How to Make

Body Butter

BY KAMI MCBRIDE
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

6 SUPPLIES
- OIL
- BEESWAX
- TIPS FOR GRATING BEESWAX
- COCOA BUTTER
- DOUBLE BOILER

7 SHELF LIFE OF BODY BUTTER

8 CALENDULA BODY BUTTER USES

 INTRODUCTION
I love my herb infused oils! Sometimes you need to travel and let’s face it;
it’s just a little easier to keep your herbal oils from escaping the jar if you turn
them into body butter!

You will find it more convenient to keep up with your self-care oil therapies
when you are on the go if you turn your herbal oils into body butter. Basically
we add the beeswax and cocoa butter to solidify the oil and keep it from
running out all over the place. The oils have a way of creeping out of even
the most tightly closed jar. Just to clarify, this recipe uses herb infused oils
and not essential oils.

When you have body butter around, you can just eliminate lots of other body
care products. I can’t even tell you how much money we have saved by
keeping stocked up on body butter. We use body butter instead of Chapstick,
lip gloss, lotion and massage oil.

Play around with this recipe. If you like a more goopy or runny body butter;
put less cocoa butter and beeswax into it. If you like a firmer, harder butter,
then add more beeswax and cocoa butter.

Use this recipe as a basic guideline, which way you go with it all depends on
what kind of consistency you like. Experiment a little, have fun and enjoy
using your body butter!

© Living Awareness Institute

 CALENDULA BODY BUTTER RECIPE
I love my herb infused oils! Sometimes you need to travel and let’s face it;
it’s just a little easier to keep your herbal oils from escaping the jar if you
turn them into body butter!
2 oz. calendula infused oil
1-2 tablespoons beeswax
1-2 tablespoons cocoa butter

SUPPLIES NEEDED:
Oil
Dried calendula flowers
Beeswax
Cocoa butter
Double boiler
Measuring cup
Spatula
Sterilized jar to store body butter in

© Living Awareness Institute

 DIRECTIONS
Put a double boiler on the stove and heat up the water
Put one ounce of calendula oil into the top pot of the double boiler
Add grated cocoa butter and beeswax
Gently heat until beeswax and cocoa butter are completely melted
Slowly drizzle in remaining one ounce of calendula oil
Remove from heat as soon as everything is melted. Make sure that
you do not over heat your oil. The oil should never be too hot to put
your finger into it.
While mixture is still hot, pour it into a measuring cup and from the
measuring cup pour it into sterilized glass jars or whatever container
you have chosen
Use a spatula to scrape all of the melted ingredients into body butter
container
Let the body butter cool and harden
Put the lid and label on container
Shelf life: One year

© Living Awareness Institute

 SUPPLIES
OIL
For this recipe I am using Calendula infused herbal oil. If you don’t have an
herbal infused oil, don’t let that stop you! You can use a plain carrier oil to
make a wonderful butter body. My favorite carrier oils are olive, sesame and
coconut. There are lots of other oils out there, feel free to experiment.

This is not an exact science and you can mix and match and play around with
different oils. You can also use other herb infused oils in place of the calendula
infused oil. I like to make lavender or St. John’s wort body butter. You can also
mix oils together for this. There is really no set proportion for mixing oils.
Just use 2 ounces of any mixture of oils for this recipe.

BEESWAX
Beeswax is a wax that is secreted by wax secreting glands on the honey bee.
(Amazing, right?)

There are more than 200 different compounds in beeswax and each beeswax
is a little different, depending on where it was gathered from. There is a lot
of variance in color and constituents in beeswax but it can all be used
interchangeably.

Beeswax adds its own healing benefits to the body butter. Beeswax is
emollient, soothing to the skin and helps the oils adhere to the skin.
Beeswax helps to soften the skin and it is the perfect non-toxic and natural
way to thicken an oil.

4 © Living Awareness Institute

You can purchase beeswax pastilles that are already cut into small pieces or
you can purchase beeswax from a beekeeper if you can find one in your area.
You don’t want to use large chunks of beeswax in this recipe because then
you have to heat the oil longer to melt the beeswax. It is good to use small
pieces of beeswax, so they are heated for a shorter period of time to get
them melted.

I love working with beeswax from my neighborhood beekeeper but completely

understand why people pay a little more to get the already cut up pastilles.
Grating your own beeswax is more work, but mostly it’s a big mess!

If you want to spend less on your beeswax and don’t mind the extra work,
you can often find someone selling honey at the farmers market. Look for the
honey booth and ask them for a referral. Most of the beekeepers know each
other and will be able to tell you who has beeswax. Have you ever thought of
keeping your own beehives?

I made body butter for many years before the small beeswax pastilles/pearls
were available so I figured out a way to deal with the mess from grating
beeswax. I remember the first time I saw the beeswax pastilles, I thought that
it was the greatest invention since the automobile…..

5 © Living Awareness Institute

TIPS FOR GRATING BEESWAX
I use cheese graters that have medium sized holes for grating. You can also
slice pieces of beeswax with a knife. Beeswax grating and cutting supplies
do not make it back into general circulation in my kitchen. I keep them in a
container separate from other utensils; otherwise the beeswax just gunk’s
up on whatever it comes into contact with. I have a bin that I keep all of my
beeswax and metal graters in. Once I use a knife or grater for beeswax, they
are never quite the same and are now designated for that purpose only.

Grate the beeswax into medium shredded pieces. Think of when you grate
cheddar cheese. If you use the smallest holes on the grater, it just gums up
the grater. Use the medium holes in your grater just like you would if you
were grating cheese. You can also chop the beeswax with a knife.

You don’t have to clean the graters every time you use them. Eventually the
knife or the holes in the grater get too gummed over to work anymore and
you do have to clean them. On a rainy afternoon when nothing else is gracing
your ‘to do’ list you can tend to your beeswax utensils.

Put them in a small pot of boiling water and the beeswax will come off in
the water. After the beeswax has sloughed off into the boiling water, use
tongs to pick the grater/knife out of the boiling water. Using a paper towel,
wipe the remaining beeswax off the knife or grater while it is still hot.

© Living Awareness Institute

Do not pour this water down your sink, the beeswax can muck with your
plumbing. Use a paper towel to wipe the remainder of the beeswax off the
pot while it is still hot. If you wait until the beeswax cools, you will have to
heat it again to get it off. The beeswax will slide off on a paper towel if you
wipe it while the utensil or pot is hot.

Beeswax is very stable and will last for years even when chopped into small
pieces. You can keep beeswax stored in a sealed container and it will last a
long time. I bought a big brick from a beekeeper and now five years later
I am still shaving wax off that chunk of gold.

© Living Awareness Institute

COCOA BUTTER
Cocoa butter is fat that is pressed from the cocoa bean. It is a very stable fat
and can be stored for 3 to 5 years. Cocoa butter melts at body temperature,
so it adds to the smooth spreadable consistency of a body butter.

Cocoa butter usually comes in large chunks; it doesn’t work to grate it like
beeswax, because cocoa butter will start to melt in your hands as you are
grating it. To shave your cocoa butter, put it in a plastic or metal container,
and shave it with the edge of a large metal spoon. It is easy to do and doesn’t
make anywhere near as big of a mess as beeswax.

Cocoa butter is a nice thickener for oils and adds a creamy consistency to
the body butter. Cocoa butter is emollient and soothing to the skin and
gives body butter a rich texture that feels amazing on the skin. It softens skin
and also has an anti-inflammatory effect on the skin. It helps the skin hold
moisture and adds a chocolate scent to your body butter.

DOUBLE BOILER
A double boiler has a top pot that fits onto a bottom pot. You can purchase
a special double boiler set of pots that are specifically used as a double
boiler, or you can rig it up with two sauce pots and put water in the bottom
sauce pot and use a second sauce pot that fits on top of the pot with the
water in it.

© Living Awareness Institute

 SHELF LIFE OF BODY BUTTER
The shelf life of your body butter depends on several factors:
The quality of the carrier/base oil that you started with
The quality of your body butter is only as good as the quality of the
base/carrier oil that you begin with. Find an oil supplier or store that you can
trust and store your oils properly.
The anti-oxidant properties of the base oil
Another reason I like olive oil so much is that it is anti-oxidant.
The anti-oxidant properties of olive oil prevent rancidity and help to increase
the longevity of your body butter. Some vegetable oils such as almond and
grapeseed go rancid more quickly.
If your carrier oil has been infused with anti-bacterial herbs or not
If you make your body butter with an infused herbal oil that has strong
anti-bacterial properties, the herb constituents will help to preserve the body
butter. An herbal oil made with lavender lasts longer than an herbal oil made
with comfrey because lavender has more antibacterial properties than
comfrey.
An herbal infused oil made with fresh herbs has a shorter shelf life
If you use an herbal infused oil that was made with fresh herbs then the oil
that you make your body butter with contains water from the fresh plant.
Infused herbal oils made with fresh plants are more volatile than infused
herbal oils made with dried plants.
Infused herbal oils made with dried plants have a longer shelf life
Herbal infused oils made with the dried plant method (rehydrating with
alcohol) are more stable. Dried plants don’t add water to the oil like fresh
plants do. The alcohol that is used in the dried plant method also helps to
preserve and increase the shelf life of the oil.

© Living Awareness Institute

 Introduction of bacteria into body butter container
Dirty fingers can introduce bacteria into the body butter. However, body
butter is meant to be used. Dip your fingers into it and use it! The way I deal
with this is by washing and drying my hands before using the body butter.
This is the reason why I put body butter into small containers, so it’s used up
quickly. You could use a clean utensil to get the body butter out of the
container instead of using your fingers. Well, that is a good idea in theory, but
isn’t what usually happens in real life. I always use my fingers.

How much the oil was heated while turning it into body butter
Try to heat the oil as little as possible when making body butter. Don’t start
doing laundry in the other room and come back to a boiling oil. Remember
that heat breaks down your product. For this reason, the instructions describe
heating the oil only until the beeswax/cocoa butter is melted. If you are careful
not to overheat the oil, this will help to lengthen the shelf life of your body
butter. For me, what this shakes out to mean is that I don’t multi-task while
making body butter. You come back into the kitchen after what you thought
was going to be a short task and who knows how long the beeswax has been
melted for. The oil, beeswax and cocoa butter are just cooking away……….

How your body butter is stored

Storage plays a big role in the shelf life of your body butter. You can make it
with the best ingredients in the most effective way, but if it isn’t stored
properly, it can break down rapidly. Fluctuating temperature, light, air, heat
and moisture are the culprits.

If you store your body butter open in the bathroom it can absorb moisture.
If you keep it in the glove compartment in your car, it gets cold at night and
hot during the day and the molecules break down with that kind of constant
temperature variance.

10

© Living Awareness Institute

Forgetting to put the lid back on tightly is a common mistake……

Ideally body butter would be tucked into a dry, dark place, like a wine cellar,
but then you wouldn’t use it would you? So for real life body butter storage
I don’t worry about it. I make up several 1.5 oz. jars of body butter at a time
and just keep them all over the place. We use them up pretty quickly so they
rarely go bad. Every once in a while I find one at the bottom of the back pack,
who knows how long it has been there……

Once the body butter is used up, you can sterilize the jars and re-use them.

How many people you are supplying!

The other thing that can affect the shelf life of your precious body butter
(as in how long it stays on your own shelf) is how many people know that
you just made a batch of it. My body butter gets handed out quickly!

All of these factors also interact with each other helping to keep your body
butter ambitions interesting. The combinations are endless. Follow these
guidelines and your body butter should be good for one year.

© Living Awareness Institute

 CALENDULA BODY BUTTER USES
If you look in the natural body care section of any store, calendula will be
the ingredient that you see in almost every product.

Calendula Body Butter is an incredibly versatile home remedy skin care

product. It is antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic and
vulnerary.

The vulnerary effects of calendula soothe and repair acute and chronic
skin conditions. It increases the rate at which healthy skin cells regenerate
and heal.

Calendula is soothing and healing for minor skin problems and is used for
cuts, scrapes, inflamed skin, minor burns and sunburn. It helps with rashes,
diaper rash and dry skin. It does wonders for chapped lips, dry patches and
cracked heels. It helps with slow healing cuts, bruises, abrasions, sprains
and strains.

Calendula body butter also increases circulation. It helps to resolve

stagnation, bruising and sore muscles.

Calendula body butter makes a wonderful gift and is good for all skin types.
I think you are going to really enjoy using your body butter!

© Living Awareness Institute