Craftz: Stupid Lotion Bars


Nothing says “thanks for hosting my wedding shower” like a homemade lotion bar, right? I saw a blog post with the DIY “recipe” a few weeks ago and quickly ordered supplies. The ingredient list is short, the directions are simple, the pictures are flawless. Whatever could go wrong? Plenty, like:

1. Smelly beeswax
The directions call to melt coconut oil, Shea butter and beeswax together and then pour into molds. I love myself some coconut oil and Shea butter, but the beeswax I bought was off. Forget the idea of lovely, deep-honey smelling beeswax, the stuff I ordered on Amazon smells like a thick forest of semi-dead flowers.

2. A tilt-y soap mold
What could go wrong with a soap mold—this is what it’s made for! Mine came with two different shapes on one tray; lovely for variety yet awful considering the mold couldn’t balance on its own.

3. Stupid, stupid, dumb, fragile flowers
I pressed flowers a week ahead of time thinking I’d simply push them to the bottom of the mold (or top of the lotion bar) while crafting. Man, good luck with fragile-as-a-butterfly’s-eyelash pressed flowers. I had to move every flower into the mold with surgeon like precision or else every perfectly pressed petal would crumble like dust. And! If I did get them into the mold, half the time they’d rise up in the cooling process and settle hidden somewhere in the middle of bar. Le sigh.

4. Mold removal
If the uber fragrant beeswax, tilt-y soap mold and dust flowers didn’t sink my craft ship, removing the lotion bars did. I got four out successfully, the other I-refuse-to-count-failures crumbled into pieces as I gently tried to coax them out of the mold.

It’s fine… I’ll just remelt them and try again. And try again, and try agai… no, actually. I think I’m done now. Anyone need an extra pound of beeswax?

Popular posts from this blog

The Waffles ChatGPT Taught Me to Make

My kids stopped eating my go-to oat waffles. No reason why, but one day they were in, the next day they were very mas o menos or 6-7 about them (reader translation: more or less, uncertain), and the day after that a solid nope... where they have remained. Then I broke the waffle iron.  Cool! Never one to quickly learn from the most obvious mistakes, I Amazon'd a new waffle iron over and sought to find a new recipe.  I'm really not interested in crap waffles. If it's a white flour/quarter cup of sugar waffle recipe, I might as well buy Eggos, buckle my seatbelt for a hunger induced fit (from the boys OR myself) 30 min after breakfast and call it a day. But, my last recipe (which was good! Here if you want it!) got rejected. I wasn't easily finding something that still had protein and felt good, so I turned my effort to ChatGPT. Give me a kid-friendly, oat-flour, waffle recipe And oat-flour and kid-friendly... ish it is. I now have one kid (actually my more challenging ...
Read more

Cooking Out My Kitchen

Taking down holiday decorations last week snowballed into a total home clean out. I was wild. I was ruthless. I realized I’d been compulsively buying paper plates and storing them in unique corners of the basement. You know when we use paper plates? Maybe twice a year and also when I draw on 8 of them as paper plate awards for C’s soccer team. Good thing I have 3,000 of them! Clearly I need to get better at monitoring and using what I have. That big time applies to the kitchen. I’ve got a stocked pantry, yet I’m a frequent flier at our grocery store–constantly filling the gaps of what we run out of or suddenly want. For shame! This week I had a craving for homemade soup, a want for granola on my yogurt when we were out, and a need for a dinner side dish hit and I…*groundbreaking I know* used what I had. Here’s what I made, and altered, cooking out of my kitchen: Greek Fries A half bag of frozen Costco gyro meat A half bag of frozen fries Diced cucumber & red onion Fet...
Read more

Halloween 2025

...and what a year it was. Both boys were ninjas. C and his friend Theo SPRINTED through the entire neighborhood, ping ponging across the street while the Dads strolled down the middle. Their night wrapped up after two solid hours, a full pillow case of candy, and a sweaty ninja costume. They hit the entire neighborhood, a new PR, and as C proudly displayed on his watch--17K steps. Whoa.  Meanwhile the Moms took A and friend Benny out together. What started as a sprint quickly turned into a walk/run combo. The boys also PR'd, down our long street, around the full corner and cul-de-sac, and back home again. A real highlight was trick-or-treating at our own house, where Uncle E was on duty handing out candy... Trick or treat at your own house?! HILARIOUS! They loved racing to the door to help in handing out candy, too. While the boys' stamina is always new and improved year over year, so many traditions stay the same: Our family friends, former neighbors, with boys similar ages, ...
Read more