One of my favourites is a body mousse I found on the Dish forum, one of the first recipes I tried! It has six ingredients - water, oil, emulsifier, stearic acid, glycerin, and preservative - and it feels just lovely! I did tweak it, using olive oil instead of whatever was suggested at the time, but I've kept everything else the same. Many times I've thought of using cetyl alcohol instead of stearic acid, adding an ester or two, switching out the oils, but I've never done it because the recipe is just so perfect the way it is!
This desire to get back to basics inspired the series and e-book by the same name back in the summer (click here for the back to basics round-up of links), but I haven't done it with lotions in ages! So coming up in January, I'll be posting the six ingredient challenge and I hope you'll play along! The challenge is to make a really great lotion using only six ingredients. I'm not counting water, 'cause it's necessary - but hydrosols, watery extracts, and aloe vera will count - or preservative, mainly because I don't want anyone to leave it out in the hopes of getting an extra ingredient in there. Fragrance or essential oils won't count either.
I figure this is a great way to get to know what our ingredients bring to the party, what they offer by way of skin feel, thickening power, emulsifying action, and so on. I'll set out the rules for the first post in early January, and I think this will be a very interesting experience! I'm not offering fabulous prizes or anything, but there will be a lovely feeling of satisfaction when you've made something really awesome and shared it with others!
I'm dying to do this now, but I know we're all swamped with the holidays coming!
The second thought was to challenge myself to use ingredients in a different way. My husband came up with the idea of Iron Chemist. Each week he'll go into the workshop and choose one ingredient I must use that week (with the exception of preservatives, because that wouldn't be very interesting!).
The rules? I have to make at least two, but preferably three, products using that ingredient. I'll post the ingredient at the beginning of the week, and post the recipes at the end of the week. I'd love it if you played along by making a product and sharing your recipe (and pictures, if you have them). Again, there aren't any fabulous prizes to be won, but you will get the satisfaction of challenging yourself to try something new.
I haven't really done any challenges in a while, so I figure this will be great fun! If you have any other ideas for challenges - a new product, a duplicate product, and so on (remembering that I have access to only the supplies I have!) - comment away!
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