Help with a body product recipe
Hey all,
So for about six months of the year I have problems with dry and scabby nostrils (JUST what you wanted to read about tonight!! ;) ) and sometimes I put petroleum jelly up there, but I don't like to. It stinks, and, well, it's petroleum. Ew. So anyway, I have this fantastic book, Better Basics for the Home, that has a recipe for a Non-Petroleum Jelly.
Quote:
2 ounces olive oil
1/2 ounce beeswax
12 drops grapefruit seed extract
Combine the oil and beeswax in a double boiler and place over medium heat until the wax is melted. Remove from the heat, add the grapefruit seed extract, and mix with a hand or electric mixer until creamy.
Two questions for people with experience making these kinds of products:
1) I have a small block of beeswax. I presume the ounces are weight and not volume? Do I grate it? I do know I can't cut the sucker.
2) I priced the GSE and it is costly. What is the function in the recipe? I saw that the GSE in the store had the extract plus glycerin. Could I sub glycerin in the recipe, or simply omit? I read that GSE is antimicrobial. The book also mentions that it functions as a preservative. So I suppose if I omit, the mixture will simply not last as long.
My goal here is to not spend the $14 on the small bottle of GSE. Do you have any ideas or answers, or perhaps even a different (easy) recipe for a thick moisturizing cream? Thanks!