Live Stream Lip Balm

Hey everyone!

If you're curious how I make my lip balm, check out the Live Video Tutorial that I'll be doing tonight at 7PM! You can download their app (in the App Store only) to watch :-)

If you miss it, or you're an Android user like me, you can usually also catch it on their blog: Boxtiq Blog. It won't be posted right at 7 (because we'll still be recording!) but it should be up within a few days.

Don't feel like you have to crazily take notes from the video, because I have all of the instructions written here: Lip Balm Tutorial

Enjoy!

Coconut Vanilla Lip Balm with Beeswax and Honey

Here is the Coconut Vanilla Lip Balm recipe that I showed at Maker Faire!

This is a great base lip balm to get started with. The coconut and honey are moisturizers, and if you use unscented coconut oil, it is easy to add your own unique lip balm scent!

Ingredients

• 1/2 Ounce Beeswax. Pearls will melt the fastest, but you can also use bricks.
• 3 Tablespoons Coconut Oil or any other Carrier Oil you wish.
• 1 Teaspoon Honey
• 1/4 Teaspoon Organic Vanilla Extract**

* Coconut oil can be substituted for most other oils: sunflower oil, olive oil, or almond oil. I like the coconut oil the best because the result is very moisturizing.

** Vanilla extract is a very fool-proof scent (along with the scented coconut oil). To use a different scent, use an unscented coconut oil and remove the vanilla extract. Instead, add 3-5 drops of essential oil. USE CAUTION WHEN ADDING ESSENTIAL OILS - please research the side effects of essential oils prior to adding them to your lip balm. Some essential oils may cause sun or skin sensitivity.

Equipment

• Saucepan for boiling water. I use a 8" saucepan.
• Metal mixing bowl, preferably an older one that you don't care about or one from the dollar store. The bowl should be able to rest on the rim of the pot without touching the bottom.
• Whisk, again preferably an older one that you don't care about or one from the dollar store.
• 10 Lip Balm Tubes
• 1 or 2 Pipettes - you can avoid using these if you use lip balm pots instead of tubes. It's tricky to pour lip balm into the tubes, the pipettes make it cleaner.

Storage & Shelf Life

This lip balm will last for over a year - or at least that is the longest that I've had one so far. Usually I use them much more quickly than that :)

Make it!

1. Fill your pot with with about 1" of water. Heat it to just below a simmer, this is very low heat. The water should be producing steam. Place the bowl on top of the pot to create a double boiler. This will gently heat your ingredients. 
   
2. Place the wax in the bowl and melt it completely before adding additional ingredients.
   
3. Add the carrier oil. Since the oil is cool, it may solidify some of the wax temporarily. Whisk the mixture to dissolve the ingredients to a liquid again.
4. Add the honey and remove the bowl from the heat. 
   
5. Now is a good time to set up your lip balm tubes. Remove the caps and place 10 lip balm tubes upright near your bowl of melted ingredients. 
   
6. Now go back to your bowl and mix. The liquid should slowly start to cool until it is creamy. Allowing the liquid to cool like this will help keep your honey in suspension. If the liquid becomes too hot, the honey will sink to the bottom of the bowl, and the bottom of your lip balm tubes. 
   
7. Add your scent, in this case, the vanilla extract. Whisk until smooth.
8. Put your bowl back onto the heat. Whisk until the liquid just barely becomes a liquid again. You want to heat the lip balm as little as possible at this point because excess heat will cause your scent to degrade.
9. Use the pipette to transfer the lip balm into the tubes. If the liquid is too cool, it will solidify in the pipette as you try to transfer it to the tubes. This is why it is good to have a backup pipette, just in case. Fill the tubes right up to the top. It's ok if they bulge a little, the wax will shrink slightly as it cools and the surface will sink down.
   
10. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before capping, and cool for at least an hour before use. 
    
11. Now you can add on labels and enjoy :) You can find many printable labels on Amazon. I personally like the Clear Gloss Inkjet Lip Balm Labels from Online Labels the best - that way you can see how pretty the color of the beeswax is instead of covering it all up!

This is the lip balm recipe that I use for my Coconut Vanilla flavor. Check out some of my other lip balms in my new online store!

Honey Oatmeal Face Mask

Here is the Honey Oatmeal Face Mask recipe that I showed at Maker Faire!

This mask is an excellent cleanser for sensitive skin. Honey, yogurt and orange juice all have properties that will help clear skin discoloration. Oatmeal is a gentle cleanser while the citric acid in the orange juice will help tighten pores. The lactic acid found in yogurt is also a common ingredient of many facial peels, it will help remove dead skin cells to leave your face looking more radiant. Honey contributes as a moisturizer, brightener, and cleanser.

Ingredients

• 1/4 Cup Instant Oatmeal
• 2 Tablespoons Orange Juice
• 1 Tablespoon Honey
• 1 Tablespoon Yogurt

Storage & Shelf Life

I like to use this mask immediately, but it will last refrigerated for up to a week. It can also be nice to use it cold out of the fridge, it's very refreshing!

Make it!

1.  I like to use instant oatmeal for this recipe because it will hydrate more quickly. Run the oatmeal through a blender for 10-15 seconds to ensure that your mask has a smooth consistency. The oatmeal will look like more of a powder now, but it will still have a little bit of texture. Below, you can see the difference between the unprocessed oatmeal (Left) and the blended oatmeal (Right).
   
2. Now that the oatmeal is blended into a powder, this one is another easy one! Just put all of the ingredients into a bowl and stir it up until it is a consistent color and texture.
3. Wait 5 to 10 minutes for the oatmeal to fully hydrate. The texture you are looking for is a smooth wet paste. The mask is too thick if you cannot spread it smoothly on your skin and it clumps together. The mask is too thin if it drips right off - it should be able to stick to your skin without sliding off.
4. To use, apply the entire mixture to your skin, avoiding the eyes, nostrils and mouth. Leave on for 15 to 20 minutes then rinse with warm water.

Learn More

There are plenty of articles online about the health benefits of the ingredients. Here are just a few that go into more depth than I do in my post:

• Learn more about the benefits of Honey.
• Learn more about the benefits of Oatmeal.
• Learn more about the benefits of Yogurt.

Honey Sugar Scrub

Here is the Honey Sugar Scrub recipe that I'll be showing at 4:30PM today at Maker Faire!

This scrub is a great exfoliator and  mosturizer. The three ingredients in this scrub (brown sugar, coconut oil, and honey) all have mosturizing properties. Brown sugar is a fantastic exfoliator for sensitive skin because it has smaller particles than salts and other sugars.

Ingredients

• 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Coconut Oil
• 2 Tablespoons Honey

Storage & Shelf Life

This scrub should last un-refrigerated for at least 6 months. Coconut oil becomes a liquid instead of a solid above 76 degrees Fahrenheit, so it may separate from the brown sugar and honey. No problem! Just stir it back up!

Make it!

1.  This one is an easy one! Just put all of the ingredients into a bowl and stir it up until it is a consistent color and texture.
2. To use, just take a small scoop and rub it onto your skin. Rinse off the excess with warm water. I like to use it on my feet and legs - but it is gentle enough to use even on your face.

Learn More

There are plenty of articles online about the health benefits of the ingredients. Here are just a few that go into more depth than I do in my post:

• Learn more about the benefits of Brown Sugar.
• Learn more about the benefits of Coconut Oil.
• Learn more about the benefits of Honey.

Bay Area Maker Faire 2015

Bay Area Maker Faire is coming this weekend! I've been accepted to do two talks: Backyard Beekeeping and Bee Beautiful. Both talks are on Saturday, May 16th. Backyard Beekeeping starts at 1:00PM and Bee Beautiful is at 4:30PM - Come check it out!

I did the Backyard Beekeeping talk last year - it's a 30 minute primer to help people assess whether they would like to start beekeeping. It's also a great talk for just general knowledge about bees.

Bee Beautiful is a new talk for this year. I'm going to do a 30 minute live demonstration of how to make lip balm, a face mask, and a body scrub. All of them will have honey in them and the lip balm contains beeswax too :)

I'll be posting the recipes for the beauty products on Saturday if you want to try them at home.

Re:Make

Today I volunteered at the Beekeepers' Guild booth at Re:Make. It was a fantastic event filled with DIYers.

At our booth, we were providing hands-on demonstrations of how to create a Honey-Salt Body Scrub and a Honey-Oatmeal Facial Mask (thanks to a lot of hard work from Tori Muir). The demonstrations were very popular, and we were swamped the entire time. We had approximately 2000 people come through and make beauty products with us!

Brisbane Library Talk

Today I did a backyard beekeeping talk at the Brisbane Library. There were only a few students, so we were able to customize the class to be exactly what the attendees wanted :)

First Place and an Honorary Mention!

I submitted some of my lip balm and honey into the San Mateo County Fair for competition. I didn't do so bad for my first year: My lip balm won first place and my honey got an honorary mention!

The competition categories are quite small, so it's probably not the biggest achievement, but it was still pretty cool :) Here is all of the competition:

The honey is divided into several color grade categories: water white, extra white, white, extra light amber, light amber, amber, and dark amber. Each color category competes separately. Here is the grading chart (mine was in the "white" category):

San Mateo Couty Fair

The San Mateo County Fair went really well! Fellow beekeeper Brigitte organized the booth for the Beekeepers' Guild of San Mateo County this year, and it was absolutely beautiful. The focus this year was bee-friendly plants and gardening, the booth won second place out of all of the agriculture exhibits. Sanda and I manned the booth together on the first afternoon of the fair:

One of my favorite things about the guild's booth is the observation hive. The hive fits 10 frames, and has an entrance so that the bees can still forage during the day (there is a tube that goes from the bottom corner of the hive, through the wall, to the outside). Here is a group of fair goers (and myself) looking for the queen bee:

Coming Soon: San Mateo County Fair

The San Mateo County Fair is running June 7th through 15th! I'll be selling honey from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Saturday June 7th if you want to come by and see me at the Beekeepers' Guild of San Mateo booth. I've also submitted my honey and lip balm for competition. Wish me luck!

What: San Mateo County Fair - Selling Honey

Date: Saturday, June 7th

Time: 2:00PM to 5:00PM

Location: San Mateo Event Center. 1346 Saratoga Drive. San Mateo, CA 94403 ‎

Crystallization Experiment Followup

In trying to get the prettiest honey for the San Mateo County Fair this weekend, I conducted a crystallization experiment with some of my May harvest honey.

The categories were:

1. New Comb: the category that I qualified as "New Comb" was comb with bright white cappings. I believe that the bees capped this honey less than a month before harvesting.
2. Old Comb: the category that I qualified as "Old Comb" was comb with darker cappings or darker honey. There is nothing wrong with this honey, in fact, I prefer the taste of this honey, but due to the types of pollen in this honey, it tends to granulate more quickly.

Within each category, I had 3 sub-categories:

1. Normal: the "Normal" honey, I just extracted and put in the jar. That's it. This is exactly how I sell it when it is bottled.
2. Microwaved: the "Microwaved" honey, I microwaved for 30 seconds at a time until it just started to bubble at the top (approximately 180 degrees Fahrenheit). I never heat the honey I sell, but my Mum claims that microwaving my honey keeps it nice and clear. Heating it also eliminates natural enzymes and counts as "altering" the honey, which is why I never heat the honey I sold. I figure if you'd like to heat it, you can microwave it just like I did here :)
3. Frozen: the "Frozen" honey is honey that I bottled as normal, then popped in my freezer. I've heard that this reduces the likelihood that the honey will crystallize. I think this also counts as "altering" the honey, so I don't freeze my sold honey either. Again, I'm just kind of curious which of these methods might actually work.

Now, it is one month later, and here are the results:

There was no notable difference between the Old Comb and New Comb honey. However, the sub-categories did seem to make a difference.

The Normal honey has a bit of crystallization at the bottom. You can see the white flecks near the very bottom of the container, but most of the rest of the honey looked exactly as it did one month ago:

The Microwaved honey looked the best, all of it looked exactly as it did one month ago:

The Frozen honey, in my opinion, looks the worst right now. Perhaps the cloudiness is due to the bubbles not settling out of the honey, perhaps it is crystallization. This honey has been out of the freezer overnight:

The Normal and Microwaved honey have been sitting in my living room. During some of the high points over the last month, the living room has reached just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps that mild heat helped the bubbles settle out of the honey.

Though the Microwaved honey is the clear winner, I will submit the Normal honey to the San Mateo County Fair because the Normal honey is the honey that I sell.

Backyard Beekeeping Talk at the Brisbane Library

Another beekeeping talk! Come check me out at the Brisbane Library on Saturday, June 14th at 2:00PM.

What: Backyard Beekeeping Talk

Date: Saturday, June 14th

Time: 2:00PM

Location: Brisbane Library. 250 Visitacion Avenue, Brisbane, CA 94005

I'm going to be covering:

• Benefits of beekeeping: pollination, honey, wax and other products.
• Honey bee biology and behavior.
• Caring for your bees.
• Beekeeping equipment: what you need to get started.
• General time, space, and legal requirements.
• Additional resources to learn about beekeeping

Maker Faire: Backyard Beekeeping

There was an amazing turnout of over 100 people at my Backyard Beekeeping talk at Maker Faire today! 

My 25 minute presentation covered:

• Benefits of beekeeping: pollination, honey, wax and other products.

• Honey bee biology and behavior.

• Caring for your bees.

• Beekeeping equipment: what you need to get started.

• General time, space, and legal requirements.

• Additional resources to learn about beekeeping

The talk was a high level primer aimed at providing a base level of knowledge about beekeeping and multiple sources for additional information. I got an excellent response from the audience and many compliments from the Maker Faire staff! An absolutely amazing experience!

Here are a few more pics:

Maker Faire Presentation Details

Details about my Backyard Beekeeping presentation have been posted on the Maker Fair Website! Check it out: Backyard Beekeeping

My talk is at 2:30pm on Saturday, May 17th. Come check it out!

Coming Soon - Maker Faire

I just learned that my Backyard Beekeeping talk has been accepted at Maker Faire Bay Area! How exciting! I do not know whether I will be presenting on Saturday, May 17th or Sunday, May 18th, I will update later with the details.