Shea butter

Posted on 21st December 2008 in Green/eco-friendly, skin care

     A couple of years ago I started doing research on making my own lotion or body butter. I bought some supplies and decided that it might be an interesting way to make money if I could. That didn’t work out the way I hoped. I was doing all the work and then I had little time when working two jobs. That holiday season I gave away a lot of the shea butter I made. It made many fans.
     Years later, I make it only for family and myself. Since Rick is without job we are planning on making and hopefully selling some here or on Ebay or in my Etsy shop, TaynneeBazaar. (Please note, at this time there is no shea butter for sale there. If you would like to buy a 4 ounce glass jar of my favorite butter, handmade by myself and Rick please use the contact me page and let me know.)
I use it daily now because I can’t use store bought lotions anymore. The preservatives and other synthetic ingredients give me a bad reaction.

     What is so great about shea?

     Shea is actually karite butter from wild, not cultivated Karite trees. It grows mostly in Western Africa. In its most unrefined shea butter is toted for having great healing properties. African women have been using it for centuries for skin, medicine and cooking. Only recently has the western world been introducing shea into it’s beauty and personal care products.
It is a great “healer”. Some of the things contained in it are familiar to us, vitamin A and E and fatty acids. An unknown one is cinnamic acid, which is what helps protect against sun damage. Vitamin’s A and E allow it to be anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial, both of which are great for skin problems like eczema, psoriasis, burns, stretch marks, scars and dandruff. Those vitamins support the skin so that it can repair its self properly. The fatty acids moisturize. It has a low melting temperature and is easily absorbed by the skin. Shea butter can also increase circulation and promotes cell regeneration.
     Unrefined shea butter has a strong smell. It can be refined to remove the scent. The argument is that if you refine it then many of the healing properties will be lost. I have the refined shea butter. I have only used that so I have not opinion about the unrefined butter, other than a strong curiousity. When I run out I plan on buying unrefined to see the difference. I think the refined stuff is great, I can only imagine how wonderful the “good stuff” is.

     Eco-friendly butter:
     Another reason I love shea butter is that it supports African women. The women do most of the work to make shea butter from harvesting to producing the butter from the seeds. It has remained very independent of outside influence. It cannot be cultivated. Since it can take 50 years for a tree to mature, the women must care for and maintain the trees. It’s good for the environment to avoid mass production or cultivations. Support shea, support your earth and your fellow woman.

     My experience with the body butter that I make has been great. I love it. Though I am still young, I do have some lines and stretch marks that have decrease as I use it more. Applying it I feel like I am “feeding” my skin. Healthy skin – healthy body. Your skin secretes sebum and some wastes. Unhealthy skin is not able to do this. Thus your body will not be “breathing” properly.
Another consideration is that almost everything that what is applied to your skin will be absorbed into your body. From there it has to be filtered out of the body. The natural filters in the body are liver, kidneys, and lymph system. If the body does not identify the substance that is put into the body, such as synthetics or altered “natural” ingredients (high fructose corn syrup is an example), the liver must work over time to clean the body out. Most of the ingredients in cheap lotions are not whole or even exist in nature. Why make your liver work harder than it needs to? It already has its work cut out for it with the alcohol, meds, and bad foods that we consume. (This is not an anti-alcohol post. I love a good drink, but know what it does to my body.)
     Choose something nice for you skin. Treat it with respect, give it natural and when possible organic “food”. Look through your beauty items. Can you pronounce those ingredients? Do you know why they are there? Are they “natural”? Or even safe? Look them up – you’ll be surprised what you learn.

     What beauty products do you use on a daily basis? Could you give them up for a more natural option?

     For a request of a jar of shea butter please click through to my “Contact Me” page and send me a note! And as always thanks for stopping by!

     The following is a site I found that sells fair trade shea butter. I have not purchased from them so do some research before you buy, but it looks good so far. Let me know if you have purchased from them already or if you decide to, I would love to know. I’m getting low and will have to purchase again in the next couple of months.Pure, unrefined shea butter

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Olive oil is not just for cooking

Posted on 17th December 2008 in Green/eco-friendly, skin care



     Olive oil is not just for cooking. In spa class, we discussed the different oils that could be used as carrier oils for essential oils. Olive oil was among the other oils discussed. Out of spa class olive oil is toted for its health benefits in and on the body as well. It is high in omega 3 fatty acids, which are natural anti-inflammatory agents. Olives are also high in anti-oxidants. Recently, the beauty industry has been tapping into the ancient oil that has been used for centuries. It is very moisturizing, great for sensitive skin, I love it. I have eczema on my hands and another form on my upper arms. This more natural form of a moisturizing agent has worked very well when my poor arms were red this summer. I pulled out my bottle of the green oil when I noticed my hands were cracked on all side and getting very red a couple of days ago. And took a hot bath.
     The Olive Oil Source has a good bit of information about this little fruit.

     How to use this lovely oil:
• One version of application is in a hot bath. Pour out one or two tablespoons into a small bowl. Draw a hot bath. Apply the oil wherever you want or need it. Try to keep whatever part of your body, arm or foot, under the water. It forces the “good stuff” deeper into your skin.
• If you want add some essential oils. Be sure that the oils you use are high quality. You can get high quality oils from Samara Botane. For the blend to be more effective use an oil like rose that has great effects on skin. The heat from the water will help to force the essential oils deeper into the skin and with it will go the oil. And unlike baby oil, also known as mineral oil, unless you have an allergy this will not give you zits.
• You can of course just apply directly as a lotion. You could combine other oils with it, such as jojoba oil. Or melt shea butter or something else like it, blend together and create your own body butter.

     Consider using this oil in cooking and for skin care so you make it through the winter with fewer cracks and red spots.
     Also, on the eco side of things, if you buy organic olive oil it is better for the environment. As long as you don’t get a blended oil you won’t have to worry about poor ingredients or synthetics. Buy in a glass bottle and you won’t be using plastic.

Photo from: Visit Messinia

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Natural Skin Care – Eczema treatment, a hippy approach.

Posted on 19th July 2008 in Green/eco-friendly

Being a bit of a hippy I prefer to try natural things at home to maintain or better my skin. Most of my life after puberty has been spent fighting acne and other skin problems. I have acne on my face and neck. It’s not nearly as bad as it was several years ago. I also have something on my upper arms. I’m not sure what it is, might be a form of eczema. I’ve never been to a dermatologist for it. My mother-in-law, whom is a nurse, guessed that is what it was. I looked at her medical dictionary and it has pictures that match my arms under the “eczema” page. I did have it on my hands as a child, very badly, left my young hands looking about 10 years older than they were. They still look old and wrinkly. I used to hate it. Now I think, well I’m going to end up wrinkly anyway, my hands just have a head start.

I’m getting side tracked. So my arms used to cause me a lot of worries, I was so self-conscience about it. I think I’ve worked through it. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t try to get rid of it on occasion. I experiment with it. This was my experiment two nights ago. I took a nice hot bath and made my own salt scrub. The salt scrub consisted of the following: Epson salt, olive oil, essential oils, tea tree oil, rose gallica, cedarwood atlas, cypress, sweet orange. I’m not sure of the amount of drops other than I tried to put just one of rose, it can be overwhelming. One or two of cedar or cypress, I can never remember which one it is, but one of them is way overwhelming for me. I just need to smell it and I’ll add it later. I’m going to work on perfecting this recipe because well, the next morning my arms looked so much better. There were still bumps and scars but it wasn’t inflamed anymore and there weren’t as many bumps that I could pop. I know it’s gross but I do pop them sometimes. And yes I know that causes them to scar sometimes.

I was amazed! Two days later, my arms still look great. I’m going to write everything down and slowly eliminate ingredients one at a time, to see which ingredient(s) it is that helped so much. It might turn out to be the combination of everything. I’m so excited. I’ll write it all down and post it later.

On a side note, I do end up smelling like a garden. I’m okay with that, but if anyone else has issues with smelling like nature than it isn’t for you. Also, be careful with what essential oils you use. I am a certified aromatherapist and have done plenty of experiments on myself after double-checking for cautionary notes. I can’t remember everything and rather than burning myself I check my handy-dandy essential oil book. And before I complete this, I’ll say that most essential oils need to be mixed with carrier oil such as olive oil or jojoba oil. Some can burn or cause irritation. So do research before hand. The book I have on hand all the time is The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils by Julia Lawless, very good, very informative. There are websites where you can buy them and get information on the essential oils. But be careful, you want good quality oils. Better results come from better quality oils.

This is what I mixed up this morning and I used it in the shower, just on my arms.

Salt scrub with olive oil

1 tsp olive oil

1 drop rose gallica

4 drops orange

4 drops tea tree

2 drops cypress

1 drop cedarwood atlas

Epson salt*

*I used maybe1/8 cup of Epson salt. I’m not sure of exact measurement I just wanted enough salt to absorb all the oil. If you have too much then the oil won’t cover the salt.

So far my arms are still looking great. I might also decide to use this for a week and then take an ingredient out and try that for a week. I’ll update this later.

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