Beautiful Food, Travel & Design
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. It’s never been something that Pat and I have taken seriously as a couple. We’re always trying to find ways to celebrate our relationship and make each other feel special, so the idea of needing a day set aside by greeting card companies to do so feels a bit contrived…. Read More »
Body butter isn’t a fancy enough name for this stuff – even homemade whipped body butter doesn’t do this stuff justice. I should have probably called it something else that is more descriptive, like bikini time body butter or time-to-get-your-legs-out-it’s-summer body butter. Or legs-for-days body butter. Or I’m-going-out-tonight-and-man-do-I-look-good body butter.
What I mean is this miraculous potion is body butter in the literal sense, unlike that store bought stuff that has all sorts of additives in it to make it more like a thick lotion. It’s solid in your hand but once you rub it on your skin it melts and gets oily – just like butter. That means it’s not the best all over body moisturizer for most people. If you’re going to put it all over, you need to cover yourself with something you don’t mind getting oily – or just plan on hanging out in the house naked for a while until it soaks in (or if you’re in San Francisco, plan a trip to Baker Beach or the Folsom Street Fair I suppose).
Get the DIY and read more after the jump!
I’ve been on a healthy beauty kick recently – it’s so easy to make many of the beauty products I use every day at home and often it’s cheaper than buying them in the store. It’s nice to be able to control what goes into them with ingredients like beeswax and coconut oil instead of isopropyl lanolate and octyldodecanol (for realz?).
I made lip balm for little impromptu presents for my girlfriends and to make them a bit fancier, I used vintage pillboxes that I collected from flea markets. With a bit of patience, I collected a huge assortment all for under $3 each! There’s also a huge variety of options on Etsy too.
6 tablespoons coconut oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons beeswax (I used cosmetic-grade white beeswax pellets)
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon pure Vitamin E oil
Lipstick (optional)
Place a few inches of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Place a heatproof bowl over the water and melt the coconut oil, olive oil and beeswax together, stirring occasionally.
Add the honey, Vitamin E oil, and lipstick and stir until melted. Pour into your containers and let set. You can speed up the process by popping it in the fridge.
Note: To color this batch I used about a 1/2 inch slice of a deep burgundy lipstick and it produced the pretty pale pink color you see in the photos.