Monday, February 8, 2010

My first take on making my own body butter

Let me start by saying it didn't turn out to be a butter. :) More like a buttery body emulsion. :)
I always try to find new body products that make my skin more soft and less dry (and hopefully help I never ever get another stretch mark). So, some time ago I found this great Croatian site that has a really good collection of essential oils (I was trying to find some oils to learn the smell of some of perfume ingredients). Anyway, they have also a good selection of individual butters and plant oils - for Croatian readers, you can find more here.
I ordered before summer some shea butter, sesame oil and some essential oils. I planned on using the butter and oil during summer due to their properties but when it's hot outside, I realized I don't like anything that leaves a fatty residue on my skin.
These days it is very cold outside and I need something strong for my skin and I came up with the idea to liquefy the shea butter since it's solid at room temperature and put some sesame oil in it so it would be more easy to apply. While checking my essential oils to see what am I going to put in for smell, I found some 30ml of marigold oil so I took that as well.
And once the shea butter melted, I put the marigold oil in and some sesame oil and in the end clove leave essential oil. Poured it into plastic holders with caps and put them outside to cool. at first I thought I put too much clove because the smell was strong while the butter was liquid but once it cooled off, the smell was just right. But as soon as I put them at room temperature, it lost the butter strong consistency and somewhat melted into a buttery emulsion. :) But, it feels wonderful on my skin and is absorbed much faster than one other real butter I have which is quite greasy and tends to rub off on my pjs.
You can guess where I'm going with this. :) I plan on buying more raw materials and using them for my own concoctions. This time I won't put that much oil into butter to make it more easy to apply - I think I put almost half of the shea butter weight in oil and that was too much.
I'll let you know if next time I get a real body butter. :)

6 comments:

  1. Wow! This is pretty cool. I've always thought about making my own lotions.

    A friend's aunt did the same thing - she made body lotions to give to people as presents and everyone loved them so much that they started paying her for them and now she's got quite a profitable little business going.

    Let us know how the next batch goes. x

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  2. This IS pretty cool-- I wish I could smell it!! I love the idea of putting sesame oil on your skin- so fragrant and sensuous. Keep us posted.

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  3. Thank you Beautiful Things. :)
    It's definitely fun to try and create something for yourself. I will definitely experiment more with different ingredients and essential oils.

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  4. LCN, once I get the hang of this (if I get to that point), I'll be definitely sharing my creations with people who are interested. I just have to get some practice (and make the butter solid not liquid). He,he

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  5. Nice! I never had the patience to look into making my own skin care products... I guess I was also always afraid to end up with someting I would have to throw away! lol! but I love the idea of DIY body butter!

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  6. BeatyTalk, the way I see it, with a body product and using all natural ingredients (but not too many), chances for a mistake are not that big. :) Small steps and the mistakes might only be small (like not getting a butter but a butter emulsion). ;)

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