Shea Butter-Sal Butter Comparison Body Butter

Creating a light lotion with these two different butters made me wonder how much more prevalent these two butters would be in a creamier mixture. I took my recipe for the lotion I’d made before and tweaked it to get more viscosity.

Sal Butter at the top; Shea Butter at the bottom.

The first thing I did was to reduce the water from 69% to 50%. Then I increased the Shea/Sal Butter to 20%. I added some Cocoa Butter to help with thickening the texture, but I kept the Beard & Hair Oil Base the same. My thinking was that the oils would help the mixture come together better. I also did not increase the Emulsifying Wax, as I only wanted to use enough to bring the oils and water together. I increased both Glycerin and Stearic Acid.

I chose to try the Scented Beard & Hair Oil Base in this recipe – it’s scented with Tea Tree, Peppermint, and Orange Essential Oils. The scent is so light, though, and the usage such a small part of the overall formula, that I am going to include a fragrance. After sniffing the oil base several times, I decided I wanted to complement the citrus aroma. My choice of fragrance oil for my batch is Eucalyptus Spearmint Fragrance Oil since the fresh, minty, sweet aroma is one of my favorites!

Let’s make a small 100-gram test batch to see if I’m on the right track.

Recipe:

INSTRUCTIONS:

Weigh all but fragrance and preservative into a microwave-safe container. Heat using short bursts of time, stirring between each heating, until the mixture is liquid. Allow to cool to 120 degrees (F) before adding fragrance and preservative.

The body butter will be quite thick and not pourable. I packaged this in our one-ounce jars, which come in a set with lids. (100 grams fills three jars with a little extra – told you it was a tiny batch!) To easily fill any size jar, I’d recommend putting the body butter into a plastic bag and cutting off the corner so you can easily pipe the product into the jar without making a big mess. (Please tell me I’m not the only one who makes big messes!)

NOTES:

I like the texture of the finished product, but the body butter feels way too greasy. Yuck! I tried to get photos of my hands looking greasy after applying the body butter, but it didn’t work out. Sorry there aren’t any images to go with this blog – please come back tomorrow!

I’m going to tweak the recipe a bit by adding something to tone down the greasiness – Dry Flo TS or Isopropyl Myristate, perhaps. Our Technical Support Team advised me to back off the oils and increase water. Back to the drawing board. Tomorrow I’ll redo the recipe – stay tuned!