Lotions: Body butter creams

So what makes a body butter cream different than a foot cream?

• We want the same thickness, but we're going to be adding more light oils so it's not as heavy.
• And let's change the stearic acid to cetyl alcohol so we can get something more glidy.
• And we're going to increase our butters to make it thicker and give it more stay-on-ability (I can't think of the word I want to use there...)

In the last two recipes, we chose a single oil and worked with it so you could get a sense of what the oil brought to the lotion. In this recipe, I'd like to choose a combination of oils to achieve my goals of a moisturizing body butter. I like to mix a light, medium, and thick oil together for body butters. I'm actually going to reduce the oils and increase the butters for a very thick cream. So let's use our oils at 10% in this recipe, choosing 4% light, 4% medium and 2% heavy.

Light - sunflower oil is very emollient and inexpensive. It's great for aging skin. You could use fractionated coconut oil if you want something very light or soy bean oil for a light feeling with great emolliency.

Medium - rice bran is my usual choice for a medium oil. It's got a great shelf life and it feels wonderful. Shea oil would work well here, but it is going to be greasier.

Heavy - you guessed it, olive oil. You could use avocado oil here for very dry skin.

And we're going to adjust our butters. Believe it or not, I'm going to increase them as I want something very smooth and emollient, so I'm upping our butters to 15%. I'm going to use shea here, but you can use mango or aloe or other butter of your choice.

RECIPE FOR A BODY BUTTER

WATER PHASE

60% water

2% sodium lactate or glycerin

OIL PHASE

10% oils (4% light, 4% medium, 2% heavy, or just 10% of the oil of your choice)

15% shea butter (or butter of choice)

6% emulsifier*

3% cetyl alcohol

COOL DOWN PHASE

0.5 to 1% preservative

1% fragrance or essential oil blend

**Note the increase in emulsifier...I have a total of 28% oils (oils, butter, cetyl alcohol), so I'm going to use 25% of that total amount (rounded up) so 6% would be suitable for Polawax or BTMS here.**

1. Weigh out your water phase in a heat proof container and put into a double boiler.

2. Weigh out your oil phase in a heat proof container and put into your double boiler.

3. When both containers have reached 70C, weigh out your water again, then add it to your oil container.

4. Blend with a hand mixer or stick blender for at least 3 minutes. Repeat this process as often as you would like until the temperature reaches 45C. (Again, I'm a fanatic mixing fool, so I like to mix a lot!)

5. Let cool to 45C, then add your fragrance or essential oil and preservative. Mix well with your hand mixer or stick blender, then let cool.

6. When the mixture has cooled to room temperature (a few hours), spoon into a jar and let set before using.

This is going to be a thick, emollient cream that is a little oily (way too oily for your hands!) Maybe you're not an oily person - what can you do? You can choose lighter or drier oils (like hazelnut or grapeseed - shelf life 3 months!) or you can reduce the shea butter to 10% and increase the light oils by 5%. You could use BTMS as your emulsifier, which will leave a powdery feeling behind.

Or you could add some IPM to increase absorbency and add cyclomethicone to give it a powdery after feel. If this sounds like crazy talk to you, then tune in tomorrow to learn all about other ingredients you can add to your lotions to increase glide, reduce greasiness, and increase awesomeness!