This homemade body lotion is very easy to make, soothing, regenerating, and healing for the skin with pure ingredients and ten minutes of your time. It’s less expensive than store-bought lotions, will give you a very high quality product, and makes a great gift.

With homemade body lotion you can use the best ingredients. You can use organic ingredients. Add in your favorite essential oils for fragrance or medicinal effect, or make it plain and mix in your hand whatever essential oil you want in the moment.

I usually double or triple the recipe, since it is almost no additional work to do so and you get so much more. At holiday time and I am giving it as gifts, I make a couple of quadruple batches and gave it in 12 ounce mason jars.

Time to make:              3 minutes
Time to clean up:        7 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 oz oil Many different oils are possible. Olive, grapeseed, sesame. You must make sure to use organic oil, or else you will absorb the pesticides in the oil through your skin. This applies to store bought lotions as well.
• 2 oz lanolin One of the ingredients in some lip balms, lanolin has a deep moisturizing effect on skin and hair. It seals the skin to prevent moisture from escaping and even absorbs moisture from the air. It helps rejuvenate dry skin and relieves the pain of skin cracking. Organic oils and aloe vera gel can be found in any health food store or Whole Foods, but lanolin might be harder to find. Consider buying lanolin online from Jeans Greens. The quality of their product is extremely high, and the prices are very reasonable. Apparently no such thing as organic lanolin yet exists, despite claims on amazon.com and others.
• 2 oz aloe vera gel Use this in place of water. Although aloe is 99 percent water, aloe gel also contains substances known as glycoproteins and polysaccharides. Glycoproteins speed the healing process by stopping pain and inflammation, while polysaccharides stimulate skin growth and repair. These substances may also stimulate the immune system. Add a few teaspoons to make it thinner and more lotion-y.
• Essential oil You can add any that you want, but be certain first that it will not irritate the skin. For example, lemon grass oil will irritate, but lemon oil is fine. You may want to add a particular oil for its medicinal value. You will absorb it right through your skin. Popular oils are vanilla, lavender, rose, and lemon.
• Optional: Bees’ wax is used to harden the lotion for hands and face. Not needed for body lotion. But you need to warm and soften it before blending it in – a bit more complicated.

Blending

Use a blender. Mix the oil and lanolin, then slowly add the aloe as you blend. Don’t go wild with the blending. Just bring it to a nice even texture, fully blended. I’ve noticed you can blend it to the point that it gets watery. Essential oils can be added anytime, and you can be liberal with them, since they lose their scent over time.

Storing

Pour into a glass food jar with a tight fitting lid, a mason jar, or similar. Color of the jar is not important.

Clean up

Lanolin is sticky. I know of nothing to clean out the blender better than plain old soap and water.