I’m having a hard time deciding what it is I love most about these perfect body butter bars. Is it how they melt perfectly on contact with my skin and absorb quickly? Is it their amazing, delicious scent, which comes entirely from the butters and oils they’re made from? Is it that you just need three ingredients and maybe 10 minutes to make them? Perhaps I’ll never be able to decide, but suffice it to say, there’s something in these bars for everybody to love.
I can’t quite remember who first introduced me to the idea of making my own DIY Egyptian Magic. It may have been Meredith, it could have been a reader. It seems my memory isn’t that great on this one. Anyhow, it was a great idea. As with many of the more natural products out there, I was floored by the cost, especially considering the ingredients, which are all pretty easy to get. So, in the midst of an extreme dry spell, I whipped up a batch of my own, and it’s fantastic.
Every year around this time The Body Shop releases their seasonal line of cranberry inspired body products. I say “inspired” because they don’t seem to have much in common with the little red berry other than the colour. I used to love the lip gloss, but once I started making all my own lip glosses and balms, I realized its overly sweet and sticky, with a rather sickly artificial fragrance. So, this year I thought I’d make my own cranberry lip balm.
This peppermint cocoa lip balm was just supposed to be a peppermint lip balm, but my cocoa butter (USA / Canada) had more ambitious plans. It is a beautiful, fragrant cocoa butter (USA / Canada), and in the end I got a lip balm that smells like a delicious little Girl Guide cookie. It glides on like a dream, and smells utterly delicious.
The cocoa butter (USA / Canada) from New Directions Aromatics is easily the most fragrant cocoa butter (USA / Canada) I’ve ever worked with, and it is just divine. Its delicious, chocolately scent is strong enough to come out in concentrations as low as 15%, and I am just in love. That’s where this delicious naked lip balm comes in—it’s perfect if you’re fragrance sensitive, but between the warm, honey fragrance of the beeswax, the summery perfume of virgin coconut oil (USA / Canada), and the delicious cocoa scent, this lip balm smells subtly (yet distinctly) delicious.
One of the questions I am asked the most is along the lines of “I don’t have ingredient X, can I use ingredient Y or Z instead, or just leave it out?”. Sometimes the answer is a quick yes, and sometimes it’s a complicated no. So, I put together this guide to help you understand the different roles different carrier oils play in different formulations. That way you can start to understand how things work and make easy and successful substitutions! In this entry I’ll be talking about plant-derived carrier oils and butters—the basic building blocks of many skincare formulations.
Make it Up: The Essential Guide to DIY Makeup and Skin Care is now available at booksellers all over the world!
