DIY Homemade Sugar Wax – My Failures and Successes
This week I discovered sugar waxing or “sugaring.” Apparently this has been around for some time now but I ran into it while scrolling through Pintrest (of course). There are salons that do sugar waxing but there are also ways to make it yourself (why spend a ton of money to get waxed by someone else when you can do it yourself for less than $2?). I never liked the thought of waxing, but when I learned that the hair would not grow back for up to 4 weeks I wanted to try it right away! Plus, this has no harsh chemicals in it. It’s all natural, baby! This project was not as easy as I thought it would be, but here is what I came up with it!
My goal for this was to make a soft wax. The difference between soft wax and hard wax is that you need to use cotton strips (I cut up a shirt) to rip soft wax off your skin. Hard wax is hard enough that you just apply it, and rip off the wax without any strips. I wanted to use the soft wax becuase it seemed like people had more success with that than the hard wax. I also have very thin leg hair (sorry for the image) so I figured soft wax would work best for me!
Recipe for Soft Wax:
1 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of lemon (or lime) juice
1/4 cup water
First, combine the sugar, lemon juice, and water in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture on medium-high until bubbly.
After about 10 minutes it will start to turn an amber color (not light yellow!). This is what you want! Take it off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes to make sure it is the color you want.
Pour it into a jar and let it cool for about an hour or two. When you are checking to see if it is cook enough, be very careful. This stuff gets REALLY hot… trust me. I know.
As you can see below, the wax was hard enough that I could take it out and play with it. This is the consistency of a hard wax. I tried it out on my legs and it just did not work out. It was so hard that it just slipped all over my leg and didn’t stick very much. I tried it on a small patch on my arm and it worked a little bit, but it did not work like I hoped it would. So I tried it again!
Note: When applying to your legs, apply it upward (in the opposite direction of your hair growth) and rip downward (in the direction of your hair growth). Sugar waxing is a little different than normal waxing but the plus side is that it does not rip off any skin, just the hair!
After making a second batch it came out the same way. Too thick! After it cooled it got super hard to the point where it would just slide all over my leg when I tried to smooth it on. It wouldn’t stick and when it did, it barely pulled out any hair. Ya’ll better believe I was about to give up by this point by my husband kept pushing me to try again (he really just wanted my legs to be smooth for 2 – 4 weeks).
After looking up what my problem might be, many people said I might be cooking it too long. Others said to let it cool for a few hours and then microwave it at 15 second intervals to see if it gets softer. I was hoping I didn’t have to make another batch becuase I spent all day long cooking the sugar, then cleaning it up, then dumping it, and cleaning up some more, then making more and repeating the whole process (I broke some nails trying to chip this stuff out of the glass jar! As a side note… just let it set in some water for awhile and the sugar will melt). I only made two batches at this point and was ready to just give up! But my husbands voice kept ringing in my ears so I let it cool for a few hours till it was rock hard them microwaved it a few times, applied it, annnd… It didn’t work. So I tried the hard wax recipe.
Recipe for the Hard Wax:
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water
Just like the soft wax, let this mixture boil until it turns a golden brown then let it cool.
To make a long story short, I made four batches (3 of “soft” and one of hard). None of them worked on my legs… BUT I tried the soft wax out on my husbands arm (poor guy) and it worked liked a charm. I also used the soft wax on my eyebrows and it worked wonderfully! So I came to the conclusion that my leg hair is too thin or was just too short. I didn’t exactly like the idea to wait for my hair to get to 1/2 and inch long, so I just gave up and shaved. I am happy that I can use it on my eyebrows though!
Don’t give up just becuase it didn’t work for me! A lot of people have great success with this. If you try this out please let me know how you did!
