Conscious about what ingredients you put on your skin, but taken aback at the high cost of many natural beauty products? You can easily make your own with this DIY Body Butter!
By Ashlee Bradshaw, Contributor Writer
Our skin is our largest organ, it is the first thing people see when they look at us, so people tend to want to keep good care of it. The problem with skin care products today is that many of them contain toxic chemicals that are actually doing more harm than good.
If you don’t want to pay a small fortune for the safer skin care alternatives, you can easily make your own skin care products at home with a few key ingredients. This DIY Body Butter is the perfect recipe to help keep your skin feeling smooth and moisturized. It even helps with the appearance of scars, stretch marks, and wrinkles.
Why DIY?
Most skin care products and moisturizers today are packed full of synthetic chemicals. These chemicals are dangerous to our skin and body. In fact, some of these chemicals can have an adverse effect and cause your skin irritations, dryness, itchiness, and wrinkles to happen more quickly. Scary right?
Parebens– Found in many skin care and cosmetics, linked to skin irritation and allergies. It mimics estrogen in the body, which can cause hormone disruption.
Synthetic fragrance– Causes skin and eye irritation, headaches, dizziness, allergies. Is a high concern of organ toxicity.
Petrolatum– Impurity of this form of petroleum jelly is linked to organ toxicity.
Diethanolamine (DEA)– A potential human carcinogen and therefore expected to be harmful and toxic.
Stearalkonium Chloride– A biological and environmental toxin. It is suspected of causing non-reproductive organ toxicity.
These are just a few of the long list of harmful ingredients found in skin care products that you find on the store shelves. The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database ranked the above ingredients with moderate to high regarding their health concerns.
DIY Body Butter Recipe
What You Need
- Glass jar or container
- ½ c. Coconut oil
- ½ c. Cocoa butter
- ½ c. Shea butter
- ¼ c. Vitamin E
- 15 drops of Lavender oil
Directions
- Fill a pan half way up with water
- Place on stove burner on a medium setting
- Add coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, and vitamin E oil to glass bowl
- Place glass bowl in pan on stove creating a double boiler
- Stir ingredients and allow a few minutes to melt and mix together
- Once ingredients have melted, remove glass bowl from pan and then place in refrigerator for 1 hour
- Remove from refrigerator and add lavender drops to the ingredients
- Mix (whip) together with a mixer
- Scrape whipped body butter into glass container with rubber scraper and enjoy!
Why These Ingredients?
Cocoa butter– Well known for the prevention and reduction of stretch marks, cocoa butter is a prime ingredient in skin care. Cocoa butter is also great for skin conditioning and moisturizing. It is high in antioxidants, which eliminates free radicals that cause skin to appear aged and stressed.
Shea butter– Shea butter is an anti-inflammatory and an antioxidant. It is also known for it’s skin moisturizing and strengthening abilities. It helps reduce the appearance of wrinkles and protect skin against sun burn.
Coconut oil– Works as a skin moisturizer, eliminates skin irritations and rashes. It also has a natural SPF of 5.
Vitamin E (non-GMO source)- Vitamin E has been used for healing scars for years. It is also rich in antioxidants, and helps regenerate damaged tissue.
Lavender oil– Lavender works as a moisturizer for the skin. It helps regenerate damaged tissue, and reduces the appearance of scars and stretch marks.
This recipe sounds awesome. Would you happen to know the shelf life of the Body Butter?
Thanks
I have had mine for quite a few months now and it is still going strong. I would say to follow the shelf life labeled on the ingredients you use. 🙂