And then I became a mom. Not just once, but nine more times.

Somewhere between frequent diaper changing and all the hand-washing that went with it, and all the meal-prep that worked my hands several times a day, my hands got worse and worse.

The pain went deep. And I experienced it daily.

At its worst, I couldn’t chop fruits and vegetables, especially anything that could bring on the sting. Like lemons. It meant I had to ask my husband to step in and do the chopping for me.  

It meant that every time I ran my hands under flowing water, I would grimace in pain. 

It meant that each hand-washing routine involved unwrapping yet another bandage to apply to the cracked skin. 

It meant that while pump lotion might bring temporary relief, I knew I would have to re-apply it the next time I washed my hands.

And then on that cold, December day, she called me up, “Have you ever heard of a bar of lotion?”

“You mean soap?” I asked. 

“No, no. Lotion. In a bar. A friend found some at a farmer’s market and gave me one. It’s working wonders for me but I’m almost out. Think you can figure out how to make it?”

Challenge accepted. 

My mom always called me Susie Homemaker because I was not only baking bread and brewing kombucha, I was also making soap. How hard could lotion be?

Turns out, lotion CAN be hard. Not hard to make… that part is easy. Lotion can be HARD, as in solid!  And it’s a fix for extremely dry, cracked skin. I’ll tell you how it works in a minute…

So with some sleuthing on the Internet, I finally found some instructions deep in a soap makers’ forum, teaching others how to make a Hard Lotion Bar. I chose the recipe with the most easily accessible ingredients found at my natural foods store. And then, I made my first lotion bar.

LOTION BARS FOR DRY SKIN: DO THEY WORK?

If I could somehow convince you that you can now toss your messy pump lotion with all its promises of dry skin relief. 

If I could look you in the eye and tell you that your Band-aids will only need to be used for minor emergencies and not daily use. 

If I could promise that your overnight cotton gloves can be used instead by your 4-year-old and her princess costume, I would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, that promise holds true if you scroll down and let me do just that. 

Your key to getting your hands back to smooth again? Apply a hard lotion bar.

Your kitchen tools are back and ready for use. And they feel GOOD.

Here’s how I got my hands smooth again:

After creating the bar, I let it rest until ready for use, which was just a couple hours, not days.

A hard lotion bar looks like soap, but it’s not. NO WATER REQUIRED. 

HOW A LOTION BAR FEELS ON THE SKIN:

It didn’t hurt, not even when I rubbed hard over the cuts and splits. After setting down the bar, I wanted to continue to rub my hands together. I made sure every little nook and cranny of my hands received the full effect of the lotion bar. 

Already, my skin felt amazing.  The cuts no longer hurt and my hands felt soft.

Done. Lotion applied. How would it affect my activities?

Other lotions and emollients couldn’t match what this hard lotion bar did. Those always left my hands feeling greasy.  I’ve since learned that they contain a lot of ingredients that aren’t good for the skin. Ingredients like petroleum. And fragrances. Even water can do more damage than good (more on that later).

With the lotion bar, I could go right back to my activities, whether it was sitting down to type a letter, sign my name to a check, or chop an apple for the kids. My skin felt GREAT.

It felt better than great. It felt SILKY SMOOTH.

Hours later it STILL felt amazing. Normally, by now, I’d have to re-apply a pump lotion. But this hard lotion bar application held up, from morning until night. 

WHAT WE LEARNED AT THE FARMER'S MARKET

That very recipe that I found deep in a soap forum on the Internet became the 3-ingredient recipe that fixed my dry skin that day in December.

Several months later, my young sons and I brought the bar to “market” - a local farmer’s market had started up in my city. Having zero experience in selling, the hard lotion bar (we affectionately named it Beesilk) sold itself. All we really had to do was provide samples to the many housewives, electricians, cattle ranchers, and school teachers in our community who had the same dry skin issues that I had. The free sample brought them back for a larger “pocket-size” bar to try out, and they would return a couple weeks later for the “full-size bar” for longer-term use. 

After a few months of testing the bar at various farmer's markets and craft shows, we were convinced that we needed to continue to get Beesilk into the hands of more people who needed it. For that, we chose to go online. 

We quickly gained the support and endorsement of many popular bloggers.