Making Body Butter Bars

From: http://ourgreenexperiments.blogspot.com/

I have a project that I've been meaning to do for quite a while now. I had all the supplies, I worked out my process, everything was ready to go...........then 3 months went past. In the last three months I forgot all about my project, I have so many that's not a hard task for me but when I was reading Keeper of the Home yesterday my project came back to me. YES!

This idea originally came to me after my soon-to-be-husband fell in love with the Buffy Body Butter Bar from Lush. He didn't care so much about the exfoliation aspect, but he really enjoyed being able to moisturize in the shower. I was really happy that he enjoyed Lush's product (I like stuff from Lush, I figured it would be easier for me to get away with buying stuff from there), but they are $12 each. That was a cost that I couldn't stomach to pay all the time (and I didn't particularly care for the scent either). I found this great informative youtube video on how Lush makes its body butter bar and knew I could do it at home myself.

Body Butter Bars

You'll Need
Mold (I used a silicone cupcake tin)
Double boiler of some sort
Shea Butter
Coconut Oil
Beeswax

1) Determine how much weight your mold can hold. I did this by placing my mold on my kitchen scale, hitting tare, and pour water in to the desired fullness. If you're using something like a cupcake tin, or something with multiple cavities you can just fill one and then multiply by the number of cavities. My cavities held 2 oz of water, so I needed a total of 24 oz of oils.

2) Measure oils. I decided that I would use equal parts of beeswax, shea butter and coconut oil, so I measure out 8 oz of each.

**NOTE: When buying beeswax, it's probably better to buy the pastilles or 1 oz blocks. I bought the 1 lb blocks because they were cheaper (I regret that decision). It took me 10 minutes to figure out how I was going to break down that block of beeswax. I ended up just breaking it into pieces with a hammer.**


3) Melt oils. You can do this step however you feel comfortable. Options include in the microwave, crockpot or using some sort of double boiler. My double boiler was actually a steaming pot that I set a 4 cup, glass Pyrex measuring cup in (it made for easy pouring).

I did find that the oils melted faster if I put the lid on. Also the beeswax takes the longest to melt so you might want to put that on the bottom.

This is what everything looks like when it's melted. Those little bits on top are beeswax that didn't fully melt. (Don't worry about them)

4) Pour melted oil into mold.

5) Put mold in freezer. My bars were completely cooled in 33 minutes. (I know because that's exactly how long I was exercising)

6) Remove from mold and enjoy! After taking my bars out the mold, I wrapped the ones I didn't intend to use right away in wax paper and put them in the freezer. The one I'm currently using is in a metal tin in my bedroom.

That's it. It's super easy and doesn't require a lot of work. I guess the real question is economical is this?

7 lbs coconut oil: $17.95
5 lbs shea butter: $50.85
5 lbs beeswax: $52.60

7 lbs = 112 oz

5 lbs = 80 oz

17.95 / 112 = $0.16/oz coconut oil

50.85 / 80 = $0.64/oz shea butter

52.60 / 80 = $0.66/oz beeswax

($0.16 x 8) + ($0.64 x 8) + ($0.66 x 8) = $11.68 for 12 body butter bars

OR 

$0.97 per bar

Not to toot my own horn but I don't think anyone could deny that this wasn't a successful experiment. Up next I'm going to be making stick deodorant. I just have to find some of those little tubes first. 

Until next time, 

Kellan