I’ve put together a number of impressions from CCCamp that I want to share.

3D Printed Stethoscope

After Tareks wonderful inspiring talk we went to the CERT (Chaos Emergency Reponse Team) and showed the 3d printed stethoscope head which I designed to the medical people there.

I was very tired as I did drive for about 8 hours before and I don’t remember much more unfortunately.

Cooking for 300 Angels

Meet Hendi, the slicing machine that I took care of in my two hour volunteer shift as angel.

I have chopped up two boxes of red cabbage, a box of cucumbers and two boxes of carrots. The ingredients were then mixed in huge boxes

Weather Baloon

I’ve done a cosmetics workshop with my wonderful friend Jaga at CCC Camp 2015.

We had about 11 or 12 participants (we planned in for 6, 10 max.) and we only had 3 scales but managed to get everyone home with a cream and a lip balm nevertheless.

I am happy to announce about that the workshop did cover our expenses completely.

Skin Cream

We did my previously tested recipe for the skin cream. I remember getting a few questions about it, which I want to answer for everybody:

Can the lavender oil be exchanged?

Yes. Leave it out, replace with one or more essential oils if you like. I personally like a light scent of lavender a lot. Some people don’t. Be experimental on what you like or not!

I’ve accidentally put too much glycerin in

The participant asking did put in 5g instead of 1,5g. This causes the cream to be sticky. I recommended to put the cream onto wet skin if you don’t want to throw it away. You can make a lotion too by adding more water

I have put in too much oils / water

The cream will be getting more runny, but it is not a big problem if you are within let’s say 10% of the desired amount

It started to get flaky after adding the water

The temperature has gotten too low. Put it into the water bath and stir until it completely liquifies.

After arriving safely back from the CCCamp am undergoing some Post-Con depresssion again. For me, the first thing is usually linked to sleep deprivation. But I have catched up on that and I am still feeling depressed a lot.

I have figured out two major points that cause my depression issues:

Life situation

I’ve been without income since March this year. While I am managing quite well with survival, my personal austerity keeps on making awesome things to learn and document to not happening. Also to mention new wardrobe items, or just spontanious trips to somwhere.

Community around me, lack of

Why was the Camp so great? The answer is simple: The people.

I came across a lot of people that were open minded, intelligent, willing to learn, willing to teach that were just excellent to each other.

I just watched the talk Building a culture of courage where Linse talks a bit about quality of human interaction and it make me think. I only know a few of those people near me who are qualifying as such.

YOU are someone’s spirit squad, so am I!

With depression I am always asking - what can I do? What can I do!? I can do so much!

Do wonderful stuff. Encourage people. Be excellent to people. Document. Teach.

I’m making this blog post for our workshop at CCC Camp 2015. I am planning to write more about cosmetics in this blog later on. You can find my recipes on github at the moment.

Why would you want to add preservatives?

Whenever you mix cosmetics that contain water, you’re creating a mixture where microorganism can live and multiply.

Isn’t it enough to work cleanly?

It is a good practice to work cleanly and desinfect your tools before using them, but you will not be able to create cosmetics completely free of microorganisms. You cannot sterilize cosmetics.

If you however do want to avoid preservatives, you can put the cosmetics in a fridge. The lower temperature makes microorganisms to grow slower. A cream may last up to a couple of weeks in there.

Preservatives overview

Parabens

The group of parabens are commonly used in commercial cosmetics. They are cheap in industrial quantities and very effective against bacteria and fungi.

Some people however do have allergic reactions to them.

Parabens are available for homemade cosmetics too via Spinnrad and Amazon