This is a long overdue blog post and I wonder why I’ve been procrastinating these pass few days from getting into that blogging mode again. I’m caught up in a whirl of things.
In my most recent iHerb haul, I decided to get ingredients to make my very own body butter after watching so many eco-conscious individuals like myself posting videos of their body butter recipe. In my head, I was like ‘so simple!’. It does seem pretty easy to make your own body creams and other bath products and all you will need is to purchase the ingredients. For the tools, you will need a blender or a mixer to whip up some rich body butter. To me, it was such a cool idea to be making your own skincare products so that you can save money, reduce waste and customised the product according to your own needs. It seems like a fantastic idea to DIY your body butter and those eco-friendly YouTubers made it looked cool. They would describe how nourishing it is for your skin and how moisturising it is for your skin. But they didn’t share with you one thing. Read on and you will find out why.
So, after doing some research on DIY body butter, I decided to invest in some good quality essential oils to make my DIY shampoos and body butter. The DIY shampoos I’ve made with coconut milk and Dr Bronner’s soap failed terribly. So I didn’t try it ever since but I might want to try it again, perhaps with Aloe Vera instead of coconut milk. So for most body butter recipes, a common essential oil used is lavender or sweet orange. They are supposedly nourishing and moisturising for the skin and scalp. And for DIY shampoos, the recipe would often include peppermint, rosemary and lavender. So I just thought that it would be great to purchase some of these common versatile essential oils. I decided to go for Aura Cacia since it was highly recommended and the essential oils are quite potent as compared to the cheaper ones by Now Foods. That explains why I am finally owning my own collection of essential oils in my drawer. I would definitely love to buy more once I study a little more about aromatherapy and the uses of essential oils. But one thing for sure, I’ve learnt from an experienced aromatherapist that species of the plant essential oils matter and that also explains why some essentials oils are cheaper while others are expensive. Even different species of the same plant can have different benefits as well. There’s really more for me to learn at time point but I will take things one step at a time.
DIY Body Butter Recipe
Ingredients
Cocoa Butter
Coconut oil
Apricot oil
Shea nut oil
Jojoba oil
Lavandin essential oil
Sweet orange essential oil
Tools
Hand mixer
Steps
1. Melt the cocoa butter under low heat using a warm bath.
( Some actually use microwave to heat up the butter but I prefer to just use the warm bath method to melt it)
2. Then add about 1 tablespoon of each oil into the mixture and mixed with a spoon.
3. Cool it in the fridge about 10 minutes until it is semi-solid.
3. Whip it up with a hand mixer and soon enough, it will start to froth up and look exactly like whipped cream. This step takes about 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Once it has reached to that creamy consistency that you like, scoop all the product into a recycled glass container.
Yes! It’s like making buttercream icing for your cupcake.
Note: I simply worked with what I have at home. Most recipes used a combination of shea butter and cocoa butter together with vitamin E or almond oil. But as for me, I just used whatever oils I already have at home and it just worked fine. However, if I were to make my own body butter again, I would have added shea butter and less of cocoa butter because of the strong cocoa smell. The scent was pleasant but I just didn’t like my skin to smell like chocolate every day for some reason.
To find out more about these ingredients which I bought on iHerb, click here.
This pure cocoa butter by NOW® Solutions is pretty affordable on iHerb. The chocolate scent is pretty strong for this one so I wouldn’t recommend adding too much of this unless you’re a serious chocolate lover. Cocoa butter is also quite difficult to work with as it is pretty solid at room temperature and I literally have to scrape the product with a fork just to get some product out of the tub.
I got this small bottle of shea nut oil on iHerb as well as it is on sale and since I thought that I might as well give it a try since I hardly heard of it. Most of us have come across shea butter but shea nut oil? Nah. It smells really nutty and felt very oily when touched. So I recommend adding just a small amount of shea nut oil into the mixture.
If you don’t wish to add other oils, you can just stick to jojoba and coconut oil. I find these oils more soluble and it absorbs easily into the skin. However, since the coconut oil is also rather thick, I would recommend just go easy on this one as well. Do you know that Ayam Brand produces Organic virgin coconut oil too? They don’t just produce sardines and tuna.
My Verdict:
Since this DIY body butter doesn’t contain any stabiliser preservatives, it doesn’t last very long and it breaks down over time especially under heat and sunlight. Thus, I only make them in really small batches. It is enough to last me for about a week or so depending on how often you use it. The product could only last up to about 2 weeks or so before it starts to liquefy and bubbles appear.
The body butter felt good on the skin but it is somewhat quite oily so I only use in small amounts. But I guess the advantages of making such DIY body butter outweigh the disadvantages if you are talking about sustainability. It could also save you lots of money. And if you think about it, the time you spend on shopping for body butter and selecting which product you like actually amounts to the time you spend to make your own body butter. There isn’t much of a difference if you think about it. It’s also one of the ways to go zero waste by creating your own skincare products by recycling glass jars. A new product bought from the drugstore might come with excess packaging but when you make your own, trees are saved and less waste is produced as a result.
Would I make this again? Yes, I most definitely would try again but the next time I would try to tweak the formula to make it less oily so that I wouldn’t be staining my own bedsheets with the oil sitting on my skin.
I might start the zero waste challenge real soon but for the time being, I am starting to get more conscious of how much waste I’ve been producing each day. If you’re also concern about the environment and want to do your part to support this green initiative, you could participate in the upcoming Income Eco Run 2017 as a Zero waste runner with me! You can use the promo code XXDEENISEXX to enjoy $20 off all race fees.
See you there!
