This decadent coco mango body balm is downright lovely. It smells wonderfully of citrus, sinks into the skin shockingly fast, and leaves your skin hydrated and happy. It comes to us from a recipe request from Dita Bybee, who has fallen in love with One Love’s Skin Savior. This balm boasts a list of lovely ingredients, but along with that comes a fairly shocking price tag of $68/105g.
Dita wrote to say “This product is called Skin Savior by One Love Organics. It’s a gggrrrreeeaaat moisturizer and I like that it can be used as a cleansing cream. My skin loves this stuff. Unfortunately, my wallet hates it as it has crazy price tag at $68 for 105g.” I checked out the website for the balm and it’s covered in glowing reviews, so I knew I had to make it.
This coco mango body balm is a blend of some great oils—hydrating coconut, Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada) rich soybean, antioxidant loaded mango butter (USA / Canada), moisturizing jojoba, and juicy, citrus-scented orange wax. I’ve infused these oils with some nutrient-dense chia seeds and soothing oats for some added awesome.
The oil mixture is thickened just enough beeswax, making for a balm that has some good staying powder, but isn’t sticky or greasy.
I’ve scented the body balm with a blend of 5-fold orange essential oil and benzoin. New Directions is now calling out their 5-fold essential oils as being sun safe (or more sun safe) due to the extended processing required to “fold” the oil, so that’s why I’m using it here. Don’t use a non-5-fold citrus essential oil as a substitute. Speaking of photosensitivity, the orange wax in here can be photosensitizing as well, so I don’t recommend putting this balm on before a day at the beach.
The final body balm is one of my favourite projects of late. Its warm, soft, citrussy scent is lovely, and the texture is wonderfully smooth. It sinks into the skin far faster than I expected it to, leaving hands softened and supple without any lingering greasiness. I love it, and I think you will, too.
Coco Mango Body Balm
10g | 0.35oz virgin coconut oil
10g | 0.35oz soybean oil
8g | 0.28oz mango butter (USA / Canada)
7g | 0.25oz jojoba oil (USA / Canada)
5g | 0.17oz orange wax (or substitute with 5g [0.17oz] jojoba oil (USA / Canada) and 5 extra drops of orange essential oil)½ tsp chia seeds
1 tsp oatmeal8g | 0.28oz beeswax (USA / Canada)
10 drops orange essential oil
4 blobs benzoin essential oil
2 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)Combine the coconut oil, soybean oil, mango butter (USA / Canada), jojoba oil (USA / Canada), and orange wax in a small glass measuring cup and place that cup in a small saucepan with about 3cm/1″ of barely simmering water in it to melt everything together.
Quickly blitz the oats and chia seeds in your DIY coffee grinder to break them up a bit, and transfer them to an empty tea bag. Tie off the tea bag and place the oat baggie in the oils. Let the oils infuse for about 2 hours. I did this with the water in the double boiler on a low simmer to keep things melted—if you do this, be sure to pay attention and don’t let your double boiler go dry.
Once your infusion is done, remove the tea bag, pressing it with the back of a spoon to squeeze out as much oil as possible. Weigh the beeswax into the oils and melt everything together.
Remove the melted oils from the heat and stir in the essential oils and Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada). Decant into a 60mL/2oz container.
To use, massage a small amount of the balm into your skin and enjoy!
Hello Marie,
Thanks for your sharing in the blog.
I am wondering if you have any chemistry related degree when you first time doing these cosmetic products? I also try to create few cosmetic products in past few years that I use everyday (mainly soaps), and from my friends’ reviews I know they love those. I’m thinking to do more on cosmetic inventing, and would like to know if you can give me some suggestions on where to learn proper knowledge about how to create new cosmetics.
Thank you so much!!!
Tracy
Hi Tracy! Thanks so much for reading 🙂 I don’t have a chemistry degree, just a graphic design degree. Everything I know is pretty much self taught. To learn more, check out my articles in “DIY Basics“—there’s lots of great resources in there, including ingredient overviews and advice on developing your own recipes.
I would be afraid to make the coco mango butter without a preservative because it contains food- oatmeal etc. Anytime you use either water or food, it can go bad very quickly even if you can’t see it. Even with just oils, if you are going to gift it or sell it, better to use a preservative because you don’t know if people will put dirty fingers into the product or if they will always have dry hands or fingers. Better to be safe than sorry. I am not a chemist, but I do have an esthetician and cosmetology license and know about sanitation. You can get very sick from spoiled products even if they don’t appear to be spoiled.
this sounds great. I’ve never heard of “5-fold” essential oil or orange wax…could you elaborate?
Five fold oils are EOs that have been 5x concentrated (or folded) for a stronger scent, and orange wax is the wax from the orange peel. Both are available from New Directions (link in the big box above the comments).
Hi Marie
Can you explain why you infused chai seeds into the oil.? At first I assumed you meant to use chai seed oil, but that was incorrect. What properties can the chai seeds impart in the oil? Thank you
Kristen, for this recipe Marie is using chia seeds, not chai seeds 🙂 Chia seeds are suuuper healthy and loaded with awesome nutrients for the body!
Oops I meant chia but it didn’t realize spellcheck changed it to chai! Lol gotta check before hitting that send button.
But why an oil infusion for the seeds? That’s where I’m confused. TIA
haha, no worries! always happens to me. I am guessing the reason she’s making an infusion is so the mixture of oils (coconut, soybean, jojoba) and butter (mango) acquire the nutrients and properties of the chia seeds and rolled oats without adding any more oils to the recipe. But, Im sure Marie can rectify if I’m on the right track answering your question or not. haha.
I made the recipe last night but didn’t have a chance to try it out this morning. I’m sure its absolutely lovely!
Yup, bang on!
I’ve never found chia seeds in anything other than seed (or ground seed) form, so it was the only way I could get chia goodness into the final product 🙂
🙂
Hi Kristen! I wanted to impart the goodness of chia seeds, and chia seeds is all I had—no oil or extract. They’re a great source of omega fatty acids and minerals 🙂
I have to make this! It sounds lovely. I noticed on the ingredients in the Skin Savior that they had meadowfoam oil. Could this be added to the recipe?
Sure thing! I’d replace some of the soybean or jojoba with it 🙂
Ah, thank you so much for the recipe! I was just reading my email as I was getting ready this morning and I was so surprised to see my name mention! 🙂 I will try this recipe out! My wallet will thank me! Thank you thank you thank you!!!
Enjoy! 🙂
This lotion sounds amazing! I can’t wait to make it. Can Benzoin essential oil be substituted?
If you have another vanilla-y essential oil, you could use that. Peru balsam is a good choice. Vanilla essential oil is not as it’s not oil soluble, and please don’t use vanilla extract, it’s also not oil soluble.
This is amazing! Thank you again for a beautiful recipe. I love the long-lasting scent and it really does sink in quick yet keep my skin hydrated and lovely. This is my new evening moisturizer. My beauty routine keeps expanding, but only because you keep coming up with these great, effective, decadent recipes that I love and just have to have.
Who knew a blog on DIY beauty would be so life changing?
Thanks, Kathie! Your comment inspired me to dig out my tin and rediscover my love for this balm 🙂 Thank you so much for reading and for all your support, it is hugely appreciated!
I made this balm using regular orange essential oil, 5g jojoba oil, and leaving out the benzoin eo. I only use it as a night time moisturizer, so am not worried about sun sensitivity. I only used 10 drops of essential oil total, and it is a lovely light orange scent, but the finished product is a bit hard. It will melt a bit when I rub it, but I suspect it is not supposed to be that hard, is it? It is about a “chapstick” consistency.
Hi Ellen! Mine is quite firm, so it sounds like yours is just fine 🙂 I tend to keep balms a bit firmer so they’re harder to over-use and do better on warmer days.
Hi Marie, I made this recipe the first time it was published but since I didn’t have orange wax and used extra jojoba and it came out great. The second time I made it I used the newly acquired orange wax and the recipe was very dark orange because of the orange wax. I was wondering how you managed to keep yours a lighter colour when you used the orange wax. My orange wax is from NDA and is unprocessed orange wax, is it so different from yours that it would create such a different end result in colour?
Hey Ana! It sounds like ours is the same stuff from the same place, but just a different batch. With all natural ingredients there is room for colour variation, I guess mine is not as dark as yours. Unless it’s dying your skin I wouldn’t be concerned about it, though.
Actually, it does leave a little bit of orange tint on my hands so I think I will go back to leaving it out or reducing how much I use. I really LOVE this hand balm and keep a tin of it in my purse. I’ve used the orange wax in soap as it has the same properties as lanolin and it works great for my oatmeal and orange soap so the kilo that I have won’t go to waste. Always a risk when buying in large quantities but NDA doesn’t sell it at a smaller size. Thanks for your creative recipes, I don’t use anything store bought anymore because you seem to “cover all the bases”.
Ah yup, I would definitely scale back to avoid the oompa-loompa effect! I’m so glad you’re loving the balm despite the cheap faux-tan effect though, haha. Thank you so much for reading and DIYing with me—I’m always stoked to hear I’m helping people ditch shop-bought stuff for homemade alternatives. That’s the dream!
Hi Marie,
This looks amazing! Keen on making it but can’t find any soybean oil in my local stores. I looked on your carrier oil substitute page but couldn’t find much about it. Any suggestions? Also, was going to use a coffee filter instead of a tea bag – is that ok?
Thanks!
Hey Glenda! Soybean oil has an average absorption speed, so any other oil with a similar absorption speed and no strong colour or scent would be a good alternative 🙂 And a coffee filter should work as long as you can tie it off in some way to prevent spills! Happy making 🙂
Thanks so much for the prompt reply!
Just made it, and wow! Did have orange wax or benzoin, so left those out and instead of soybean oil, I used meadowfoam seed oil and sunflower oil. I used slightly less beeswax too based on comments. It is so lovely and stays on after you wash your hands! Absorbs fast! Thanks for another great one 🙂
I’d love to see what you can do with One Love’s Skin Dew. Some of the ingredients are pretty sophisticated, and only have 1 supplier. Next project maybe??
Hey Laura! I’m so glad you’re loving this 😀 It’s even lighter with orange wax since orange wax has the consistency of water, which is pretty darn cool. I’ll put Skin Dew on my list of things to look at, but I do try to avoid recipes that have a ton of hard to find ingredients as they aren’t very DIY friendly. I’ll publish one and then get a flood of 100 “but what can I use instead?!” comments haha.
Oh! I just found orange wax on lotioncrafter! Didn’t realize it had that consistency! Very cool. I’ve seen it in a couple of other products…on the list to purchase next! Skin dew could be fun to replicate or a complete pain!
I think you’ll love it! It smells amazing, too 😀 My first thoughts on Skin Dew is that it would be really hard to preserve with all that coconut water in there. Hmm.
What exactly is a blob? can you translate into drops?
Not really—if you watch this video you’ll see why!
Hello, I love your ideas and dupes, I am truly a fan but I wonder if the infusion of oats and chia seeds is equally as good as using actual oat oil and chia seed oil? Also how much are you getting out by infusing those 2?
It’s likely only a bit of a tribute, but I’d say that about most of the recipe—it’s never going to be an exact dupe, especially if I’ve never worked with the original. That said, what else can I do if I can’t get the original ingredients? I can get oat oil, but didn’t want to buy more just for this, and I’ve never seen chia seed oil for sale in Canada.
I’ve tried this recipe twice now and found it to be pretty heavy. As someone mentioned above, I actually bought the same orange wax you have just for this recipe, and it is SO orange, it really does stain my hands!!
Dayum! The colour must vary from batch to batch, which I suppose is a very sensible thing for natural products, but is definitely a bit of a wildcard that can really throw things off (one can see why some manufacturers prefer the uniformity of synthetic ingredients). I developed a recipe with seabuckthorn oil and then re-made it later with a new bottle and batch #2 could’ve been bad fake tan!
Thank you for this recipe, just made it for Xmas giving this year and it worked beautifully, even for an amateur like me. Heads’ up to all, I used the same orange wax from the link and it still arrives dark and stains orange.
Thanks for DIYing with me (and for the heads up on the wax!), and happy making 🙂
I love this balm! It is the first thing I have found to repair heel cracks. I have had deep, painful cracks in my heels, but for the first time in years, my heels are smooth and don’t hurt. I subbed almond oil for soybean oil, extra jojoba for orange wax, and didn’t use the infusion of chia seeds and oats, as I was making this at night and didn’t have the time, but it came out lovely. Thank you, Marie!
I’m SO thrilled to hear it’s helping, Angela! Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making 🙂