Eye Make-up Remover Wipes

First, let me just say how much I love Pinterest. If you aren’t a member, please feel free to contact me and I’ll send you an invite. It seriously makes doing and planning almost any and everything easy. I find myself searching Pinterest more than Google now days if I want to know how to do or make something. Yeah, it’s that amazing.

Anyways, about a month ago I stumbled upon an awesome tutorial for making wipes. I also saw some tutorials for making eye make-up remover and kind of morphed them to my own-ish recipe. My favorite part – it’s cheap, of course! There is nothing I love more than something that used to be expensive for cheap. The fact that it’s pretty natural too helps too.

Roll of paper towls

Large sealable container (the 7 cup round container from Ziploc works)

Coconut Oil

Soap of Choice (I used tear-free baby soap, but this will probably change next batch)

2 c. Water

Cut your paper towels in half, using a sharp, non-serrated knife. It does require a little elbow grease, so you might want to delegate this to a strong boyfriend, husband, or son if you have them available. I cut it myself, it just required some effort and patience.  Place the paper towels in your container.

Measure out your 2 cups of water in a measuring cup. Add to that your (melted) coconut oil and soap. I used approximately 2 tbsp. of coconut oil and about 1/2 tbsp. of soap. So far so good, but I might experiment a little in the future. (That’s just what you wanted to hear in a recipe isn’t it.) Mix well and slowly pour over your paper towels. Then smash the container lid on (unless you have a container that actually fits the roll completely). Flip back and forth slowly a few times and let it all soak in. Open it up, pull out the cardboard center, and pull the paper towels from the center. Voila! You just saved yourself tons ‘o’ money! 

So far, so good. I do find that it requires a little bit more effort that what I was using previously, but not enough to make me go back to buying eye make-up remover. I find that gently wiping my lashes first and then the rest of my eye before washing my face works best. It does remove my water-proof mascara too.

As far as cost, gosh it’s hard to break down, but I’m going to assume it’s probably not much more than $1 for the whole container. My roll of paper towels had 154 sheets, so that’s not even a penny a wipe.

Test it out and let me know what you think! I just made some antibacterial wipes today, so I’ll share that recipe after I test it a little.

Update: I’m still on my first container, and yes, I still like them. However since posting this, I’m become more aware of the harmful chemicals in products, like the tear-free baby shampoo I used in this recipe. I haven’t quite figured out an good alternative to this. I’m trying to stick with all-natural ingredients so if you have a suggestion let me know. It’s up to you if you’d still like to use this recipe, but if you’d like an alternative, here is a recipe for a liquid version. 

Fab Euro Notecards

My sister went to Europe this fall.

She brought me back these amazing, made in Portugal, notecards for Christmas.

They are by an awesome designer called Serrote.

They are so fabulous and funky.

There are 12 in all. Four blue, four tan, and four pink.

I’m thinking we should go right.

Don’t be late!

The penguin wins, with the squirrel and quail coming in 2nd and 3rd.

Who SIM is, I don’t know.

Do you see the king of diamonds?

A lot of stories could be made up with the “items through door” card.

I couldn’t figure out what this was. Until I realized I was looking at it upside down.

If you want to purchase some Serrote products, head on over to their website. All of their items are limited print however, so no guarantees. You can see the list of retailers around the world here.

I have plans to frame these as art. So don’t be thinking you might receive one of these beauties in the mail or anything.

They make me want to get stampin’!

I love cloth!

It’s true! I do! But I’m not talking about this kind of cloth (I wish I could tell you my stash hasn’t grown since then. But them I would be telling a lie).

Nope! I’m talking about this kind of cloth!

Now I know some of you are probably stratching you heads right now, but sit tight.

That above there is my cloth pad, stash. Really, you have no idea how silly I feel posting it online, so stop blushing.

I used to be one of those people who though people who used cloth pads were the weirdest creature on earth. Why is the world would people want to use those anyways? Especially when you can buy some that you just throw away.

Boy, I had no idea what I was missing!

I have known about resusable cloth pads for years, but I never imagined I would be one to use them. But over the years, people’s rants and raves about how amazing they were wore me down, and I caved. And I haven’t looked back since.

I started out with just two, just to see how I liked them, you know. And I like them, so I bought some more. And I still liked them. So I bought some more, until I had enough of a stash to get me through a cycle with a few left over (which is 19 currently).

See the part I was worried about the most was the cleaning part. It sounded, well, kind of gross to me. But my gosh, it’s not that bad. See I just shove them in my wet bag here (attached to my hamper in case you can’t tell), and then spritz them with a little natural stain remover on wash day and toss them in with the regular wash. Woah! Easy no?

And let me just tell you, I’ve had far less problems with them than I did with disposables. No longer does the adhesive stick to places you don’t want it to and there is no smell, wet feeling, leaks, irritation, or just plain uncomfortableness. All problems I had with disposables. Oh and cramps? Gone as soon as I made the change. It’s phenomenon that many have experienced, and some research is possibly linking it with the chemicals used in disposables.

I wasn’t convinced however, until about 6 months after I started using them, when one day I was out and needed to change, but had forgot a spare cloth one. So I scrounged a disposable pad out of my purse, and good heavens, I could not wait to get home and change that thing!

Speaking of taking them with you, that’s also pretty easy. I have a little set of bags that I use for that. The one all the way to the left (green one) is my dry bag (tutorial here) for when I need to take a bunch, such as for a weekend trip or on vacation. Then when those get dirty, I toss them into my wet bag (colorful one), which is also the one I use at home. But when I need just a couple to have as a change for the day, those go into the little green and pink pouches. They snap together, back to back, and one side takes the clean, the other the dirty.

At home you can store your clean ones in whatever, as long as it’s breathable. So don’t plan on sticking them in a sealable container. Mine live in my undy drawer in the plastic basket from Wal-Mart.

Have I convinced you yet? I hope so! If not, here are a few more reasons to at least give them a try.

Did you know it takes about 500 years for disposable pads (and diapers) to break down in a landfill. Um, yuck! Why in tarnation would you want your old pad sticking around for 500 years. Plus, do you really want to know what they put in them that keeps them from breaking down? I prefer not to think about it, but they are full of plastics, bleached cotton, and chemicals. Stuff that is just plain nasty. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to keep those things away from my girly parts, thanks. And it seems to me that our throw-away society was/is trying to reinvent the wheel, with stuff that is far worse than the natural thing that works better in the first place.

Some people may also wonder about the cost, but in the end, a $5-$6 cloth pad can last you well over a decade if you take care of it. Over time you can save yourself hundreds of dollars, while saving the environment from hundreds of disposable pads that will take 500 years to break down. In my Go Green tab above (which needs to be updated badly, I know) there is a list of vendors that sell cloth pads. I’ve bought all of mind from independent sellers, who make them in there own home, with very reasonable prices. You can also make your own, and I have a huge list of tutorials and patterns in my tutorial guide.

Are you convinced now?

Really people, I wouldn’t stear you wrong. I’m not one of those earth loving hippies, but I do beleive in taking care of the Earth that God has given us to live on. I also believe in taking care of myself by carefully choosing the products that I use for my body. As a Christian, my body is a temple, and well, I don’t want to trash the temple!

I promise, this is a super simple change to make. But a change that is well worth it! That time of the month really isn’t that bad anymore!

P.S. For the tampon users out there, I would suggest doing some research on a thing called the Diva Cup. I’m not a tampon fan, and thus have not tried it, but I’ve heard lots of wonderful things about it.