Home-made body butter

In today’s post, I would like to talk about homemade natural cosmetics. I have been experimenting ever since September 2014 and I am now a devotee to couple of interesting and easy to make substitutes for store bought in products. I am not completely converted yet, as I still use make-up products but then you have to start somewhere and in my repertory of daily use of products, I now use natural soaps and shampoos, homemade antiperspirant and natural body butters. I even tried to intensify my natural hair colour with some homemade solutions. I will try to cover each of these topics in the next series of posts.

But today, I will show you how to make your own body moisturizer or body butter. Which is very simple to make and honestly a great product. For me this is it, I will never buy a body lotion/butters or other similar product from the shop. No need, this does the job soooo well and it is all 100% natural!! 

So what you need to know is the ratio. And this vary slightly from recipe to recipe but not too far. You need 70% to 75% of solid butter (e.g. shea, mango or cocoa) and 25% to 30% of liquid oil (e.g. coconut, hemp, sweet almond, olive, avocado, etc.) So for example: 1½ cup of shea butter and ½ a cup of coconut oil liquid or solid (depending on where you live, both work just fine). This was the ratio I used for my very first body butter and I can confirm, it works!! To this, I then added couple drops of vitamin E that helps to preserve it.  And this lasted me for months!

However, today, I would like to try something new and I will make two small batches rather one large. My ratio for this will be: 50% shea butter, 25% coconut oil and 25% either hemp or sweet almond oil and I will add some essential oils for scent.

I have decided to try to use the hemp oil as it is known to treat redness, cracked and dry skin. And the sweet almond oil as it is overall nourishing and it helps to soothe skin’s irritations and inflammations. I will let you know in my next post, whether there is a difference in results of the two products. But, then… you need to know, that there is no one simple solution for all. So you need to try different oils to find which one suits your needs best.

Ingredients for one small jars:

When it comes to essential oils, it is a rather personal choice. Here, I am using a lemon eucalyptus for its lovely smell, but you can also use: lavender, sweet orange, tea tree, rosemary, lemon, etc. This is where you can really personalise your cosmetics.

How to:

- But the butter and oil in a glass bowl and place it in a pan of simmering water until all is melted and combined together.

- Add either hemp or sweet almond oil. Mix well.

- Cool it down and put in a fridge until it all sets back together.

- When ready, add the vitamin E and the essential oil.

- Whisk with an electric mixer until it looks like a whipped cream.

- Transfer to a jar and enjoy!

The reason I ever started to think about natural cosmetics, was because I have a very sensitive skin prone to reactions. Whether it is due to cold weather outside or dry air inside, stress or actual reaction to chemical ingredients, I tend to get these dry itchy patches. And these are no fun to look at nor to live with. And the products bought from the pharmacy did little at best and mainly nothing at all but yet they are very expensive. So I started to read about homemade solutions and it turned out, there are many people who either have a similar skin problems or want to simply give it a go to this natural idea of products and have now as I have their life changed. There are many blogs out there and many personal journeys… so I invite you to do your own little research and who knows you might end up creating your own range of cosmetics as it happened to me. Here are few blogs that are worth exploring: Rawmazing, Wellness Mama and a Facebook group for Polish readers Kacik Kosmetyczny.