How to Make Homemade Body Butter for Glowing Skin
Learn how to make homemade body butter for hydrated, glowing skin. This whipped body butter recipe is super simple to make and eliminates dry skin fast.
Do you know how easy it is to make your own natural, homemade body butter? It’s crazy simple and a really fun DIY project. Plus, you get to decide what goes in your own body butter and essentially on your skin.
We’ve mentioned before that skin is the biggest organ and a lot of people say that 60 percent of skin care is absorbed right into the blood stream.
That’s a scary statistic when you think about all the harmful ingredients found in skin care products but is that really how it works? Honestly, not quite.
It’s true that our skin is the biggest organ but it’s a barrier so it essentially keeps things out of our body. While some skin care ingredients are small enough to penetrate the skin and are therefore absorbed into the blood stream, a lot of ingredients simply stay on the surface of our skin.
So, while you do need to be careful with some ingredients, not everything you put on your skin will be absorbed.
When it comes to lotion, it mostly sits on top of your skin because it’s made of ingredients that are too big to sink into your skin, like oils and butters. So, if we don’t need to worry about most of the ingredients found in lotions and body butters being absorbed into our blood stream then why should we make our own?
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Why You Should Make Your Own Natural Body Butter
Lotion creates a layer over skin that helps lock in moisture. When using natural ingredients to make your own homemade body butter you can choose ingredients that not only help lock in moisture but also reduce inflammation and improve the barrier function which means the body will do its job and keep skin hydrated.
Hydrated skin looks and feels soft and plump giving the appearance a more youthful and glowing skin. And who doesn’t want that?
Another reason to make your own whipped body butter is water. It’s the number one ingredient in most store bought lotions and it’s a big waste. Water is a way to fill up that store bought bottle of lotion with out using too many skin healthy, active ingredients. Basically, it keeps cost down for the manufacturer but it has no benefit for the buyer.
Once that watered-down lotion gets applied it starts evaporating into the air and does nothing for your skin. The best solution is to make your own moisturizer that will create a nice, healthy layer on your skin so that the body can do its job turning over new skin cells.
This body butter recipe is thick and creamy. A little goes a long way. Water is also susceptible to mold which means it needs preservatives to make it shelf-sustainable. Since homemade body is made without water it can be stored for longer periods of time with out the worry of it going bad without using preservatives.
Ingredients for Homemade Body Butter
Homemade body butter consists of two main ingredients. Butter is the first more obvious ingredient. You can use shea butter, mango butter, cocoa butter or a combination of the three.
The next ingredient is oil. There are plenty of oils you can choose from that are great for skin. Almond oil and coconut oil are the most popular but you can also use avocado oil, grapeseed oil, rosehip seed oil, jojoba oil, even olive oil to name just a few.
Choosing the right ingredients for our body butter is important. The ones we’re using today all have a purpose so let’s quickly go over them.
Shea Butter
Shea butter comes from African shea tree nuts and they are full of vitamins, antioxidants, and fatty acids. While vitamins and antioxidants are great for our skin, so are those fatty acids. They are needed to build and maintain the skins natural oil barrier which keeps skin hydrated and healthy looking.
Mango Butter
Mango butter is made by cold-pressing the contents from inside a mango seed. Just like shea butter, it’s full of antioxidants, vitamins A, E, and C, and is incredibly hydrating. It’s also great at minimizing scars and stretch marks.
You can swap mango butter for cocoa butter if you want. Unrefined cocoa butter also has beneficial properties but it does have a strong cocoa scent. Not everyone likes to smell like a chocolate bar all the time.
We have a great Winter Whipped Body Butter Recipe that uses cocoa butter and peppermint essential oils. It smells absolutely divine but it’s not my favorite for all year round. This mango body butter is my go-to for the non-winter months.
Oil
I already mentioned some great oil choices when it comes to skin benefits. You can decide on an oil based on what it does for your skin type and any problems you’re having. Today I’m using jojoba oil because it’s the closest to skin’s natural sebum and it’s suitable for all skin types.
While I do have coconut oil on hand, I chose not to use it for this body butter recipe because of its natural melting point. If it’s cold out coconut oil will harden and when it’s warm it melts easily. That can mess with the texture of your finished body butter so I prefer to use another oil.
Optional Ingredients
There are also two optional ingredients you can use in your DIY body butter. That’s why making your own body butter is so great. You get to adjust it for your own needs.
If you feel like this body butter recipe is too oily then you can add a bit of arrowroot powder, cornstarch, or a natural clay to your mix. Arrowroot powder is very fine so it mixes into the oil easily and is less grainy than cornstarch.
Essential oils can also be added for a nice scent boost and added health benefits. Some great skin-healthy choices would be lavender, frankincense, rose, geranium, ylang ylang, chamomile, or carrot seed oil.
Today, I’m using bergamot and orange to add a nice summer scent to my mango body butter. I love this citrus essential oil set because it’s full of summer scents that I use in homemade cleaning products and beauty products all summer long.
How to Make Body Butter at Home
Enough talk, let’s actually make the stuff. It really is a simple process and only takes about 20 minutes with a bit of wait time in there.
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup shea butter
- 1/4 cup mango butter
- 1/4 cup jojoba oil
- 1 teaspoon arrowroot powder – optional
- 10-15 drops of essential oil – optional
Step 1.
Chop up and measure out the shea butter and mango butter. It looks like the brick of mango butter is going to be hard to cut up but it’s not. A sharp knife goes right through.
Step 2
You need to melt the butters. I find it easiest to put the butters in my pyrex measuring cup. Then I set the measuring cup in a small pan with 1 inch of water, set it on a burner, and put on a low heat. Stir every minute or so to help things melt faster.
Remove from heat once the butters are melted and let cool for about a minute.
Step 3
While the butters are melting; mix the oil, essential oil, and arrowroot powder together. Then poor the oil mix into the butters after the cool time.
Step 4
Put the mix in the fridge to cool for at least an hour. The mixture needs to be cool or it won’t whip well. Once it’s cold you need to whip the mix using a hand or stand mixture for about 5 minutes.
It might seem like your mango body butter isn’t whipping well but I promise it will if you let it whip long enough. It should look like frosting when it’s done.
Step 5
Put your homemade body butter in a clean, dry jar and get ready for soft and hydrated skin.
This recipe is only a 3 months supply or less depending on how much you use it or if the whole family uses it. These make a great gift. You can double or triple the recipe depending on how many people you want to gift the body butter to.
How to Use Homemade Body Butter
You can use your body butter any time and put it on as much as you like. I like to slather it on after a shower when my skin has been freshly scrubbed and is all clean.
Another great time to apply it to your skin is right before bed. The body butter will give skin a hydrating layer while you sleep.
How to Store DIY Body Butter
Homemade body butter will last up to 6 months when stored properly and applied with clean hands. It’s possible to introduce bacteria into the butter when applying it with your hands and that can make it spoil faster than it should.
It’s best to store your body butter in a clean, dry jar. If you are using essential oils then the jar should be made of glass since essential oils can break down plastic.
When I’m making this body butter recipe for myself I use these small mason jars. If I’m making some to use as gifts then I use these nicer cosmetic jars.
Keep the jar of homemade body butter in a dark, cool place. I keep mine under the sink in my bathroom.
Like I said before, coconut oil will harden when it’s cold and melts when it’s warm. If you use it your body butter you’ll have to decide where to store your body butter based on the consistency you prefer. If the body butter is stored in a cupboard and it’s really hot, like in the summer months, then your body butter could lose it’s whipped consistency but if you keep it in the fridge then it can get too hard.
This is why I chose to leave coconut oil out of my homemade body butter. In the end, the body butter will still work and you can always re-whip it if you prefer.
Body Butter Recipe
I’ve given you my favorite homemade body butter recipe today but if you read everything (good job, I know it’s a lot of info and not everyone has the patience to read it all) then you know you can change this recipe up to customize things for your skin needs. This is one of the main reasons I love to make my own bath and beauty products.
Another great reason to try making your own whipped body butter is because it’s one of the best things you can do for your skin when it comes to keeping it hydrated. It’s full of healthy ingredients that will give you soft, plump, hydrated, glowing skin.
I promise you’ll love this stuff so give it a try! If you do try this homemade body butter recipe then please let us and other readers know what you think of it in the comments below.
Homemade Body Butter
Equipment
- hand or stand mixer
- measuring cups and spoons
- double boiler or pyrex measuring cup and a pan
Materials
- 1/4 cup shea butter
- 1/4 cup mango butter
- 1/4 cup oil jojoba, coconut, grapeseed, almond, etc
- 1 tap arrowroot powder or powder substitute (optional step)
- 10-15 drops essential oils (optional step)
Instructions
- Chop up and measure out the shea butter and mango butter. It looks like a the brick of mango butter is going to be hard to cut up but it’s not. A sharp knife goes right through.
- You need to melt the butters. I find it easiest to put the butters in my pyrex measuring cup. Then I set the measuring cup in a small pan with 1 inch of water, set it on a burner, and put on a low heat. Stir every minute or so to help things melt faster.Remove from heat once the butters are melted and let cool for about a minute.
- While the butters are melting; mix the oil, essential oil, and arrowroot powder together. Then poor the oil mix into the butters after the cool time.
- Put the mix in the fridge to cool for at least an hour. The mixture needs to be cool or it won’t whip well. Once it’s cold you need to whip the mix using a hand or stand mixture for about 5 minutes.
- Put your homemade body butter in a clean, dry jar and get ready for soft and hydrated skin.
