How to Make Body Butter with Essential Oils

With the holiday season approaching, we’re creating a list of the things we’d love to receive the most. Glowing healthy skin has got to be right up there, and for really dry skin, especially in winter, butter is a luxurious gift that keeps giving. There aren’t many secrets to how to make body butter with essential oils; mix nut butter, carrier, and essential oils to make a dreamy dermatological treat.

There are two kinds of body butter, one that is water-based and one that is oil-based. The oil-based butter is commonly referred to as ‘whipped.’ A fluffy textured, thick cream is used for drier skin areas when you want extra nourishment and protection. This is what we will be focusing on and making here.

What is Whipped Body Butter

Water-based body butter tends to be made of water-based cream with added hydrosols and maybe, Aloe Vera and herbal extracts. They tend to be thinner, not as unctuous and sumptuous as the oil-based, whipped body butter.

‘Whipped’ body butter has specific characteristics and ingredients that differentiate it from other butter kinds. It will have the following:

    • A gorgeous cosmetic butter - like Cocoa, Mango, or Shea Butter.
    • Light, but nourishing carrier oils - like Jojoba or Grapeseed.
    • Pure and Fragrant Essential Oils or Herbal Extracts.

It brings to life the vision of someone standing in their kitchen, literally whipping the oil and butter together in a bowl…. Like they were making a cake, and in truth, it is not much more difficult than that.

Being lighter on water and heavier on oils and butter, you can avoid the need for an added preservative to keep your product as pure as possible if you so desire. You choose for yourself if you wish to add a preservative.

Also Read: How to Make Perfume with Essential Oils

What are The Benefits of Whipped Body Butter?

When using one of these delicious oil-based whipped body butter, you get a deeply intensive nourishing effect as it effortlessly melts into your skin to moisturize and soothe. This, in turn, reduces wrinkles and can prevent stretch marks from developing.

Your skin will be better hydrated overall, creating a protective layer, which means it can hold on to the hydration it already has—prolonging the protection to your skin from drying out.

Because of the fabulous ingredients used, it is nutrient-dense, and you are utilizing that nutrition to feed and nourish your skin with all the vitamins and antioxidants they contain.

It has a profound soothing effect that can be used to reduce the effects of skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and rashes and to cool the heat experienced by sunburn.

You can use whipped body butter anywhere on your body; save those intimate bits.

Also Read: How to Make Night Cream with Essential Oils

How to Make Body Butter with Essential Oils

Ingredients

    • 5 Oz (142g) of butter(s)
    • 2.5 Oz (71g) liquid carrier oils
    • Extra 0.25 Oz (7g) of extra oils in case a softer texture is needed.
    • 1% preservative of choice - following manufacturers' guidelines.
    • 45 drops of essential oils (1% dilution rate).

Equipment

    1. Handheld food mixer or whisk.
    2. Kitchen scales
    3. Double Boiler
    4. Non-reactive bowl or measuring jug
    5. Spoons
    6. Glass jars with tight-fitting lids
    7. 2-3 4 Oz jars.

Method

    1. Read when you need to add your preservative according to the manufacturer's instructions and note when you need to do that, so you do not forget to add it.
    2. Using the scales, weigh the butter and place it into the double boiler.
    3. Measure/weigh the carrier oils and add them to the double boiler.
    4. Place the double boiler over low to medium heat and watch carefully as the butter melts completely; you do not want it to get too hot.
    5. Remove from the heat, pour into the bowl or measuring jug, and allow to cool slightly.
    6. Place in the refrigerator for 45 minutes or until it turns opaque.
    7. You want the mixture to be relatively solid but not so hard that you cannot do anything with it.
    8. Beat the mix with your handheld mixer for a couple of minutes.
    9. This is the point to add your essential oils carefully; follow the safety data, please, guys.
    10. Continue beating with the handheld mixer and whip your product to a delightfully fluffy texture.
    11. Does it seem a bit stiff still? Add another heaped tsp of oil; if you feel you need more oil, add one heaped tsp at a time. Remember, as it settles, it will thicken slightly more.
    12. Using a spatula to help you scrape every last glorious morsel from the bowl, fill your jars and secure the lids firmly when the product is fully cooled.
    13. Just do a quick visual check after 24 hours to ensure they have not sunk back too much and the texture has remained the same.

Also Read: How to Make Face Serum with Essential Oils

Here is My Favorite Homemade Body Butter Recipe

5 Oz of butter made up of

    • 1 Oz of Cocoa Butter
    • 3 Oz of mango Butter
    • 1 Oz of Shea Butter (refined has a better scent profile and is less overwhelming).

Altogether this should weigh 5 Oz or 142 grams.

2.5 Oz (71g) liquid carrier oils made up of:

0.5 Oz each of

If you struggle to find one or do not have them in stock, swap them out for grapeseed or rice bran oil instead. Keep to nice light oils and avoid heavier oils like Olive, Avocado, or Wheat Germ.

Extra 0.25 Oz (7g) of extra oils in case a softer texture is needed.

1% preservative - follow manufacturers' guidelines.

45 drops of essential oils (1% dilution rate).

SL No: Essential Oils and Absolutes Safety Data Level
For A Healthy Adult
Drops
1 Geranium Oil (Pelargonium Graveolens) 3% 10
2 Bulgarian Lavender Oil (Lavandula Angustifolia) 3% 10
3 Clary Sage Oil (Salvia Sclarea) 3% 8
4 Sweet Fennel Oil (Foeniculum Vulgare) 2.5% 7
5 Ginger Root Oil (Zingiber Officinale) 3% 5
6 Vetiver Oil (Vetiveria Zizanoides) 3% 5

How to “Whip” Your Homemade Body Butter

You can use a variety of whisks when you are learning how to make body butter with essential oils. Still, the thing to remember here is this:

The more powerful the whisk, the more air will be introduced to the product and potentiality, which will dissipate over time and cause the butter to shrink and sink back into the jar.

Stand mixers are very powerful, and while they make light work of the mixing, they could introduce too much air into the final mix. Therefore, it is not my mixing tool of choice.

Handheld electric whisks and immersion blenders give a wonderful light and fluffy mixture, but they will certainly experience some shrinkage. This is fine if you are making butter just for yourself, but not so much if you plan to sell them.

Therefore, an important consideration here is how much shrinkage you might get and how you can mitigate that. Use heavier or firmer butter; alternatively, use a ratio of more butter and a little less oil for a stiffer texture that will experience far less air loss.

A good stiff hand whisk is as good as anything, but it does require plenty of elbow grease and some dedication to your work. With this method, the final product will likely hold on to the air introduced, and you will experience far less shrinkage.

So…to your tools of choice!

Also Read: How to Make Facial Toner with Essential Oils

What is the Shelf Life & How to Store Homemade Body Butter?

You will want to store your whipped body butter in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Ideally, I prefer dark glass jars that stop the light from getting to your oils and butter, helping them to last longer. You have made the glorious butter; at least squeeze every last ounce of goodness from it by storing it right.

Store them in a cool, dark place with an ambient temperature.

Use a spoon or spatula to remove the product from the jars to stop any contamination from your hands that may spoil it.

Because these oil-based whipped body butter does not contain water or water-based ingredients, they are unlikely to go off, spoil or grow mold. However, they will only last as long as butter and oils.

If it suddenly stops smelling so fragrant and smells like old oil, your butter or oil has gone rancid, and it will be time to discard and make a new batch.

It is best to use them up within 6-9 months.

Remember, though, because they are ‘whipped,’ they will lose some of their volumes and sink a little; you can re-whip it and bring it back.

You must remember that if you make a batch to either keep for yourself or give as gifts, they will sink, so make them as close to giving as possible and store them somewhere cool.

Important Questions

Advantages of Making Your Body Butter

You may ask what the advantages of making your body butter are. There is a long list of very good reasons, but we shall focus on these few for the moment.

Chemical-Laden

Many commercial preparations are laden with chemicals and chemically derived ingredients. When you look at our list of ingredients, everything is plant-based; you can even choose a plant-based preservative. There is no need for any chemicals here.

In a world that is increasingly conscious about what they put on their skin and where it came from? How sustainable are this practice and product? Did the people who work to gather and process it get paid a fair wage? 

Many commercial products contain poorly sourced butter and oils, and they cannot, or will not, provide the provenance of the ingredients within. That should ring alarm bells to you. 

Making your body butter allows you to ask and answer those important and relevant questions to your satisfaction. If a company cannot provide you with provenance, perhaps it is time to find one that can.

Essential Oil or Fragrance?

Ingredients need careful reading, especially regarding what has been used to scent the butter. It may say ‘Rose and Pure Essential Oils’ on the lid, but is it rose essential oil?

Rose is often adulterated or simply a fragrance, and because another essential oil is added, they can claim it has essential oils. Misleading right?

It is hard to ascertain what is real and what is not from that dizzying list of ingredients. Always look for the Latin names of the oils themselves to indicate that they contain a natural product.

By making your body butter, you control what essential oils go into your product. While you could use fragrances, you get none of the additional effects essential oils will have on your skin and their mood-enhancing abilities.

Mass Produced

Much commercial body butter is mass made, with thousands rolling off the conveyor straight into packing boxes. What consistency and care have gone into those products?

You have control over that care and attention by making your body butter with essential oils. A part of you goes into every jar. Certainly, when I buy handmade products, I like that someone lovingly made this for me.

Can I Recycle My Pot?

I found recently, flipping over pots in the store and looking at the recycling codes of the plastic used for these kinds of pots, that a huge array of these products are in pots that are very difficult to recycle. This is not something I want to buy into anymore.

When creating my products, it was as important what vessel the product went into…as what ingredients went into it. Why make a beautiful organic product and then put it into a pot that cannot be recycled easily?

For the most part, I chose glass where possible. Almost endlessly recyclable. I will also refill my cleaned and sterilized glass jars when making products myself. One particular jar I have perhaps been using for 15 years. It has had a new lid a few times, though.

Please make sure that you consider the sustainability and recyclability of your pots as much as you do the ingredients that go into them.

Palm Oils and Parabens

There has been such a demand for palm oil because our supermarket products are simply bursting with it. This has led to deforestation in parts of the world where habitat loss is seriously impacting indigenous species like Orangutans’.

The World Wildlife Fund says in their article 8 Things to Know About Palm Oil, “There also remains some exploitation of workers and child labor.” No one wants to be putting a sublime product onto their skin at the cost of a child losing its time to play and be a child.

We need to demand better, and we can do that by refusing to buy products with palm oil. We can make our own with carefully, sustainably sourced, provenance ingredients and then feel smug as we slather it on, knowing that we are simultaneously contributing to saving the planet. Talk about multi-tasking!

Parabens are added to toiletries and cosmetic products that will break down over time; they act as a preservative to prevent this from happening. They are mostly found in rinse-off products like shampoos and conditioners, but they can also be found in many other personal care products.

There is evidence that these parabens can “disrupt hormones in the body and harm fertility and reproductive organs, affect birth outcomes, and increase the risk of cancer,” according to The Environmental Working Group.

Our care products expose us the most to parabens, and we recommend that you research these risks for yourself and avoid them where you possibly can.

What to Do If Your Body Butter is Greasy

I do not know about you, but I struggle to cope with greasy products on my skin. If you are like me but need that extra luscious nourishment for your skin from the oil, you can do a couple of things to reduce how greasy your body butter feels.

You could try adding any of the following:

    • arrowroot powder
    • tapioca starch, 
    • pure talcum powder
    • cornstarch

Because they are all quite different, it is hard to give exact measurements, but start with a teaspoon and go from there; make sure that it is thoroughly mixed through and you do not leave any clumping from the powder.

They will all have the same effect of soaking up that extra oil, but they can also leave this beautiful velvety texture behind. My favorite is cornstarch, but you will need to add some preservatives if you plan to add any of these.

Secret tip: If my face feels oily, I mix cornstarch or pure talcum powder into my liquid foundation to reduce oiliness and shine. It works every time, and it does the same thing here!

You could also try making 25% of the oil content in the recipe with fractionated coconut oil. It will help to reduce that oily feeling. 

What to Do If Your Body Butter is Melting

This question may depend on where you live in the world. If you are in a hot climate, then the answer to this might be to add a harder kind of butter like Cocoa butter. You would re-heat, being careful to avoid getting the oils and butter too hot as this could diminish the quality of all the ingredients. Add 1-2 tbsps. to start with and see how it sets.

Alternatively, you could add beeswax. Use 1 tsp for every 16 ounces. Again. Let it cool, and check the set.

If you are not contending with a hot climate, consider where you are keeping your butter; could you keep it somewhere cooler? Try putting it in the fridge, or store it somewhere much cooler and, preferably, in the dark.

If you suddenly find the opposite and your butter is too hard, tip it out into a bowl and whip in an extra tsp of oil until you get the texture and consistency you prefer.

Also Read: How to Make an After Sun Lotion

What Preservative Can I Use to Extend the Shelf Life of Homemade Body Butter?

There are a variety of preservatives that you can use to suit yourself and your budget.

Here we suggest using 1% preservative, but you must always follow the manufacturer's guidelines for the product you choose.

Pop over to Humblebee & Me for specialist advice on which preservative is most suited.

Antioxidants can help oils stop going rancid so quickly. You could add a couple of Vitamin E capsules or Rosemary antioxidants, but this will not do the same job as a preservative.

You can always consider the usage of anti-fungal/bacterial essential oils like Tea Tree to help, but again, they will not do the same job as a preservative.

When it comes to making products for myself, I choose oils to help me preserve the product. When making products for sale, I would add an organic preservative to be on the safe side.

Final Thought

You now have all you need to make your divine body butter, either for yourself or to give as a rather decadent gift over the holiday season—what better treat for winter skin than a deeply nourishing and skin-protecting butter?

We have busted all the secrets and removed all the mystery; it was almost as easy as whipping up a cake batter. So what are you waiting for? You know how to make body butter with essential oils; dive into beautiful butter and sumptuous oils. Treat yourself; you deserve it.

Also Read: How to Make Bath Bombs at Home

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