Homemade Gifts…Soap, Lotion and Lip Balm

This past Christmas, my daughter Courtney wanted to make homemade gifts for family and friends. She searched for ideas and came up with homemade soaps, lotion and lip balm. She started from scratch buying all the supplies needed, mostly online, but some at craft stores. She had an assembly line for each item and before she knew it, she had a ton of little gift bags of homemade goodies.

I didn't have time over the holidays to put this post together, but I thought it would be a great idea to post it now, because the red theme for the wrappings would be perfect for Valentine's Day gifts!!

Here are the things she made…

• oatmeal soap and some had crushed candy canes for the Christmas theme
• lip balm in the container and a tube. You can add any flavor and it's great!
• and the best hand/body lotion ever! I love this stuff.

Come on in for some of the details…

She had to start from scratch and invest in a few things.

This is a soap making mold.

Essential oils for the lip balm and soap. She bought vanilla and peppermint.

Containers…She bought the tubes for the lip balm, but did pour some of the extra into containers. They have so many types on the web.

Plastic gift bags and twine I already had.

Cute washi tape!!

For the soap, you will buy the soap base, melt it, add oil and then pour it into the mold. You can top it with your fun ingredients, like oatmeal for texture when washing your hands!

I just love the way this soap looks.

So cute all wrapped up.

The lip balm and lotion are also easy to make.

The lotion recipe is…

Equal Parts

• Baby Lotion ( she used honey oatmeal to keep the lotion a white color. Regular baby lotion is pink, but would be cute for Valentine's Day)
• Vitamin E Cream
• Coconut Oil ( found in the baking aisle)

Just whip it all together with a mixer until light and fluffy. Spoon into containers.

If you are putting the lotion into smaller bottles, I would spoon it into a plastic food storage bag, cut off one corner and pipe the lotion in the bottle.

Measuring example...If you use the 4 ounce jar of vitamin E cream, empty it and then fill it to measure the other 2 ingredients. That will help with the equal parts amounts and not dirty other measuring cups.

This lotion is amazing! Not greasy at all and absorbs quickly.

The lip balm, shown below in the dish and the tube, is made with a lip safe meltable lip balm base.

There are several techniques and recipes to search online, but Courtney melted it in a pourable Pyrex bowl and added the vanilla or peppermint oil, then poured it into the containers and tubes. 

When it hardens, it's done!

 To decorate the containers, she used fun wash tape, sound in craft stores. The tape also sealed the containers.

Washi tape is a Japanese tape that has become super popular here in the states.

These are pictures of all the gifts ready to be packaged before Christmas.

It was such a nice gift bag filled with oatmeal and candy cane soap, vanilla and peppermint lip balm and the lotion!

The main site where Courtney bought most of her supplies was Bramble Berry. I don't have an affiliation with this company, I just wanted to share with you that she had a great experience with them. Great site for info.

Hope this was a little inspiration for future gift making for you!

Thanks for stopping by,
~Karen~