for making a basic lip balm. Stephanie put this together for you guys, and you can go to the show notes, and download it for free. To get the show notes, just go to livinghomegrown.com/63, and everything will be right there for you, including links to Stephanie s website, and her resource guide, everything that you need to get started in natural skin care products yourself. If you are at all interested in joining the Canning Academy, or just learning a little bit more about canning food yourself, be sure to go to livinghomegrown.com/courses to sign up to get more information. I hope you enjoyed that episode, thank you so much for joining me, and until next time, just live a little bit more local, seasonal, and homegrown. Take care. Announcer: That s all for this episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. Visit livinghomegrown.com to download Theresa s free canning resource guide, and find more tips on how to live Farm fresh without the farm. Be sure to join Theresa Loe next time on the Living Homegrown podcast. {Bloopers}