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!

Pumpkin+Bear: Beeswax Manipulatives

I've been trying to pay more attention to my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop this autumn (or is it winter now? It's 19 degrees outside, and there's snow on the ground. That's probably winter, right? But I'm still in denial, so I'm going to say it's autumn still), since my goal is to buy Matt's and the children's Christmas presents solely from my earnings, so I finally made myself get around to squatting out in the snow with my camera to prep something that the kids and I have had around forever: these beeswax alphabet and number manipulatives:

If you like to work with beeswax and you've got children the right ages for moveable alphabets and numbers, these would actually be a great choice to DIY--they're non-toxic, waterproof, absolutely perfect for tactile and sensory learning, and although they're breakable, you can simply recast the broken ones.

And when you're done with moveable alphabets and numbers (we finally are--can you believe it? Where did my little preschoolers GO?!?), you can recast the whole lot into something new rather than having to throw anything away. 

I use these silicone alphabet and number molds, and I love them. I've used them to mold in beeswax, crayon, and plaster of Paris so far. Any other ideas for a molding material? I'll do it!

My Latest: Toys and Black-Market Drugs

a tutorial for making bendy yarn (they work just like Wikki Stix!)

an essay on post-Apocalyptic drug hoarding and the concept of community

a tutorial for making toothbrush bots

and an essay on iFixit and the Right to Repair

Coming up next week, I'm thinking about homemade buttons, food art, and household repairs!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Paper Boats and Handmade Cards

a review of Uncommon Cards and the get-well-soon card that I made

and a tutorial for waterproofing origami boats using melted beeswax 

That crock pot of beeswax has been on and off all week so far, with no sign that I'll be able to sneak it away and pack it up anytime soon. But with the scent of that beeswax from the living room and the apples cooking down into applesauce in the kitchen, autumn is smelling yummy right now!

Rainbow Beeswax Stacked Heart

New in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, a stacked heart in rainbow colors:

Stacked, they make a sturdier decoration in our nature basket, but to us, they're far more entrancing separated. They girls want to make them into Valentines, but they're actually a little too difficult for them to punch out by themselves, and I am NOT going to be the one to punch out a beeswax heart for every kid at the Valentine's Day party (I'm thinking of handing them a sheet of beeswax, a sharp pencil, and an x-acto knife for freehand heart-making, so I'll let you know how that goes, with full disclosure of Band-aids used), but I will punch out a few sets for family use, and I'm already really excited about the future bunting that will be. 

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!

A Big Rainbow Candle, and Taking Photos in the Snow

Newly listed, an 8" rainbow beeswax taper candle that I designed over the break:

I normally dread etsy photo shoots, because we have just zero nice lighting in our house, and finding nice outdoor photo locations for every single thing is a pain in the butt, but Will and I took these photos on Wednesday, while Syd was spending the day at day camp (a couple of times a year I'll enroll Syd in one of those day camps that the city runs on the days that public schools are out--we call these her "mental health days," because she gets to get away from me and Willow for the day!), and I discovered that taking photographs in the snow?

Is awesome!!!

I'd been waiting to take my photos until it was a blue sky day, then I took them in the shade with the perfectly white snow as a backdrop. I could not be happier with the results:

I'm contemplating going into crafty overdrive this weekend, to see what else I can come up with to photograph before the snow starts to melt later next week.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Wrapped and Dipped

a tutorial for dipping pinecones into melted crayon, melted beeswax, and paint

and a look at the presents that I unashamedly wrapped in newspapers and brown paper bags

 

 

The girls had a good Christmas, loot-wise. After they went to bed on Christmas Eve, they heard Santa walking on the roof, along with reindeer stamping their feet and the jingling of sleigh bells--this drove Sydney into such a state of sobbing hysterics that she couldn't get to sleep for at least an hour. She wanted to run see her gifts, and she wanted to go meet Santa, and she wanted to double-check that he saw his special reindeer-shaped cookie, and she wanted to make sure that I hadn't eaten the cookie instead of Santa, and she was pretty sure that Santa was going to come back so every noise made her sit up and say, "What's THAT?!?"

That walking on the roof bit has scared the crap out of every kid in the family, which is honestly half the fun (you might have to be from Arkansas to understand that part), but the other half is in listening to the kid tell the story, for the entire coming year, of how on Christmas Eve, They. Heard. SANTA!!!

My cousin may have also wanted to poop in the yard and blame it on a reindeer, but I wouldn't let him.

My Latest over at CAGW: Beeswax Sourcing and Roller Shade Redos

a review of Knorr Beeswax's rolled beeswax sheets

and a tutorial for mending a torn roller shade with vintage and stash fabrics

I am THRILLED about how nicely my roller shade repair turned out, which makes me all the more irritated about how long I left the torn roller shade looking that ugly. 

Let's see...the weather had just turned warm for Spring, so I'd gotten into the habit of leaving the window entirely open, and Willow got this great idea about how she was going to climb out the window, using the roller shade, Rapunzel-style, to belay from...