How to make a Coconut Ice Body Butter - Recipe for beginners

Making Body butters is one of the best things for beginners. It allows you to get to know a lot of lovely ingredients and also get used to formulating by adjusting percentages to achieve different textures, scents, colours and skin benefits.

This butter is designed to be reasonably soft and absorb well. If you live in a particularly hot country you may want to use a harder butter or add a little wax, Stearic acid, Cetyl alcohol or more Cetearyl alcohol to thicken. This is an anhydrous formula, meaning that you do not need a preservative. We’d advise a shelf life of 6-12 months, but you can do your own testing. This may change depending on oil choice.

Anhydrous body butters have a different feel to emulsified ones. They will feel more oily on the skin initially and maybe a little heavier. They are however, very easy for beginners. The provide a lot of opportunity to get creative and learn about the benefits of different ingredients. Remember, that you need to stability test and obtain a CPSR before gifting or selling your finished products.

Formula (for 100g| 100% =100g so each percentage here is the amount in grams that we will use)

Phase A

45% Shea butter, refined (a beautiful soft natural butter that acts as a humectant on the skin and gives the butter a lovely texture – use refined to avoid a strong natural scent as it will carry your fragrance better)

23% Jojoba Oil (a very light and fast absorbing natural carrier oil perfect for body butter formulation)

10% C12-15 Alky Benzoate (a skin softening emollient ester that is oil soluble, it aids in the overall feel of the product on the skin) – aware I mispronounce this in the video 😉

5% Fractionated coconut oil (a lightweight easily absorbed oil that adds to our coconut theme)

5% Cetearyl Alcohol(an oil soluble fatty alcohol that helps to thicken the final product and give it a luxurious feel, it also hardens the product a little to help prevent it melting easily)

Phase B

8% Kaolin clay or arrowroot powder (your choice, both are good at absorbing excess oil and locking in moisture and will help to create a non-greasy final product)

Phase C

2% Coconut ice fragrance oil (to give it its signature scent)

1% Vitamin e oil (an antioxidant and helps to prevent cell damage)

Phase D

1% Neon pigment or mica colour (to create our beautiful colours, divide this percentage between your chosen colours)

Method:

Melt phase A in a beaker
Add in phase B and stir
Allow to cool and firm up, whip with a hand mixer at intervals so that it it doesn’t firm too much as this will improve the final texture
When the mixture is back up to room temperature add phase C and whip again until combined
Keep as one batch or split to add different colours to each batch
Add phase D and whip until the colour/s are evenly distributed
Spoon or pipe into jars

Notes:

· The use of esters helps the product to be easier absorbed into the skin and negate that greasy feeling. The use of kaolin or arrowroot does similar.

· The cetearyl alcohol can be replaced with something like stearic acid or cetyl alcohol to thicken, but I’ve had the best skin feel from cetearyl.

· How thick you make the body butter will depend on what sort of climate you live in. So feel free to adjust the ratio of thickeners and hardeners to oils to get a consistency that you want.

· Its worth noting that some people will have allergies to arrowroot powder as it can be manufactured on a line dealing with nuts, soya or gluten, so you should state this on your label or opt for kaolin instead if worried. But if allergies are not an issue, then arrowroot gives the best results in my opinion.

Disclaimer: These formulas and recipes are experiments created for the purpose of sharing on Patreon and YouTube. Revega does not make any claims as to their qualifications or the efficacy of the formulations which are listed here for entertainment purposes and accepts no responsibility for how you use these. We are self-taught and offer these videos from our years of knowledge and experience in making our own cosmetic products.

Remember that if you intend to use one of these formulations for your own product range, do your own research, experiments, adjustments and tests before using, gifting or selling.

Patrons get early access www.patreon.com/revega