A revelation: homemade body care products

Some of the basic ingredients needed for most homemade bodycare products

This summer I became vegetarian, or I should more precisely say, pescatarian, mainly for environmental and health reasons. This may have had some bearing on the story I'm telling you today, however I've always been in favour of natural when it comes to body care (I don't mean armpit and leg hair let grow wild...not that much natural!). However a month or so ago, I started considering going "no-poo" (tree-hugger's jargon for No Chemical Shampoo) when a friend revealed that she was ditching chemically packed haircare products after a lice spell - apparently lice really like squeaky clean hair washed with shampoo. I researched a little, and I have to repeat myself here, but I have to praise once again Pinterest for being such an inspirational and bottomless source of inspiration. I found a very basic hair washing routine, that has been working like a treat, of one tablespoon of soda bicarbonate diluted in water to wash and one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar diluted in water to condition. That's it. If you can get over the absence of lather and perfume, this is for you...but you can add a little shine and scent by applying a tiny amount of coconut oil on the ends of your hair. My curls are back and I feel 16 again.

Next, I decided to give a go at making my own whipped body butter. This is the one homemade product I have been meaning to make for a long long time, especially since Little Monkey suffers from an annoying eczema patch that no commercial product managed to get rid of for any longer than a few days. This one has totally eliminated it in three applications. The three basic ingredients are coconut oil (which I also use a demaquillant and body cream), shea butter and sweet almond oil. All organic and relatively cheap to buy in bulk over the internet. For the recipe, I've used the one you can find on One Good Thing by Jillee, a resourceful blog full of incredible recipes for homemade beauty and house cleaning products. My only adaptation has been to put the oily mixture in the freezer for a couple of hours before whipping it, and adding Lavender essential oil to give it my favourite scent. This butter is my favourite little luxury I indulge in every day - and it doesn't make you any bigger for indulging!

The other discovery is a face cream that feels just as lovely, made with a basic oil mixture (coconut oil, Shea butter and beeswax), and some Vitamin E, chamomile infusion and jasmin essential oil. The recipe can be found on the Handmade in PA blog. Again, super simple to make, and it feels really nice on the skin. Also, you can change the infused herbs depending on your skin's needs (I used dried chamomile flowers for their calming properties and also because easily available at my local market).

But the real discovery for me has been a natural deodorant made with (guess what?) coconut oil, bicarbonate of soda (my other favourite thing in the whole world), cornflour (yes! You read well...this is to absorbe moisture), beeswax and essential oils (again, another lavender kick for me). This incredible, creamy deodorant is MORE effective than the equivalent commercial brands. I tried to do some maths to understand how much this deodorant costs, when compared to equivalent commercial brands, and I think this costed me around £1.50 per stick (I've used two empty roll-on deodorant containers). So, it is cheaper, it is more natural (even organic) and it works wonderfully, no "skunk effect" even after a whole working (and stressful) day. Buying the ingredients in bulk also helps saving. Again, the recipe can be found on One Good Thing by Jillee.

Add to this that I now clean my house with vinegar in which orange peals and cloves have been immersed for 15 days...lovely wintery smell and great results. At a fraction of the price and without nasties.

The basic ingredients for my homemade deodorant

I'm so passionate about all of this that I feel like I'm embarking in a war on corporations, chemicals and attempts to sell hot air at dear prices...and it's only started!!!

Feb13 Update:
I'm experimenting more and more on bodycare products and recently made lip balm (have a look at this, only a few ingredients for a wonderful, vaseline and other nasties-free lip balm) and solid lotion bars (check my post on them, with link to recipe - here).
I've been making lots of them to give to my friends as small presents, nicely wrapped up in brown packing paper with a ribbon, or I have sewn a sweet little pouch with oilcloth and cotton in which to put them...

March 2013 UPDATE! if you can't be bothered to make lotion bars or creams and you'd rather buy my handmade products, you can visit my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftyVirtage - if you can't find what you are looking for, please contact me and I'll try and help :)

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DIY Soap Pouch

Are you a soap lover like me?
I really can't stand slimy shower gels, and I adore that clean, antique scent a bar of soap has, especially if we are talking lavender and natural oil soaps. That scent reminds me of my grandma too! I always look for bars of soap in market stalls...BUT (and there is a BUT), soap can get a little yucky when left in a soap holder after a few uses...
I stumbled across the lovely idea of a soap pouch on Pinterest (where else?!); the original was a very simple pouch made out of towel by Whimsy Love. I love the idea because the pouch acts as your sponge as well as eliminating soap-related mess in the bathroom. I added to this basic idea a couple of elements.

I've also used a microfibre towel as my base material, as it dries quicker than ordinary towel and it's softer. At the bargain price of £1 at the Pound Shop (and I can make another 5 with the amount of fabric it had), it's even better!

So, I wanted to make it slightly prettier (you can see the little trim I added to the edge of the pocket), and more practical, so I added a loop to be able to hang the pouch in the shower (=easier to dry + no yucky mess).
If you want to do the same, remember to add first the trimming to the edge of the pouch your are going to see, then the loop (I've used herringbone tape for a strong loop that doesn't lose shape when hung wet with the added weight of the soap bar), then sew the raw edges, as illustrated below.

Now you can turn the pouch inside out, place your soap bar in, and enjoy your soft soapy moment!

Sorry for the fake soap, it was past midnight, I couldn't find a new bar in the whole house, and I certainly didn't want to take a snap of the used one I had in the shower! 

Orange blossoms: hand-painted tablecloth

I knew immediately what I wanted to offer my long time friend Cristian, when he announced he was going to get married soon...I knew how much he loves cooking and entertaining friends at home and how much he would have appreciated a hand-made present from me. Tablecloth it was.

He and his wife Francesca are talented architects (I was once one of them - but not so talented...), so they designed their own home's refurbishment. I noticed on the pictures they sent when they completed the works, a beautiful flowery theme above the kitchen table...so beautiful that they used it again for their wedding invitations, and so beautiful that I decided it was the perfect pattern for the present I had in mind!
So, well in advance of the wedding day (please note the well in advance) I cut a 120x120cm  square on white cotton upholstery fabric; using a dimensional orange fabric paint with a pearl finish (to give the drawing some texture) I started painting a pattern of flowers on two opposite sides of the square. The paint is really super-easy to use as it can be held like a pen. Now, the difficult part was to reproduce in scale the flowers from the pictures and the wedding invitation...it took me a while, but the result on the tablecloth is pretty similar to the original flowers.
I wanted to give a double-face function to the tablecloth, so I've used a rich, thick orange cotton for the back. I was lucky it matches quite well with the flowers on the wall.

A slight hiccup in this story were the napkins...towards the end of the project I realised I didn't have enough orange fabric to make four square napkins - or time to buy more fabric (as usual, I ran out of time, in fact I ended up asking my mum for help to sew some of it and giving this present to my friends MONTHS after their wedding...).
My husband (by now you got why I married him) came up with an idea: "Why don't you make triangular napkins? People tend to fold napkins in two anyway!". So what looks like a brilliant designer idea was in fact pure serendipity!

This is the finished result.
All credit for the beautiful pictures to Cristian, now owner of the tablecloth and happiest daddy-to-be!

This is Cristian, by the way, in a portrait I drew for his birthday, long long time ago