I love few things more than the scent of the forest floor in the sun in the Canadian Rockies. A few weeks ago we took a trip out to Moraine Lake—one of the most famous lakes in the world. You might not know it by name, but you know the view; it’s incredibly famous. Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks used to be on the Canadian $20 bill. It’s just around the corner (by Canadian standards, at least) from the more famous Lake Louise. The lake water is an astonishing, almost unbelievable bright turquoise, and the forest around the lake smells incredible. You can wander a forest path to the back of the lake (stopping to take about 600 photos as you go) and bask in the incredibly fresh forest air and the smell of pine trees and fir needles. Even if you can’t make it to Banff, this lovely Moraine Lake Body Lotion will help transport you there.
For its amazing scent I decided to combine a lovely blend of essential oils indescribably foresty smelling bayberry wax. Bright, clean fir needle essential oil blends with deep, warm labdanum and crisp, fresh cajeput to create a scent blend that smells like sunshine on the forest floor and clean mountain air. A wee touch of rose wax adds a subtle floral note for a final scent blend that’s intriguing, subtle, and delightfully reminiscent of hiking in the forest.
This is rose wax.
Rose wax is by-product of the production of rose essential oil and rose absolute, and I adore it. The best thing about it is how it smells amazingly of roses, but doesn’t cost $100 for a solitary teaspoon of the stuff. Rose wax is my favourite way to get a real rose scent in something, and I can’t recommend it enough. The wax itself is very soft—it’s nothing like beeswax or candelilla wax—so it’s not useful for thickening (it’s roughly as hard as shea butter). Used in teensy amounts it’s a wonderful scent ingredient, though—if you don’t have any and you love the scent of roses (but not the price tag of the essential oil), I can’t recommend buying some enough. If you don’t have any, you can use an extra gram of safflower oil and add a few drops of rose essential oil or absolute instead.
A blend of grassy hemp seed oil and safflower oil make for a light, fast-absorbing lotion that glides beautifully over the skin, leaving it soft and hydrated (but not greasy). Because bayberry wax is quite a soft wax, it doesn’t make the lotion tacky like some waxes can. I used unrefined hemp seed oil for its slight grassy scent, but if you’ve only got the refined variety, that’ll work as well.
The general consensus is that this lotion is incredible. I forced (err, encouraged) a bunch of friends at a party to try it out, and they all liked it, saying it smells awesome and feels great (even Kate, who’s super picky about how lotions feel, said she loved how this one feels!). And, as I sit here, huffing my hands like a person you don’t want to sit next to on the bus, I have to agree. This Moraine Lake body lotion is awesome stuff.
Moraine Lake Body Lotion
6g | 0.21oz complete emulsifying wax (not beeswax!)
7g | 0.25oz hemp seed oil (USA / Canada)
7g | 0.25oz safflower oil
4g | 0.14oz bayberry wax
1g | 0.03oz rose wax73g | 2.56oz just-boiled water
2g | 0.07oz vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)2 blobs labdanum essential oil
2 drops cajeput essential oil
10 drops fir essential oil0.5g | 0.017oz Liquid Germall Plusâ„¢ (USA / Canada) (or other broad spectrum preservative of choice at recommended usage rate [why?])
Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer (aim for steaming, no bubbling) in a wide, shallow pan. I used a sauté pan (something like this, with a flat bottom and short sides), but a frying pan would work as well. You want the pan to be large enough to hold two glass measuring cups or small bowls so you can heat the two parts of the lotion at the same time.
Weigh the emulsifying wax, hemp seed oil (USA / Canada), safflower oil, bayberry wax, and rose wax into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup, and place that measuring cup into the water bath to melt everything together.
Up next, combine the just-boiled water and vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada) in another small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place that measuring cup in the water bath along with the emulsifying wax mixture to heat it up, stirring to blend everything together.
Heat the two parts in the water bath for twenty minutes, keeping an eye on the water bath so it doesn’t simmer dry. After twenty minutes the oil part will be thoroughly melted, the water part will be completely heated through, and the vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada) will be completely dissolved. Pour the water part into the oil part. Leave that measuring cup in the water bath for another three minutes to ensure everything is melted before removing the measuring cup from the heat.
Using an immersion blender, blend the lotion together. You’ll want to start with short bursts, working up to a constant blend. Blend for about three minutes, and then leave it it for ten minutes before coming back to stir it with a flexible silicone spatula and blending it some more. You will notice some thickening at this point, but it’ll still be pretty thin.
Leave the lotion for another ten minutes, and then stir and blend it again—at this point it should’ve thickened into a nice white cream and should be relatively cool to the touch.
Blend in your essential oils and preservative (though do check the instructions for your specific preservative—some have special instructions for adding to concoctions) and decant the mixture to a 120ml/4 fl oz pump-top bottle or wide-mouthed jar. Enjoy your Moraine Lake body lotion!
If you don’t have fir essential oil you can use pine essential oil or spruce essential oil instead. There’s a few different varieties of each (black spruce, white spruce, spruce hemlock, etc.), any of them will work.
All the pictures of Moraine Lake are mine—I’ve been sharing more (and lots of other photography) on Instagram. You should follow me!
This looks amazing!!
Thanks, Carlee! 🙂
Marie, just this morning a friend and I talked about trading some of her bayberry wax for some of my rose wax. And I open my email and find that your new project uses just these things. It sounds divine! Can’t wait to make it.
How perfect! I hope you love it as much as I do 🙂
Wow Marie, as if your recipe wasn’t an awesome treat alone….those photos!
Thanks, Colleen! I do think it is hard to take a bad photo of somewhere so beautiful, but we lucked out with stunning lighting!
I do not have any bayberry wax. What can I use as a substitute?
Thank you for your recipes & your time,I don’t know if you hear it enough; I just wanted to thank you for all the people who think it but do not always say it.
~Ginny~
Check out the encyclopedia entry for bayberry wax for information on alternatives 🙂 And thank you for your support and kind words!
I’m allergic to hemp oil. What would be something I could use instead of hemp oil?
Check out the encyclopedia entry for hemp seed oil for information on alternatives 🙂
The Bayberry wax is not available on the Canadian version of Amazon. Did you get it at Saffire Blue?
I did 🙂
Oooooo I love the sound of scent!! LOL as if a scent can have a sound. You know what I mean. But, I have a 2 year old and a newborn and will not be getting around to making lotions anytime soon, I do, however, make body butter on a fairly regular basis (shea/cocoa/coconut oil). Seems less fussy to make than lotions, with fewer ingredients. Any way I could get this kind of a scent into a body butter concoction? Could I just swap out the weights of the water/emulsifying wax/carrier oils with equal weight of shea butter perhaps? Thanks! Can’t wait to spend more time on your recipes soon ….
If you want to make a balm that’s similar to this lotion I’d just make this instead 🙂 Happy making!
I just made this. I used grapeseed instead of safflower, and black spruce instead of fir… I have no idea where my fir EO wandered off to. Oh well, spruce made a great substitute. It smells like a wonderful forest hike. Maybe not in Morraine Lake, but somewhere else in the great Canadian woods. I’ll have to find my fir to see what Morraine Lake smells like!
Thank you for the inspiration Marie and for the olfactory vacation!
Yum! I’m still totally in love with this lotion, I’ll be so sad when it’s gone and I have to move onto yet another recipe haha 😛
I just made this! Marie, it smells heavenly, despite my doubts . It was the cajeput I doubted, but doubt no more.
I recently inherited a whole pound of beautiful raw bayberry wax. You were right when you said it makes a difference waaaay back in your Manitoba Balm or lotion comment to me.
A winner! For me and my Christmas giftees.
P.s. someday I’m going to this Moraine Lake.
Woohoo! I’m so glad you are loving it I cannot get enough of this one—I rare re-make lotions as I always have so many, but this one got a re-make quite promptly! And congrats on the inheritance, that’s definitely a great addition to your DIY cupboard 🙂
I made this yesterday for the first time. What can I say…wow!! What an interesting scent! At first it was strangely foreign and my brain tried so hard to link it to something familiar, but alas, it had trouble doing so. After wearing the lotion for a while, I found myself sniffing the top of my hand or my arm, whichever was more readily accessible and had more of the scent on it. I am hooked and feel like my world has been opened wider into the strange realm of this scent combination. Thank you for introducing me to the resinous oil of labdanum. I had never heard of it before this recipe despite the fact that I have been using EOs for many, many years already!
I have a question about the lotion itself. I find it a bit sticky after application. It does go away after a few minutes, but would prefer to try to change that. Do you think it is the effect of the ritamulse (my first time using that emulsifier, and I never use synthetic ones, have only tried the beeswax/lecithin/borax combination, which worked, by the way – but was also sticky although I had lecithin in that recipe and maybe that was causing the stickiness?), or do you think it is from the glycerin? This is my first time using glycerin. Could that make a lotion a bit tacky at first?
Thank you again for an awesome lotion recipe and scent combination! There is something about that scent…
I’m so glad you’re loving the scent blend! I’m completely hooked on it, too 🙂
I’m genuinely surprised that you find this sticky. Ritamulse does have a dry, powdery finish that can “drag” a bit if you continue to rub the lotion in as it absorbs, but it definitely isn’t sticky. Lecithin will definitely cause stickiness if used in high enough concentrations, but is unnecessary in the beeswax/borax combo (the beeswax and borax react to create a complete emulsifier on their own), so you could try this version and that should solve the problem. Used at the concentrations here, glycerin will not be sticky, either. I just re-applied some of this lotion and it isn’t sticky in the least, so… colour me baffled. Did you do everything by weight, or increase the amount of glycerin?
I think I understand what Maryann means about it being sticky. I found the same thing – there seemed to be a bit of tackiness. I thought it was due to the rose & bayberry waxes. I experienced the same feel when I made the Silken Rose & Green Tea lotion that used rose wax. I used BTMS-50 which I’ve made many lotions with and hadn’t noticed a tackiness before. So not sure, but it wasn’t a big deal and I loved both lotions!
Hmm, interesting! I think my rose wax may be a bit different from what most people work with as mine is brown and clumpy and apparently a smooth amber substance is more common, so perhaps that’s what’s going on here 🙂 Thanks for chiming int!
I think SwiftCraftyMonkey refers to it as “drag”. Anyway, I have to say, the more I’ve used the Moraine Lake lotion the more I love it! I think the texture is perfect for the colder winter weather that’s coming. I’ll definitely be making more of this one! Thanks, Marie
Ah—when I think sticky, I think honey-type sticky. Drag I can definitely see; I find the more powdery emulsifiers like BTMS-50 and Ritamulse can definitely have a touch of drag in the instants before they fully absorb but have mostly dried.
I can’t get enough of this lotion, either! Especially now that it’s snowing here
Hi Marie! This recipe has been on my list to try out for a while, but I kept holding off because it was more complex than the body butters and lip balms I usually make. I finally gave it a go this weekend and I *LOVE* it! The scent is absolutely wonderful and it feels luxurious. Thanks for such a great recipe!
YAY!!! I’m so glad! I, too, am absolutely addicted to the scent of this lotion I’m so glad you’re loving it! Thanks for reading and DIYing with me 🙂
I know you made this recipe quite a long time ago, but I’m just reading it now….I’ve purchased all the ingredients except the containers. My question is: can I use a bottle or pump top or is the lotion too thick for that?
It’s WAY too thick for a pump top—you’ll want a jar of some variety 🙂
well, I made this and totally messed it up somehow. I did use BTMS 50 (yes 50) instead of the other e-wax is the only change. I’m pretty sure I weighed everything out right. It is runny as cream after at least half an hour. :(( Don’t know what I did. I’ll try again another day when I’ve recovered from the disappointment. Is it possible to somehow add more emulsifier?? I also have polawax in my supplies. This is only the third time I made a little recipe of lotion, the others were fine.
Glad to hear it turned out a couple hours later 🙂
Hello, cynthia again. I was a little impatient, about an hour later my lotion was perfect consistency I took some to work and everyone loved it, so do I. Thank you. gonna make some more!!
YAY! 😀
Hi, Marie: The bayberry wax is out of stock on Amazon. What do you think about using bayberry candle wax? Thanks. C
As long as it’s pure bayberry wax it should be fine!
Hello from New Zealand. I have rose wax but it’s pale yellow and very very hard… nothing like what you describe (got it from Pure Nature). So this makes it a bit like trying to follow American recipes… ingredients never match, quantities differ, smell is different, and texture is a Whole Different Ball Game. So for a super hard wax, do I use less or just use what you specify and hope for the best?
For floral waxes I wouldn’t worry about it too much; we typically use them at very low levels so they won’t impact the end consistency much at all 🙂