DIY Body Lotion |à la Wellness Mama

Have many of you heard of Wellness Mama? Her blog is incredible for all things natural and eco-friendly, providing recipes for everything from foundation to lip balms. She really is the Queen of Green (*cheesy puns*) Eco-friendly, natural, organic, no animal testing or chemicals – right up my street! So I decided to give it a whirl and use her recipe to create my own body lotion using just THREE ingredients. I’ve mentioned before that I am not a skilled baker whatsoever and for some reason, I expected that lack of talent to transfer into this process but it was actually so simple and took less than twenty minutes. Tempted to give it a try? Here we go…

I take no credit for this recipe – this all Wellness Mama’s!

Ingredients

1. Coconut oil – I am using Viridian 100% organic, raw coconut oil** and it is simply divine. It is also a massive 500g jar, so you’ll get a lot of batches of lotion out of it. I was really keen to use high quality coconut oil because it will be going all over my skin, and the less processed the better as far as I’m concerned. Remember, what goes on goes IN!
2. Cacao butter – Wellness Mama says cocoa, shea butter or mango butter work too, but I find cacao butter gives a lovely fragrance that means you don’t need to add any other scent. Plus, I couldn’t find shea or mango conveniently, whereas cacao butter is in every health-related store these days and it’s not too pricey either.
3. Bees Wax – Unfortunately, this recipe is not vegan because of this ingredient, but I will investigate alternatives and keep you posted! I found this bar in The Health Store, but from some brief searches online it looks like it can also be purchased in a more granular form, so whichever is more convenient for you!
4. Silicone Cake Cups – These little gems were only €1.50 for 12 in a local store and they’re perfect for this task – no sticking, no paper waste and they’re reusable so you can get a lot of use from them! I’ll be keeping this pack for future batches – they’re also handy for storing the lotion bars in.

 Because this was my first attempt and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect, I cut the recipe a little bit and used a half cup of cacao butter and coconut oil, and half of the beeswax bar. From this batch I got four large lotion blocks, so you could increase or decrease according to what you would like!

Step 1: I created a very improvised bain-marie to melt the three ingredients together. By that I mean, I put them in a bowl over a pot of boiling water and the heat melts them… It sounded fancier as a bain-marie… Please, please be careful using this method as it’s extremely easy to scald yourself or get a nasty steam burn. I had oven mitts to hold the bowl in place as I stirred and make sure to let steam escape constantly so that you don’t effectively create a pressure cooker! This is not a job for little kiddies to be involved in.

Step 2: Stir the ingredients until they are in a pure liquid form.

Step 3: At this stage, remove them from the heat and if you want to add essential oils, do so now. As I said, I didn’t because the cacao butter gives  a delicious scent by itself.

Step 4: I had my silicone molds in a cupcake tray to keep them in position. Carefully pour the liquid into the molds – I actually spooned it in very slowly to avoid any waste and/or burning of my hands and would strongly endorse this method. Any spills can be easily cleaned because they’ll dry almost like wax immediately and can be wiped/scraped off. Nevertheless, I’d do this on a counter-top rather than an expensive wooden table #commonsense

Step 5: Leave the bars to cool fully – I did this at around 8pm so I left them until the next morning. By then they were completely solid and ready to pop out of the molds.

I gave one to my friend, one to my mum, have been using one myself and have a spare waiting for when I run out. So far – a resounding success! They begin to melt as soon as they touch the skin, so keep them somewhere cool and dry. They aren’t the quickest drying product, and the skin will look wet for longer than it physically is, but as with all moisturising products it’s really an individual skin-by-skin case. I use it before bed each night to give it time to really absorb without any worry about my clothing.

So… what do you think? Tempted to try them?

Let me know in the comments!

~ MTL

mirrorthelove@gmail.com

**Viridian kindly sent me this beautiful 100% raw organic coconut oil. It is grown in accordance with the Soil Association guidelines for organic farming and production, and for every purchase of a Viridian product, they donate a portion back to charity. Viridian are the leading brand of ethical vitamins, maintaining a strong ethical philosophy at all stages. This means no animal testing, non-GMO, non-irradiated and 100% active ingredients with no additives, no added sugars, no colourings and no artificial flavourings.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.