Category: Products & Services (Page 18 of 24)

My sister got us two sets of Creativity for Kids Make Your Own Layered Lotions, which she found at target for around $4 (the regular price was $15). I can’t imagine paying anywhere near regular price for the kit, given that at most, it’ll give your kids 15 minutes of fun.
Basically the kit comes with 4 canisters of colored, scented shimmering hand lotion (note, do not use on your face), which you put in one of two heart-shaped bottles in whichever order/pattern you want. There are also two pieces of ribbon to tie around the bottle.
Even though the concept is so easy, the lotion likes to stick to the sides of the bottle when you push it in, so you can’t really get the nice layered look that you see on the bottle. But I don’t think the kids care much. In all, they (7 and 4 yo girls) seem to enjoy making the layered lotions. And for $4 each set, I’m not sorry we bought them.

As you know, I’ve been really into soap-making with the girls lately. I’ve been also wanting to branch out into other “beauty” products, and I already made a foot and a face scrub. I also bought some Epsom salts (99c at the 99c only store) to make bath salts. But my next project is to make lotions. Mika and I already made some using lotion making kit, but in that case it only consisted of mixing a pre-made lotion base with color and fragrance – not too exciting.
Now I got a lotion making kit from Bran Berry Soap Making supplies, so I will try the real deal. The kit comes with:

8 oz. Sweet Almond Oil
8 oz. Avocado Oil
8 oz. Shea Butter
1 oz. Phenonip
1 lb. Stearic Acid
1 lb. Emulsifying Wax or Ceteryl Alcohol
12 – 4 oz. Clear Reverse Tapered Ovals w/White Caps
1 oz. Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil
1 oz. Cucumber Melon Fragrance Oil
Lotion Making Booklet

After buying it, I thought I’d have been better off just buying the individual ingredients in larger quantities, so I could make products other than lotion, but c’est la vie. This kit will make 48 oz of lotion – which is not that much in comparison to another kit I was thinking of buying – but I can’t imagine having a need for more. Indeed, I have so many store-bought (by my mother) lotions at home, that I don’t really have a personal need to make my lotion myself. But I’m hoping it’ll be fun for the girls 🙂 Now, thinking back, that other kit was probably a better value. Oh well.
Anyway, what I actually wanted to say on this post was that Branble Berry was a good company to buy from. Everything came well packaged, the recipe booklet came with general as well as specific lotion-making instructions, and, most importantly of all, the package arrived 5 days (which included a weekend), after I’d ordered it. I did pay over $11 in shipping – but the package was almost 8lbs.
I’d probably buy from them again – though this hobby is getting expensive (I bought the kit as a birthday present to myself), so I don’t anticipate doing it soon.

Update. I was wrong when I said the Bramble Berry kit would only make 48oz of lotion. I calculated that based on the fact that the kit came with 12 4-oz bottles – I thought that there would be as much lotion as bottles. Well, I was wrong. I don’t know exactly how much lotion you can make with this kit, but it’s a LOT. The real problem is getting cheap bottles/jars where to put all the lotion you can make – and finding uses for said lotion.
I’ll also report that I did order more stuff from Bramble Berry (hey, you only turn 40 once), and once again it arrived in less than a week from when I ordered it. The shipping charges are high – but I’m very happy with them.

We just came back from the 99 cents only store in Hayward. As usual, we spent too much money on crap – though I got some sunflower oil and 2 lbs epsom salts for making cosmetics. But we also found Little Pet Shop pets (including this one) for, of course, 99c. Another good bargain was the Baby Alive Diaper Bag with Diaper, Bottle, and Bib and another set (I think it was a towel or bathrobe), for, once again, 99 cents. Those things cost $10-20, so that’s a huge bargain.
Afterwards, at McFrugal’s, I got a 15 pc travel container set for $3 – most of the pieces are small round jars, better for lip balm than lotion, but at that price I can’t complain. Alas, I could only find one bag.

I wrote about the Scientific Explorer’s Spa Science Chemistry Kit before, but in this post I wanted to list the contents as they are so difficult to find anywhere else online.
They are:
4 oz baking soda
5 oz oats
10.5 oz sea salt
1 oz citric acid
.5 oz lavender essential oil
.5 oz peppermint essential oil
.5 oz dried roses
1 very small glycerin soap bar
1 small muslin bag
2 pipettes
2 plastic cups
1 test tube and cap
And, of course, the instructions.
Other than the instructions you pretty much can find everything you need to make the recipes at home, and indeed, for many of the recipes, you will need to use additional ingredients from home.
All that said, essential oils are quite expensive ($10-$20 oz), so if you consider that, the kit is not a bad deal.