Super Easy Hard Lotion Bars

Posted by Common Sense Homesteading (commonsensehome.com)

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These have been wonderful for my winter dry skin. I used to coat my hands at night with petroleum jelly, because it was the only thing that helped with the dryness. Normal lotion didn’t help much at all, plus I don’t like the fragrance of most lotions, and many have questionable ingredients. Since I do a lot of dishes and wash my hands frequently, these bars have been a godsend. No more dry skin for me! My only regret is that I didn’t try them sooner, since they are so easy to make. The smell is light and pleasant, and they absorb fairly quickly.
Most homemade lotion recipes involve quite a few ingredients, blenders and more mess than I’d prefer to clean up. In contrast, all you need for these these bars is three ingredients, one pot, and molds – that’s it!
I used a recipe from Jo’s Health Corner, a site that I highly recommend. Jo has tons of neat ideas for natural health products.

Hard Lotion Bar Recipe

Ingredients
1 part each

• Cocoa butter or shea butter
• Oil
• Beeswax

Melt all ingredients together, pour in molds, let set until hard, unmold, and you’re done!
I used plantain infused olive oil, almond oil would probably work nicely as well. I made one batch with cocoa butter and one with shea butter, just to compare. For the wax, I used granules from Frontier, but will probably switch to some sort of unrefined beeswax in the future because it is more therapeutic.
Here’s a shot of all the ingredients as they begin to melt. In this batch, I used two ounces by weight or volume of each ingredient. I weighed the wax and cocoa butter, and used a liquid measure for the oil.

When everything has melted completely, pour the liquid into molds of your choice. I had molds available that I used for melt and pour soap making. You could also use muffin tins or some other small container. 6 ounces of product filled two molds completely and one partial mold.

After several hours, the lotion will be firm and hard and should release easily from the mold.

My mold set has a lot of fun shapes. I’m rather fond of the basic oval bars, but the boys like the stars and moons better. I bought these years ago at a local craft store, but there are some super cute molds available now like this fish, frog and turtle mold.

Shea Butter Lotion Bars

Both the shea butter and cocoa butter work well for moisturizing. I find the shea butter bars to be a little tackier and take longer to absorb into the skin. They also smell a bit “planty”, not bad, just not as good (to me) as the cocoa butter.

Cocoa Butter Hard Lotion Bar

The cocoa butter bars smell good enough to eat! My younger son loved the smell so much I caught him rubbing the bar all over himself after he got out of the shower – even in his armpits. I had been using the bars as a lip balm, too…oops… The next time I made a batch, I poured some into smaller containers to use as lip balm, and made my son his own special bar.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. This one’s a keeper in our house! Please pass the post along if you find it helpful, and leave a comment if you have any questions or ideas.
Update: – You can find these ingredients (and containers and molds) at Mountain Rose Herbs (link below), amazon.com (linked within the post), soaperschoice.com, and many other sites around the web. I do have affiliate accounts with Mountain Rose and Amazon, so I get a small payment if you purchase from either through the links below. Keep in mind that two ounces of each ingredient made three bars, so a bulk purchase would make a LOT of bars.