I made some small mason jars of homemade body butter as Christmas gifts this year!
A friend of mine first introduced me to the idea of making your own all-purpose lotion several months ago. I’ve since realized that the upsides of doing this are endless:
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-Just 2 to 5 (or more) ingredients–however complex you want to get
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-No unnecessary chemicals or preservatives
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-No more ridiculously expensive face lotions
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-I’ve streamlined my bath/morning life since I can use ONE lotion for face and body
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-Finally, all of the ingredients are chock full of antioxidants and have healing properties.
There are infinite variations on body butter recipes, but the rule of thumb is to use a 1 to 1 butter to oil ratio. After trying a few variations, I’ve found that Wellness Mama‘s recipe gave me the best results for a creamy body butter (note, my climate is East Coast fall and winter). Her recipe is equal parts cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut oil and sweet almond oil. Just using shea butter and coconut oil works well too, but the smell of the shea butter is pretty strong. I also tried just using cocoa butter and coconut oil but the butter turned hard and crumbly immediately. Using both shea and cocoa butter with coconut oil and sweet almond oil gave me a perfect creamy butter that stayed fluffy in the jar. The two butters also seemed to help temper each other’s strong aromas pretty well, so you get a delicious nutty chocolate smell. Lastly I added a 1/2 teaspoon of Vitamin E oil in the last stage of the mixing.
The day of our xmas get-togethers, I whipped together some fabric labels for the butters:
Amazing! This is so much better than the commercial body butters. Skin needs so much more attention during winter weather. Greetings from Vancouver 🙂 Hoping you’ll release more music and tour!