Make a Mason Jar Foaming Soap Dispenser

My tutorial was originally published here on Crafting a Green World.

Foaming soap is so much fun to use, but store-bought foaming soap often is either made from super-shady ingredients or is ridiculously expensive. 

If you've ever experienced either of those scenarios, then you are going to be STOKED at how easy it is to make your own foaming mason jar soap dispenser, and your own totally natural, totally good-for-you foaming soap to go in it. Although I prefer Mason jars for all of the foaming soap dispensers in my house (I pick antique Mason jars out of a 1950-s era dump that the former owners of my home didn't tell me was in the back of the six-acre property--good times!), this tutorial will work just as well for any glass jar whose mouth is the right size to fit a canning jar lid. Some spaghetti sauce jars, for instance, are actually really cute, and some even have the embossing to make them identical to canning jars. 

 Here's what you'll need to make your own Mason jar soap dispenser:

Supplies And Tools

• Mason jar or any jar with the correct mouth size
• Foaming soap dispenser lids. You can buy these for either a regular mouth or wide-mouth canning jar. Before these started to be made commercially, I'd buy just the foaming soap dispenser parts and hammer an opening into a canning jar lid to fit them--what a stinking pain in the butt! This is the one case in which I am THRILLED that I don't have to DIY every part of my project.
• Dr. Bronner's liquid soap. I was obsessed with peppermint for at least a decade, but now nothing will tear me away from almond.
• Water.

Directions

1. Cut the foaming soap dispenser to size. You'll need to do this if you're using a pint jar, but not if you have a quart one. Fortunately, the plastic dispenser can be cut with kitchen scissors, so all you have to do is measure the height of your jar, then mark that same distance from the top of the foaming soap dispenser's lid. Cut the excess off of the dispenser, making sure to cut at a slant.
2. Make your foaming soap. My favorite recipe is 1 part Dr. Bronner's liquid soap to 4 parts water. For a pint jar, that means that I use 1/3 cup of Dr. Bronner's and 1 1/3 cups of water. If you want to make your foaming soap even more special, here's a recipe for an antibacterial hand soap that has only one additional ingredient.
3. Attach the foaming soap dispenser lid. All you have to do is screw it on, then pump it a few times to get the soap going.

Now with your very own mason jar soap dispenser, you have no excuses not be as clean as a whistle!

Bath Bombs for the Girl Scout Cadette MEdia Journey, Plus 8 More Bath Bomb Recipes

I am not alone in not loving the Girl Scout Journeys. They're overengineered, all over the place instead of tightly themed, and there is inevitably a disconnect between the girl book and the leader book.

Nevertheless, Girl Scouts who are Juniors and above must complete one Journey before they can begin earning the Higher Award at each level, and there is a special award that a girl can earn for completing three Journeys at her level.

And guess who wants to earn that Summit Award before she Bridges to Senior in the fall?

Sigh...

The kids earned the Breathe Journey last summer, we've been slowly working our way through the MEdia Journey all school year, and this summer we're simultaneously working through the badges that represent the Outdoor Journey. Syd will end up earning the Summit Award, too, simply because she might as well if Will is already doing it.

The Cadette MEdia Journey is an awkward juxtaposition of semiotics, comparative media studies/writing, gender studies, and self-improvement seminar. For instance, girls are asked to collect and analyze ads for their portrayal of women, make a healthy, honey-sweetened strawberry lemon sorbet, and play Taboo using only female celebrities--all in the same meeting! And only that first activity actually counts towards their Journey. The rest is just filler pretending to be enrichment.

To adjust this Journey for my own kids, then, I deleted entirely the pop culture crap--pop culture isn't one of my own kids' areas of interest, and they don't know celebrities and aren't much interested in hit songs, etc. I bumped up the semiotics so that we're spending most of our time doing critical analysis of pop culture media, which actually works much better since the kids aren't invested in pop culture media. And I kept the self-care aspect, because I agree that's important for tweens and teens to learn (although we didn't make that sorbet...).

This session, then, was all about self-care! Syd has been wanting to make bath bombs, so we tied it into the MEdia Journey girl book, pages 48-49, entitled "Your Body, Your Friend." In this passage, girls are encouraged to check in with themselves and notice how they're feeling physically and emotionally, and to care for themselves the way they'd care for another. I explained the aspect of taking a bath as a kind of Self-Care Relaxing Me Time, and we made bath bombs.

We made these LUSH-inspired bath bombs, substituting Vitamin E oil for the coconut oil called for in the recipe, and using liquid watercolors instead of food coloring (you only need a very small amount, and it doesn't stain skin or the bathtub):

I had thought that the kids would work together, but each preferred to make her very own batch just the way she wanted it. I made myself a batch, too!

The recipe uses a lot of essential oil, and that's the most expensive ingredient, by far. There are some recipes that skip the essential oil, but I have a fair collection, so I let the kids choose whatever they liked:

I have one set of spherical ice cube molds, so the kids each got to make one sphere, and we put the rest into silicon molds. I tried shaping a couple by hand and setting them to dry on newspaper, but they immediately began to collapse and so I had to put them in molds, too:

Surprisingly, the bath bombs in the molds puffed up as they dried. I really like the ones that we put into the heart-shaped molds; I think they look like cupcakes!

Overall, we all preferred the look of the traditional spherical bath bombs, so if you're doing this for an entire troop, you could save money by using molds or muffin tins, but I think you should splash out on some cheap plastic bath bomb molds. The result is worth it, especially for kids who are familiar with the ridiculously expensive bath bombs that they sell in the mall.

Syd did some more experimenting (of course!) and made several more bath bombs, and each kid has enjoyed doing some self-care by taking a relaxing bath with some of her bath bombs.

Want to play with even more bath bomb recipes? Here are other ones that I want to try:

1. Syd really wanted to make bath bombs with Epsom salts, so I found this recipe for us to try soon.
2. This recipe uses cornstarch. I'm not sure why it's needed, which is why I want to try it.
3. Syd thinks that these geode bath bombs look great, but I am extremely dubious--one, about what the coconut oil will do to our drains (mainly, clog them?!?), and two, about what the lustre dust will do in the bath (mainly, sit on top of the water and cling to one's skin).
4. I LOVE the idea of hiding a small treat inside of a bath bomb. I think that this would make such a cute party favor or gift for a kid.
5. We have some of this mica pigment for Syd's slime-making hobby, so we could make these pearl bath bombs!
6. A hidden color inside a bath bomb sounds really fun, and I have activated charcoal on hand.
7. Ooh, here's another bath bomb with activated charcoal in it! I might be obsessed now.
8. I will never not love anything galaxy-themed, and I like the look of this particular galaxy bath bomb recipe the most.

Did you know that bath bombs are also excellent science? They're a terrific demonstration of an acid-base reaction that utilizes a catalyst. A few years ago, I wrote about some great acid-base chemistry experiments that the kids and I did (including the exact one that you use to make bath bombs!), and suggestions for further exploration.

P.S. Want more in-the-moment hands-on homeschooling projects? Follow my Craft Knife Facebook page!

We Made Beeswax Lip Balm for the Girl Scout Cadette Breathe Journey

I have never met any Girl Scout leader, parent, or girl who has admitted to enjoying a Girl Scout Journey. They're cheezy, oddly baby-ish in the way they speak to the girls and yet at the same time over-involved and over-complicated in what they expect from the girls, over-engineered with a LOT of filler, and really unclear on the requirements to complete them. Must a girl only do the specific steps listed for her award in the back of the Girl Book, or must they do most or all of the several more activities set out in the Leader Guide?

The only positive thing that I will say about them is that completing the Agent of Change Journey did give Syd the skills and experience that she absolutely needed to be able to plan and carry out a successful Bronze Award project. But even that Journey was an utter slog to complete, during which I had to lead a variety of pointless activities that didn't inspire me, much less the girls, AND it was at least a Journey focused on its Take Action Project. This Cadette Journey, Breathe, has bizarrely juxtaposed a theme of air with a theme of... like, personal care, kind of?.. and the TAP is both less of a focus and much more of a pain in the butt that will at some point require each girl to ask adults who the Journey hopes will be total strangers and experts in some field to join her "Air Care Team."

Stop right now and imagine a tween or young teen asking a total stranger to join her Air Care Team, while literally saying the words "Air Care Team." I really think that if a tween or young teen did that, an actual hole would open in the Earth and swallow her to save her from her embarrassment.

So, no, the girls don't love it, and neither do I, but we're doing it anyway, because they need a Cadette Journey under their belts before they can start their Silver Award projects, something that Will has about 14 months to complete. She'll need as many of those months as I can give her, so we are finishing this dang Journey this summer!

That being said, as with everything Girl Scouts, you can modify the Cadette Breathe Journey somewhat in order to fit with your own girls' interests. We'll be exchanging more sophisticated experiments for the simplistic ones detailed in the Journey (although, again, it's debatable if the science component is even required, so make your own judgment there), and our meteorology unit study intersects with it nicely, so we'll be completing that study as part of this Journey.

This particular project is a modification of the bath and beauty section of the Journey (which I am, again, not completely certain is required, but if you're going to jump through hoops, might as well jump through all of them, sigh...). The Cadette Breathe Journey as-written in the Leader Guide includes instructions for the girls to create aromatic bath bags, using dried lavender, and lotion, using rosewater and lime juice. My two girls aren't into baths and lotion, so instead we're going to create scented air and drawer fresheners (using my wool felt and essential oil air freshener tutorial here), and over the weekend we made the beeswax lip balm recipe from Beekeeper's Lab:



Will and Luna also really like the Honey Dog Treats from this book, by the way.

I made a few modifications to the beeswax lip balm recipe, some of which worked and some of which didn't, lol. Instead of using lip balm tubes, I used a stash of little containers, very similar to these containers, that I already had on hand--yay for stash-busting!

I also already had the beeswax, lanolin, and sweet almond oil on hand from other projects, so I only needed to buy the Vitamin E oil--if you know of any other recipes that use Vitamin E oil, PLEASE tell me all about them!



The recipe calls for the use of a double boiler, but I already had my crafts-only crockpot out and filled with beeswax for an upcycled beer bottle candle project that I'm working on, so my Great Idea was to have the kids measure out all the cold ingredients first--

The recipe doesn't call for essential oils, but since we were using this as a recipe for the Breathe Journey, it needed some aromatherapy components. Part of this activity, then, included discussing which essential oils were safe for the skin and how you could conduct the research to make sure. We discussed essential oils in general and some of their specific properties in an earlier session, which I'll tell you about another time.

--and then add the hot beeswax and stir them together. I'd assumed that the beeswax would melt the cold ingredients, but the cold ingredients instead chilled the beeswax, so instead of saving time, I instead spent 40 minutes with these Mason jars of lip balm mix in the oven at 170 degrees, checking on them every five minutes to see if they'd melted. I couldn't just blast them or I'd ruin the qualities of the Vitamin E and essential oils already added, GRRRRRR!!!

Finally, though, they were melted and ready to be re-stirred and poured.

Before I tell you the next story, I have to preface it with the fact that I make the children do five sit-ups or five push-ups as discipline sometimes. I do it primarily for negative self-statements--think "I can't" or "I'm not good at," etc. It's just something super quick to break the cycle of negative thinking.

Now, the story: Will, our newly-minted teenager, was being just impossible at pouring. She didn't want to wear oven mitts, but the Mason jar was too hot to hold--duh! Nor was she able to successfully just pull her T-shirt over her hand, sigh. So she consented to put on one mitt, but only on her non-dominant hand, and also the oven mitts make one's hands unwieldy, also duh, and so she really needed two.

She would almost pour, then the Mason jar would slip and she'd almost drop it on the floor, so she'd put it down and fuss and decide to try again, doing the EXACT SAME THING, almost drop it, and set it down to think again as her mixture grew in danger of starting to solidify. The little hamster was running on the little wheel inside her brain, though, just not quickly, and not pointed in quite the right direction yet, but it was persevering and so was she.

Matt, however, was losing his ever-loving mind watching this skin-crawlingly painful struggle with the seemingly obvious--seriously, I could see him going crazier by the second, witnessing this crazy overload--and all of a sudden he was all, "Here, let me do it!" and took the oven mitt off Will's hand. He had put both oven mitts on his own hands and was even holding the Mason jar over the lip balm containers before the loud gasps of both me and Syd registered with him. My girls, they KNOW what's going to piss me off.

Thanks to that gasp, I had plenty of lung power to shout across the table at Matt, "YOU ARE DISEMPOWERING YOUR DAUGHTER!!!!!" The look on his face as he came out of his "OMG get it done!" fugue and realized what he was doing--without a word, he put everything down on the table, dropped to the floor, and did five push-ups. Will barely noticed, as she went back to her labors. Syd asked if she could sit on his back while he did them.

And believe it or not, both kids successfully poured their lip balm into the tiny containers:





Each recipe filled three containers, which is perfect as it makes one to keep and two to give away. If you're doing this activity as a whole troop, I think it would be nice to keep one, set one aside for a future gift, and trade one to another Girl Scout. You could also make custom labels either with stickers or a 1" round punch and a glue stick, but since the tops of these containers are clear, the kids didn't want to cover them, and they didn't want to put the labels on the bottom, either.

My kids tend to like to have only one activity at a time, but again, if you were leading a larger troop, you could combine this project with making the air fresheners, since you'll have the essential oils out out anyway. Or maybe you don't have to do any of it, because maybe it's not even actually required by the Journey? Feel free to let me know your opinion!

P.S. Did you know I have a Craft Knife Facebook page? I post links and pics related to homeschooling, crafting, and Girl Scouts there every day, so feel free to join me!

A Recipe for Children's Perfume (and Bubble Bath!)

Syd LOOOOOOOVES to make "children's perfume":

As you can see, it's really just a combination of flavored extracts and water, with funnels and REAL little bottles--the cute little glass bottles are very important, I'm told--and labels written on (Sydney's Vanilla Cupcake Perfume, etc.).

I actually don't own a ton of extracts--basically just vanilla, peppermint, and almond--so poor Syd's perfume recipes are limited, but if your kid was super into it, or if you wanted to let kids make perfume at a party, there are actually a ton of flavors. I wouldn't say no to some homemade orange/chocolate perfume, myself.

To make bubble bath instead of perfume, Syd says that you should use soap (we use Dr. Bronner's liquid soap) instead of water to mix with the extracts. 

This particular photo is from a few months ago, so I can also tell you that this stuff lasts, as I just emptied out a bottle that I recognize from this batch a couple of days ago, in a mass commandeering of all the little bottles so that I can make more alcohol ink. 

Because in this month, when I've got 700 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in my house and am running three different cookie booths for my troop, and am creating and sewing TWO Trashion/Refashion Show garments out of patterns that I still need to make, I also absolutely need to be thinking about how to make a faux stained glass TARDIS using picture frame glass, dyed school glue, and homemade alcohol ink.

I mean, right?

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Antique Drawers and Detox Baths

a round-up of herbal recipes for kids, including a "detox" bath

a round-up of drawer projects

and a look at my own antique drawer storage system

The whole family has been fighting a nasty cold, probably originating from the kids' plane trip, all week. I actually put Syd in that detox bath that's mentioned in my first link one afternoon, hoping to relieve some of her annoying symptoms, poor kid, and she LOVED it! She spent four hours in that bath, listening to audiobooks of A to Z Mysteries, running more hot water whenever she felt cold. 

The rest of the family prefers showers, so we've been regularly steaming up the bathrooms, trying to relieve congestion. I've made soup with garlic and ginger, we've had some extra home time, and although I haven't fed it to the kids, I've happily indulged in my Pappaw's homemade recipe for cough suppressant: whiskey and honey.

I don't know if whiskey and honey actually suppresses my cough all that well, to be honest, but it does make me feel better about it!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Soap! (and a Giveaway of Soap!)

a write-up of the hand-crafted soaps of Soaps to Live by

and a giveaway!

Hop over right now and enter that giveaway, because I want you to have some nice soap as a present.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Hooded Towels and Painted Rocks

a tutorial for kid-painted rocks

and a tutorial for Syd's new monogrammed hooded towel

It's just the thing for swim class and goofing around in the YMCA pool; it's easy for her to get around herself, it's easy to keep from falling off her as she walks, and it covers more of her body than a beach towel would, so that drying off is at least a possibility (what is with kids refusing to actually DRY themselves with a towel, instead huddling, soaking wet, underneath it while griping a lot?).

Unfortunately, the hooded towel is not quite a match for the morning diving lessons that Syd's been taking this week--what is also up with this late July being so COLD?!? The other, good parents have taken to bringing multiple towels and robes, etc., for their kids, but my kids, who know full well what they *ought* to pack for themselves for the pool... well, this morning Sydney brought a bath towel, still damp from yesterday because she left it crumpled in a heap in the car, and Willow didn't bring anything, because her crumpled towel had actually been underneath Syd's crumpled towel in the car, and thus was still dripping wet.

Air-drying at 70 degrees on an overcast morning is probably good for one's immune system, yes?

I Let My Kids Wear Makeup

Despite my own hang-ups about the outward manifestations of gender, the girls both see makeup as another form of art play, and they enjoy it as much as they used to (and still sometimes do) color on themselves with markers, only, since I never bought washable markers, makeup is much easier to wash away at bedtime.

Because I don't want the kids to associate makeup with "looking pretty," it was really important to me to find makeup in full color palettes, not just what's trendy right now. Specifically, Sydney wanted blue lipstick, which I found on etsy, and blue eyeshadow, which in itself wasn't too hard to find, but I also wanted the girls to have green eyeshadow, and orange eyeshadow, and purple and pink and black eyeshadow.

I did finally find excellent color palettes for makeup for the kids. For the eyeshadow, I ended up buying a SHANY eyeshadow palette, which yes, does have blue and green and orange and purple and pink and black. It ended up in the girls' Easter baskets, and I actually used it for the fashion show, too, blending red into pink above the black and silver glitter line that Syd's makeup artist put just above her eyelashes. I also bought the girls a set of eyeliner pencils, which turned out to be really too delicate and fussy for children to use, but I don't use makeup myself, so what do I know? Add to that one blush and all the body glitter that a kid could care to make for herself, and you've got yourself a pretty thorough makeup exploration set!

Although the kids do love to do themselves up like clowns with their makeup, I was feeling at a loss for any technique or tips to provide when they asked, since not only do I not wear makeup currently, but I've also never worn it--I don't even have the tips of a twelve-year-old self to pass on! Fortunately, one of my friends who has a teenage daughter told me that her kiddo, who is great with makeup, spends tons of time watching makeup tutorial videos on Youtube.

What the what?!?

Well, let's check it out!

Seriously, how cute is that? The kiddos do seem to enjoy copying some of the simpler tutorials, and I feel like they have, without making them feel like they have to be conventional, gotten them to have just a little bit lighter of a hand with the application:

Just a little bit, mind you.

And yes, their father and I do patiently sit for makeovers:

Yes, that IS a paintbrush. Only recently have I figured out that you have to buy special makeup brushes separately.

Considering that the girls ALSO have a thing for nail polish in funky colors--

--they are quite the colorful crew these days.

Sisters

Let me try to brush either child's hair, and she will respond as if I am attempting to rip it out by the roots. Let a sister take brush in hand, however...

May their hands always be gentle towards each other.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Makeup and Hoop Skirts

a discussion of handmade makeup, inspired by these MuyLinda Collection lipsticks that I bought for the girls

and a tutorial for the hoop skirt that I made out of upcycled wire hangers

My friend Kayte already suggested a mod for this project, which is to use a pair of needle nose pliers to wrap the long wires around the hoop, instead of gluing them to it. Unfortunately, I've actually since abandoned this particular hoop as a no-go for Sydney's Trashion/Refashion Show dress, since it just didn't mesh with the flowy look that we're going for (a look SO spinny-flowy that, four seconds after trying the finished dress on Sydney, I realized that I'm going to have to use the last bit of that vintage silk sheet to make my twirly girl a pair of matching bloomers!).

So...now the kid has a hoop skirt to add to her dress-up wardrobe.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Guitar Picks and Body Glitter

a review of a punch for making DIY guitar picks

and a tutorial for making body glitter

Yes, the girls are deep into makeup play again. Syd and I are immersed in Trashion/Refashion Show design right now, which is probably what inspired it, but nonetheless, the weekend found us at the drugstore, picking out brand-new batches of eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick.

The girls still don't associate makeup with conventional gender norms (I don't wear makeup, and for the fashion show, both men and women applied it and wore it, and yesterday, on our way to our weekly volunteer gig, Willow's makeup application consisted of grey smudged all the way around her eyes like a raccoon and a stripe of red body glitter applied in a straight line between her eyes down to the tip of her nose), and my big assignment right now (along with, of course, the fashion show garment, a big bean bag order, revamping our homeschool group's membership application procedure, and other such nonsense) is to free them from conventional color norms, as well. The makeup at the drugstore all seemed to revolve around the same color palette, and we found neither the blue lipstick nor the red blush that Sydney specifically wanted. To keep the emphasis on makeup as a playful, expressive craft, it's really important to me to find a varied palette for all the basics, ideally including the rainbow colors. 

So off I go to browse the online supplies lists of cosmetology schools! With kids like these, there's no danger that I'm going to get locked into my comfort zone, that's for sure.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Homemade Lotion and Ice Blocks

a tutorial for the solid body lotion bars that I gave as Christmas gifts this year


and a tutorial for outdoor building blocks made from ice and food coloring

We've got a day filled with errands today--Sydney's currently over at the library with Matt, reading to a service dog as part of a literacy enrichment program that the library runs, and then we're all off to Goodwill (plain white dishes and a basement couch), the grocery store (whole wheat pastry flour, ginger, and broccoli, among other necessities), and a bunch of used furniture stores (since I'm probably not going to find a basement couch at Goodwill)--but a productive evening planned. Matt usually sneaks back to his office one evening a week, so that he can get actual work done without co-workers and cubicle noise to distract him, and I'll be working on next week's CAGW:

• a tutorial for the beeswax sheet cut-outs that the girls and I have been having fun making, and
• ...........

I'm sure I'll think of something!

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Wood Painting and Soap Carving

a round-up of non-toxic methods to paint and seal wooden toys

and a tutorial on setting up a soap carving activity for your kiddos