Creating natural skincare products is a passion of mine, after years of spending countless euros on finding the best skin regime and getting disappointed over and over again. And I remember feeling completely cheated after reading articles about all of the unnecessary and dangerous ingredients hidden in our everyday skincare, labeled as something unpronounceable. Which resulted in my journey of investigating how to create my own DIY products. Why would I pay 20-30euros for a “natural” body lotion in the store to find out that the labelling was just another marketing trick and the ingredients didn’t line up with their promise of being natural.
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Knowing what you put on your body is equally as important as knowing what you put in it, and I decided it was time to learn how to be the author of my own skin regime. And by sharing these simple steps and ingredients, I’m hoping to help you do the same.
Why Make a Lotion Bar?
There are a lot of good reasons to get into lotion bars, the most satisfying (in my opinion) being that it’s packaging free. A great way to help do your part in saving the environment. Another great reason is that you get to be creative, and decide what shape you want your lotion bars to be. Making them great gifts for birthdays, Christmas, baby showers, bridal showers or just about any occasion you want to make someone feel special. All you have to do is purchase silicon mould, in whatever shapes speak to you. I often buy my moulds at any local store that sells baking accessories like cake moulds.
How to Make a Lotion Bar?
I decided to keep my lotion bar recipe nice and simple, using a 3 ingredient base of coconut oil, mango butter and beeswax. Coconut oil and mango butter are amazing for hydrating and softening the skin and the beeswax is important for the lotion bar to keep it’s shape.
Using 90g each of the oils I added them to the pan I planned to use for double boiling.
After melting the base oils completely, I decided to add 15 drops of Lavender (antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties) and 10 drops of Frankincense (heals damaged skin) for added benefits. Once done I poured the still liquid mixture into these adorable owl silicon moulds.
I left my mould aside to dry for the next 4 hours or so and took out these adorable little owls. In total I created 4 bars. I keep the unused bars safe in the fridge wrapped in paper towels.
USAGE TIP: I like to wrap my lotion bars in a small face cloth, which I keep it in while passing the bar over my body. I prefer this method, because I don’t like the lotion melting into the applying hand too much while using it.
Lotion Bar Recipe
I log all recipe measurements to a total of 100g, this way you can easily recalculate for the batch you’d like to create. However, I would like to disclaim that the batch I created in the below photos is 3 times that size and created a batch of 4 lotion bars for reference.
Ingredients
- 30g | 33% Coconut Oil (or Almond, Jojoba, Argan, Avocado)
- 30g | 33% Mango Butter (or Cacao Butter, Shea Butter)
- 30g | 33% Beeswax
- 0.5g | 0.5% drops Lavender & Frankincense Essential Oils (optional)
- 0.5g | 0.5% Vitamin E oil (optional)
Equipment
- Kitchen scale | Measuring cups
- Double boiler | Heat resistant bowl and pan
- Silicon Moulds
Process
- Use a kitchen scale or measuring cups to measure portions of the coconut oil, mango butter and beeswax and add them into the bowl you’ll be using to melt the oils.
- First step is to melt the coconut oil, mango butter and beeswax in a double boiler or bowl which you can use in a saucepan with 3 centimeters of water (as replacement of double boiler).
- Once the ingredients are melted together, remove it from heat and stir in the essential and vitamin E oils (if used).
- Pour the still liquid mixture into the silicon moulds, and leave to dry for a couple of hours in safe place where you don’t need to move them until fully rested.
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