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Natural shaving cream recipe

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Natural Shaving Cream from Essential Oil Recipes

This Natural Shaving Cream is great for both men and women. It is excellent for a man’s bristly beard as well as for the softer feminine hair on legs, underarms, bikini and Brazilian. The cucumber juice will soothe the skin, while the lavender and carrot essential oils will help with any razor nicks. Overall this natural shaving cream keeps the skin nicely moisturized, leaving the skin soft and smooth.

Ingredients

* 4 tablespoons almond oil
* 2 tablespoons avocado oil
* 1 cup cocoa butter
* 1 tablespoon cucumber juice
* 3 tablespoons witch hazel
* 3 drops Carrot oil
* 6 drops Lavender oil

Method
* Make the cucumber juice using a juicer. If you don’t have a juicer, place half a peeled cucumber into a blender and mix well. Pour this into a jug through a fine sieve to remove any lumps. Set aside.
* Melt the cocoa butter in a glass pyrex jug placed into a small pan of simmering water.
* Once the cocoa butter has melted, remove from the heat and mix in the almond and avocado oils and the witch hazel.
* Stir this mixture well then add the cucumber juice, carrot and lavender oils and mix well again.
* Pour this mixture into a sterilized glass jar.
* Cover tightly and label the product, including the date.
* Shake the jar well before each use then stir with fingertips applying it to the skin ready for shaving.
* Please note, as this recipe contains fresh cucumber it will need to be stored in the refrigerator and should be kept no longer than 2 weeks.

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Do You Park Your Cross Stitch Thread? Try The Royal Roads Method

I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking. 

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section. 

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily. 

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right. 

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next. 

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]