Body melts with Amazonian oils

Body melts or lotion bars or whatever you may call them are among my favourite cosmetic products.

Easy to make, uncomplicated and fun. They are excellent as give-aways, gifts or for own use. You can create innumerable variable pieces with just one recipe and since you don't have any water, there is no need for any preservative and challenge test. These are relatively stable as long as you don't put them directly near a heating source and you can vary the consistency according to ambient temperature.

All you need is a blend of oils & butters. You may even want to add waxes but I generally make my melts without any wax and am quite happy with the result. And then you have an absolute freedom to add, fragrance oils or essential oils, extracts, additives, antioxidants and colorants. And yes, you'll need a kind of mold for your body melts. If you're already a soap maker, then you can use any of your available small molds. If you don't have any soap making molds available you can use chocolate making molds, cookie molds or even ice molds.

I've kept this recipe very essential and simple but as you can see the result is extremely gorgeous and I assure you the skin feel is even better than the look.

I didn't add any colorant or extracts and this amazing color is coming from the buriti oil. I've added tocopherol as an emollient and rosemary extract as an antioxidant to avoid rancidity and oxidation and I decided to use mandarine essential oil. You're free to use any other fragrance oil or essential oil but please consider the dermal limits of the essential oils in your formulation.

The ratio/balance between oils and butters is essential for a nice appearance, stability and skin feel. Generally, you want the melt to keep its solid form and not to melt in the container, during transport or storage but you want it to melt over skin by coming into contact with skin temperature and application of a very light pressure. If the oil concentration is too high, the body melt would melt during storage or as soon as you take it into your hand. If the concentration of butters and waxes is too high, the body melt would not slide and melt over skin and would feel very sticky and fat.

Another important point is the heating and cooling process. You are probably familiar with the nightmare of grainy shea butter if you've already worked with it. Do not overheat your ingredients and keep stirring during cool down. Then you'll have nice, shiny and smooth body melts.

Now that you're familiar with the basics, let's go to the practical part.

Before we start I want to recommend you to read our older posts: hygienic manufacturing practice in cosmetic lab and introduction to Basic equipments and utensils for a cosmetic lab.

For 100 gr body melt you'll need:

Cocoa butter      59.9%

Shea butter        10.0%

Cupuacu butter  10.0%

Babassu oil         10.0%

Buriti oil              9.0%

Tocopherol         0.5%

Rosemary CO2 extract   0.1%

Mandarin essential oil  0.5%

Here we go:

1- In a water bath or double boiler melt shea butter, cocoa butter, babassu oil and capuacu butter. Stir during melting for a uniform distribution of temperature.

2- As these are melted, stop heating and add buriti oil, tocopherol and rosemary extract and blend well. Avoid agitation and introduction of air bubbles into the system.

3- Add the essential oil and blend.

4- You can cool the blend @ room temperature, or cool it in an ice bath. I prefer putting the blend in the fridge but stirring it in 10 minute intervals till it comes to a trace. At this point, pour it into molds and put the molds into the fridge.

5- Let them stay overnight in the fridge and pop them out of the molds on the next day. Voila, here are your nice, shiny and smooth body melts or lotion bars.

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BeHappy and have fun