Craft #5: Body Butters

Part of what I do as 'Lazy Crafternoons' is teaching people how to save a few pennies and make their own bath and body products. The things we pay for on the high on street can often be replicated easily at home and better yet, you can tailor them to suit your own tastes. Its easier than you think to make your own bathbombs, face masks, and body scrubs, but one of the simplest and most versatile products I make are these homemade body butters.

Making these body butters are simple:

All you need is a metal bowl, a pot full of water, some chocolate moulds or silicone ice cube trays and equal amounts of these three ingredients;
- Beeswax
- Cocoa Butter
- Coconut Oil


By melting these ingredients in equal amounts in a double boiler (set your metal bowl over a pot with a small amount of boiling water in it), you get a body butter that holds its shape and melts perfectly at body temperature. This means you can make your body butter in a range of shapes and sizes and use them in a range of ways: they are great on patches of dry skin, they work fantastic as a lip balm, use them on your cuticles, or warm them up in your hands and use them as a massage butter.

Simply melt all the ingredients together until they are just melted (be careful: if you heat too high, you'll burn out the lovely natural smells of the cocoa butter, beeswax and coconut oil - and if you let them heat too long you can risk burning and igniting them - remember: these are waxes and oils!).


Once fully melted simply pour the mixture into your choice of chocolate moulds, silicone ice cube trays, etc - use empty soft cheese containers for a soap-bar type shape, or pour into a small tin or container for keeping in your bag or at your desk at work.


Let them cool for a short while, and then turn them out and wrap them up any way you like!


You can play with the proportions of ingredients to get something softer and suitable for melting in the bath or something tougher if you want something more protective. You can also add essential oils to spice up the scent of the melts, or add elements like aduki beans to give nice texture for massaging.

I'm going to be listing a chocolate box full of these little goodies on e-bay this week, as well as putting together a melt-at-home kit including bowl, moulds and ingredients so you can make your own batch at home. Keep an eye on the blog as they will be listed soon!