YES Café – A Warm & Interesting Christmas

Here comes December! With the unpredictable weather here in Shanghai, skin care bothers us a lot in winters. Shanghai Roots & Shoots organized the YES Café – LIP Balm DIY on Dec 19th 2015!

Our topic today was to make the lip balms and the Res-Q ointment. Each of our participant could make a lip balm of almond oil and shea butter, a lip balm of coconut flavor and a Res-Q ointment.  All the types of oil were carefully selected and were surely organic so that the final products would safely protect our lips or skin.

The organizer Rebecca introduced the raw material and the dos and don’ts at the beginning. Before she handed over the detailed DIY guidelines to us, she emphasized the importance of disinfection. Then we were divided into groups to make the lip balms and ointment by ourselves!

Most of us decided to make the lip balms first. We found it difficult to weight the beeswax accurately with the provided scale because it was too light！ We finally solved it after trying several solutions – by just using a heavier container to hold the beeswax.

The rest steps went smoothly: mixing the raw materials, heat the mixture, pouring into the balm containers.

At the last step — infusion, the girls deserved a big applause for they used the glass rod and made a perfect pouring! Bravo!

Afterwards, it was the Res-Q ointment! Comparing with the balms, it was obvious that the process was the same and there was just a small difference between the ingredients. The main material of ointment is the comfrey-steeping olive oil. It is why this ointment prevents the skin away from itchy,  eczema and other discomforts.

Thus, making Res-Q ointment went smoother and faster. The only thing that impressed everybody was the smell of comfrey-steeping oil. It was not that delightful…

Finally, it came to the package decoration and equipment cleaning.  The beakers with wax were difficult to clean.  A young gentleman stood up and volunteered to make it out. One of the glass rods was broken.  Luckily, no one got hurt. Hugs to him 🙂 At the same time, the girls were fascinated by the lovely stickers for the unique decorations on their lip balms. One of the participants even tried the balm before it was solid enough to use. So moisturizing!

It was a wonderful experience to make lip balms and ointment by ourselves.   Christmas was around the corner so the DIY lip balms would be a great gift to the beloved ones.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Author: Min’yue Liu