Project Pinterest: You Win Some, You Lose Some

If you have spent any time on Pinterest, you know that not all pins are created equal. I spend a lot of my Pinterest time in the "DIY & Crafts" section, searching for new ideas on sewing or crafting projects that are useful, cute/colorful/pretty/some other adjective that means visually appealing, and at least relatively simple and inexpensive to make. Some DIY/crafty ideas can go a little overboard, in my opinion. How many hand-knitted wrist warmers does one need, exactly? Correct answer = none. But sometimes a pin can seem like a good idea and when you try to replicate it you end up making something of a mess.

Enter my latest effort--homemade lip gloss.

This idea didn't come from any specific pin. I searched for "homemade lip gloss" and a bunch of results came up, many of which had this basic recipe:

1/2 cup Vaseline
1-2 packets of Crystal Light (or Kool-Aid mix, whatever)
A container to put it in

Directions: mix it all together and put it in the container.

That sounds incredibly simple, yes? Why yes, I thought, it does! Even better, I already had a small container of Vaseline that I could scoop out, mix with some Crystal Light I had, and put back in the same container. Free, woohoo!

I especially liked this idea because it used plain and simple Vaseline. I carry a little container of this around with me at all times and use it as lip gloss, constantly. I have really sensitive skin and for some reason I get chapped lips or even cracks if I wear any other kind of chapstick, lipstick, lip gloss, you name it. If I do wear some sort of colored lipstick I have to apply Vaseline first as a base. I like having a little color so the idea of having a light tint of pink/red mixed in with the stuff I already wear was appealing.

So I grabbed my ingredients and got to work.

My first sign that this was not going to end well was the difficulty I had stirring. The glob of Vaseline just wanted to hang out on the spoon the whole time, so I kept having to use my fingers to push it off but then it would get stuck to my fingers. So then when I tried cleaning it off my fingers I made a mess and ended up just cleaning it off with dry paper towels, leaving a slick residue on my hands that made stirring a slippery and frustrating task.

I emptied one packet of drink mix into the bowl and stirred. Hmm. It colored it, but it was kind of a really pale mauve color. Not the look I was going for. One more packet. Now it was still mauve, just more richly hued. It was also gritty, so I pressed the spoon into the mixture to dry to mix it better and get a smoother texture. It stuck to the spoon in between each press and what didn't stick to the spoon stuck to the side of the bowl. Now I had a mess of a bowl plus cherry stained, Vaseline covered hands.

After some more mixing I decided to try it out and see how the color looked once applied.

It felt like I was smearing sand onto my mouth. The texture was still really gritty, plus the tang of the flavor made my lips tingle. I could taste the drink mix, which wasn't bad, but definitely intense.

I checked the color out in the mirror. It wasn't awful, but then I realized that it had stained my tongue as well. I'd had to lick the colored sugar mix off my lips or I would've looked like the top of a salted margarita glass. Added bonus: my teeth were also tinged a slight red color.

I scooped the batch back into the Vaseline jar, though I'd lost a good portion of it in the stirring/cleaning debacle. Once it was back in the container, I wiped the bowl out with a dry paper towel and promptly dropped it on the floor, leaving a glob of pink Vaseline behind and rendering that tile stained and incredibly slippery. I then threw away the container of lip gloss in a fit of frustration and disgust.

Moral of this story: buy some damn lip gloss. It costs about a dollar, seriously. The money you save in drink mix, paper towels, and cleaner for your hands and kitchen can be saved and put toward another DIY project. You know, like yard for those wrist warmers.

Can't win 'em all :)



~Stacy