These homemade massage bars are great. They come together in an instant, mold wonderfully into any shape you need, and melt right at body temperature. The beeswax and cocoa butter (USA / Canada) smell wonderful, and they do a great job of moisturizing your skin and slicking up a massage. They also store really well, assuming you’re not living in Australia during the summer.
I find measuring cups make great molds for these bars; you can pour a centimeter or two of the molten mixture into the bottom of a cup (proportionate to the size of the cup). Once it sets up, the bar will pretty much just fall out. For smaller applications, I’ve found little silicone chocolate molds do quite well. That’s what I’m using for these ones; they’ll make great stocking stuffers wrapped in a bit of cellophane like a candy.
Homemade Massage Bars
1 part beeswax
1 part cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
1 part liquid oil
Essential oils, as desiredMelt everything together. Add essential oils and pour into molds. Allow to set up. Use for massage and/or moisturizing.
What kind of oil & about how much does it make ? Thanks !
You can use any kind of plant-based oil, but I’d recommend steering towards something with a fairly neutral scent that isn’t too thick. Sweet almond, apricot kernel, and grapeseed are all great choices!
Hello!
I am curious if the cocoa butter can be substituted for coconut oil? Or is the coconut oil better used as the liquid oil?
Thanks
Katherine—this recipe really isn’t formulated for using coconut oil, which is an oil that is soft at room temperature. Instead, it uses a brittle and a liquid oil. If you have fractionated coconut oil you can use that for the liquid oil. If not, I guess liquid is still your best bet (otherwise you will just have very goopy body butter), but the bars will not have the same melting point (it may work out just fine if you live somewhere with average temperatures around 30°C, though).
Hi there,
Do you know what dye I can use to make colourful looking massage bars such as green/red/pink and blue?
Love your recipe it made awesome natural ones 🙂
Thanks
Hi Nicola! New Directions Aromatics has a section of natural dyes that you can use in bars like this. Do be careful not to use too much, though, or you’ll end up with body lipstick 😉
Hi there I’m looking to make around 10 of these do you know how much of the ingredients I would need please?
Thanks!
Well, this obviously depends on how large you want your final bars to be, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. If you want your final bars to be 30g, that means you’ll need 300g total ingredients. Divide by three since the recipe is equal parts three different ingredients, and that’s 100g of each.
Thank you
🙂
Hello, I am curious what type of essential oils could be used, and how much to use in each batch.
Thank You.
You can really use any topically-safe essential oils you like, and just add them to the recipe until you like the way it smells (stay away from citrus EOs as they can cause photosensitivity). Keep in mind, though, that these bars smell utterly divine on their own if you use raw beeswax and raw cocoa butter—like honey and chocolate. Yum! I don’t add EOs to these for that exact reason 🙂
Hi I’m really stuck on these I’m hoping you might be able to offer some words of wisdom. I’ve made some bars which are just cocoa butter & essential oils & they’re great! They smell perfect but melt too quickly to use as massage bars, they’re really only good as solid lotion.
I changed the recipe up to be 1:2:2 beeswax:cocoa butter:shea butter which made for a perfect consistency but I just cannot get them to smell of anything other than beeswax. I made 50g of bars with 30 drops of essential oils in & still nothing! I’m thinking I might just have to remove the beeswax altogether but I’m sad about that because the consistency we so perfect.
Any advice would be most welcome!
Well, I love the smell of beeswax, so I’d call that a win, haha 😛 I do find that the scent of beeswax doesn’t usually hold on the skin, though—that’s where the essential oils really start to shine. Other than that, I suppose you could just use bleached beeswax, but that seems utterly criminal when the wonderful local stuff is so lovely.
Are you getting any scent from the EO at all? It could be that you are adding them when the mixture is too hot and burning off the scent.
I use unrefined beeswax in mine which has a strong honey scent, and dont have an issue with not smelling the EOs and I use about 10-15 drops.
A good point—my other query would be if the EOs are pure, or are perhaps dilutions. If they’re a 3% dilution that may explain why not much scent is coming through.
Did you do the measurements by weight or by volume?
I always do everything by weight—grams, specifically, though you can use whatever unit you are most comfortable with. This will more or less work if you do it by volume, but I always prefer weight for ease of clean up and precision 🙂
Would olive oil do as a liquid oil? Thank you for your answer.
Assuming olive oil is liquid where you live, yes!
love you blog….can i substitue the coco butter for shea butter and get the same results for the massage (lotion) bars? thanks
Hi Margaret—the short answer is definitely not, here’s an entire article on why 🙂
what type of oils i should use in making lotion bars is it essential or carrier oils? and need to know the difference of using them.
Other thing, its better to add rose oil or rosehip oil in making lotion bars?
Carrier oils and essential oils are VERY different. Essential oils are not actually oils—they contain no lipids, they are simply oil soluble. Essential oils are highly fragrant and potent, and are typically used at 1–5% in projects, while you can use 100% carrier oils.
Rose oil is an essential oil that costs ~$100/5mL. Rosehip oil is from a completely different plant and is a carrier oil—you’ll want to use the carrier oil. Read this for more info!
Hi Marie,
I read this post after reading about beewax and coconut oil ratios which is awesome!
I really would like to create a candle using coconut oil and beewax with a small amount of cannabis extract.
This product is mainly for people suffering from skin cancer. I tried 10 grs of coconut oil and 2 grs of bewwax but it still takes too long to melt and there are still some bits of beewax left on the skin.
Any help would be appreciated.
Hey! I’m afraid I have pretty much zero experience with candles, so I really can’t offer any advice. Once flames come into play I’ve got no idea what’s going on!
Can i sub coconut oil instead of coaco oil in the recipe
No, they’re really different and that swap will not work very well. Please watch this video to learn more 🙂