Home Made Body Butter

I love home made body products. I love buying handmade soap as well as making it. I set out recently to make Whipped Body Butter. This was my first experience within the lotion/body butter area of handmade and as always with learning new things, it was an interesting experience.

Onto some good DIY,

Ingredients,
Mango Butter 10 ounces
Sweet Almond Oil 6 ounces
Corn Starch 2 tbl
Fragrance Oil (or Essential Oil would be great) 1 tbl
I purchased all of these items at Voyageur, my local soap supply company. Check them out by clicking here.

Beautiful Mango Butter.

Sweet Almond Oil and Corn Starch.

Fragrance Oil.

Once you've got all of your ingredients measured out and ready melt the Mango Butter over a double boiler. This doesn't take long at all.

Once the butter is all melted you should have a clear liquid that looks something like this.

In a separate bowl pour in the Sweet Almond Oil. Mix in the Corn Starch and add the fragrance oil, stir it all together.

Pour the Corn Starch mixture into the melted Mango Butter.

I then took the mixture and proceeded to whip it in my KitchenAid,

...for almost an hour. Everywhere I researched said this would take 10-20 minutes. I also chilled the mixture intermittently as the whipping brought the temperature of the mixture up.

While mixing I found the spatter was really bad. I don't have a fancy spatter guard so I rigged this up out of plastic wrap,

..I feel like Martha Stewart would judge me in moments like this.

Being stubborn I then put the mixture into my blender,

..for about 40 minutes. I got some froth but it quickly died down. As a last attempt I even tried my stick blender,
...with no luck. So having killed about 3 hours of my night just trying to get this butter to whip I gave up. And poured it into these beautiful tin containers from Voyageur.

About 24 hours later the mixture has solidified. Kinda lovely in my opinion.

I made cute little labels from kraft colored paper and small twine bows.

Perhaps the lack of whipping was a happy mistake. This butter is lovely on my skin. I just scoop a small amount and warm it up with my finger tips. Almost immediately it turns into a clear oily texture but it absorbs very quickly into the skin (the Corn Starch makes it non greasy). Once the butter has soaked in my hands are silky smooth.

These little Body Butter containers make wonderful gifts, you could even make custom labels! If you know someone with really sensitive skin opt for no scent and you have a wonderful treat for their skin! I know one of these little tins is going to make its way over to a good friend of mine!

There are so many benefits from making home made body products, I can't encourage it enough. If you can try to buy local products like handmade Cold Process Soaps or even natural alternatives from the grocery store. Recently I switched my deodorant (I'm not ready to start making my own yet!) to Tom's, an all natural aluminum free alternative. Check out Tom's by clicking here. I know even with trying natural shampoos it's hard to get a good feel throughout your hair after washing. I've been using Live Clean Vegan Shampoo for several months now and I can't rave enough about them - good news is they are also available at Wal-Mart! Check them out here: http://www.live-clean.com/.

Hope you are having a great week!


P.S. I'm linking up here,