Homemade Hand Lotion using Essential Oils

In the winter my hands suffer from the lack of moisture in the air. Even living in a much more humid environment on the west coast my hands still appreciate being treated with hand lotion on a regular basis. I have made my own hand lotion in the past using an emulsifying wax.  With just a few simple ingredients I made homemade hand lotion using essential oils, which my hands really appreciate!

This time around I decided to use beeswax. instead of the emulsifying wax. We still have an ample supply of beeswax from our own bees. I only needed a very little bit (1/4 cup). I used lavender as my essential oil but you could use whatever fragrance you like. The olive oil I had on hand, the beeswax was from our bees and I use Young Living as my source for essential oils.

Why use Young Living essential oils? Young Living uses their own farms, use first distillation and they are the oldest and largest company on the market for oils. I have been very impressed by the quality of their oils.

The experiment using beeswax instead of emulsifying wax was an epic fail! I need to find another recipe for hand lotion using beeswax. The essential oil, beeswax and olive oil combined nicely to form sort of a bar, which when rubbed in your hand does moisturize your skin. However the end result was not a nice lotion which I was expecting. I will share my original recipe using the emulsifying was which did crate a beautiful thick hand lotion.

• 

• 

• 

Homemade Hand Lotion

Ingredients:

1 ¼ cup hot water
¼ cup emulsifying wax
¼ cup olive oil
15-36 drops of Young Living essential oil (depends on how strong you want the smell, I used lavender.)

Directions:

In a Pyrex measuring cup I combined the olive oil and emulsifying wax and microwaved it on high for 1 minute or until the wax is melted. The temperature is about 155 degrees.

Remove the wax – olive oil mixture from the microwave and heat up the water in another Pyrex measuring cup for one minute. While the water is heating up add the essential oil into the melted wax-olive oil mixture.

Carefully pour the hot water into the wax-olive oil mixture and watch it turn milky white. At this point the temperature is about 125 degrees. Pour the hot lotion into your jars and let it cool over night.

I was a bit skeptical that it would thicken, however the next morning the lotion was a nice thick consistency.

You could have used more essential oil but I really like the gentle fragrance of the lavender, it is not overpowering at all.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site.

For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting Nancy On The Home Front.