Episode #16: How to Make Homemade Lotions and Body Butters

What if you would make your own homemade lotions and body butters? Listen in as I chat with Angela Palmer while she provides some tips on how beginners can get started in DIY skin care.

Specifically, we discuss:

• The difference between a lotion and a body butter

• Pros and cons of a lotion versus a body butter.

• Types of oils and butters she recommends for each of these products

• Where you can find the ingredients for making your own lotion and body butter

Mentioned In This Episode

• Where you can find Angela: Website

• Angela's gift: E-book: The 10 Best Lotion Making Oils and Butters

• Don't forget to join our wait list for the next HobbyScool online learning summit. Our summits are free to attend and you can be the first to know when the next summit launches by getting on the wait list here.

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Transcript:

00:00:02

And today my special guest is Angela Palmer. Angela is a handmade skin care educator. She lives in Idaho. And Angela, I'm super excited to chat with you today. This is a topic that I don't know a lot about. We're going to be talking about making do-it-yourself lotions and body, body, body Butters. I got tripped up there for a second and I I could tell you I don't know anything about the subject, so I am.

00:00:30

I'm very excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about this myself. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about you and how you help people and how you got started in this?

00:00:47

Yeah, thanks for for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So I got started making my own handmade skin care products, kind of like anything really cool that we get into in life. I kind of fell into it when I was in school to become an esthetician. We had one lesson that and it was a very short lesson, but it was about making skin care products from ingredients that you had in your kitchen.

00:01:17

So our instructor had us bring in like a papaya and a pineapple and yogurt and oatmeal, and we spent this lesson just kind of crafting some skin care products from these kitchen ingredients. And that really kind of intrigued me because I remembered my mom when I was a kid. She would make like an oatmeal facial mask, but seeing that these natural ingredients could actually have.

00:01:48

Effectiveness on par as a professional product. That was really exciting to me. And then when I started working after I graduated, started working at the day SPA, we had handmade products that we would use in our treatment rooms. So we would do salt gloves that were made from sea salt and oils, and we made our own massage oils from coconut oil and sweet almond oil and essential oils. And our herbal body wraps were literally. Just.

00:02:18

Herbal tea that we bought from the grocery store and we made really strong herbal tea and soaked our body wrap in that and our clients, they loved these treatments. So I really was intrigued and that kind of like set me in motion with.

00:02:37

Starting to research some of these natural ingredients and I'm thinking, well, if I could make this product for my clients in our treatment room, what other types of products can I make at home for myself? And this was.

00:02:51

Many, many years ago, those of us who are over a certain age remember when the Internet was not a thing, so there wasn't a lot of information out there. So I spent a lot of time in the library and reading books, and then I just kind of jumped in and started experimenting with making my own skin care and.

00:03:13

I made a lot of mistakes. I made some really, really, really bad products in the the beginning, but that was how I learned. So that was actually the single most.

00:03:24

The important thing I think that I I did was just experimenting. So I made products that felt horrible on the skin. They smelt horrible, they molded. But as I experimented and had those failures and then fixed things slowly, I actually started creating skin care. That was really lovely and I really liked and I started replacing my store bought skin care with my handmade.

00:03:54

Products, and my clients would ask me occasionally, like what? What products do you use on your skin? And I would tell them, actually I make my own. And they were kind of interested in it. Like I was. I kind of. I thought, I don't know, maybe it was just me. Like I was kind of strange and this was something that only I was interested in. But I realized that other people were kind of interested in this as well. And about that time a friend of a friend was creating.

00:04:24

A holistic Wellness program at California State University, Stanislaw. And she asked me to come and teach a natural skin care course for that program. And that was how I got into teaching others about making their own skin care products. And it really slowly grew from there. So I taught my first handmade skin care class in December of 2001. So I've been doing this for a long, long time.

00:04:55

And I've always just been so humbled and appreciative of my students and their passion for the topic and their enthusiasm because it really is a it's fun and it's exciting to be able to create your own skin care products at home really simply with lovely, lovely ingredients. So I think there are like two types of people in the world, like, why make it when I can?

00:05:25

Diet. But I and my students were definitely like the why buy it when you can make it? So that's really kind of my story in, in a nutshell, how I got started teaching others how to make their own and skin care products.

00:05:41

So when you mentioned the you know about the oatmeal facial mask, I remember doing that years and years and years.

00:05:47

Ago, yeah, right.

00:05:49

Yeah. So I was like, you know, back when I think I was trying to solve like an acne problem problem. Back then, I don't know if that actually does that or not, but.

00:05:59

Yeah.

00:06:00

It was a great skin care ingredient. You can use it for a lot of different skin care issues. It's very cleansing. It's anti-inflammatory, it's gentle and you can put it in a lot of different products like facial masks and bath soaks, soap, of course. You can make a oatmeal extract by soaking it in a glycerin and then adding that extract into lotions and and cream. So it's a it's a really versatile ingredient.

00:06:30

So listening to you describe all that you you definitely have me motivated to explore replacing like my lubricin and austreim lotion. So so let's get started in here. But the first question I have for you is.

00:06:47

What is the difference between a lotion and a body butter? I'm not even. I'm not even.

00:06:55

I don't even really know what a body butter is, so you might want to go into a little bit more detail about that too.

00:07:00

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So lotions and body Butters very often, especially in the DIY skin Care World, like the the terms are used interchangeably, but there are some very key differences between a body butter and a lotion. So a body butter, it's a moisturizing product, so you put it on your.

00:07:25

Skin to moisturize you you just massage it in just as you would like a typical over the counter or store bought lotion. But a body butter is a water free or what we call anhydrous product. So it is made simply from lipid oils or what are sometimes called carrier oils. So this could be sweet almond oil or sunflower oil or hemp seed or avocado oil, any type of of liquid oil and then blended with.

00:07:55

A cosmetic butter. So this would be like Shea butter or cocoa butter or capoise. Shea butter, mango butter. OK, so these butters are solid at room temperature. So to make a body butter, you could make a very simple body butter by just melting down a butter with an oil, mix them together and then you let them solidify. You can just leave them as is. It's almost like a if you just leave them as is. It's almost like a lip balm.

00:08:26

Or your body's kind of that consistency. But what a lot of handmade skin care crafters do is they whip these butters and oils together. So sometimes you'll hear like a whipped body butter or a whippy body butter or a body frosting. So just when these ingredients are almost completely solidified, but they're still kind of warm and soft, take a hand mixer and you whip them up just like you would whip up meringue or.

00:08:56

Buttercream frosting. So it whips air into the product and you can add fragrance oils or essential oils to give a a scent to it if you choose, but that's what a body butter is. So it's basically just a blend of oils and cosmetic butters and it is a water free product, OK. So that's a body butter. Now in the lotion, it's a little bit different in that we do have those oils, so the same.

00:09:27

Oils that we use in a body butter, the same cosmetic butters that we use in the body. Butter can be used to make lotion, but the key difference in the lotion is that there is water in the product. OK, so a lotion technically speaking is an emulsification between oil and water, so.

00:09:52

And I'll, at this point you're saying, OK, that's really cool. But oil and water don't mix, right, because the oil floats on top of water. So to make a lotion you have to add a special ingredient that is called an emulsifier. So an emulsifier allows the oils to become suspended. All the oil molecules become suspended evenly throughout the water. So then you have tiny, tiny, tiny little droplets of oil.

00:10:22

Suspended throughout your water and the emulsifier keeps that shelf stable so the oil isn't going to separate out. So the store bought lotions that you buy it is an emulsified lotion. So you can make at home a lotion that is almost exactly like the lotions that you would buy over the counter as far as the way they feel on the skin and the way they look. So that the key difference here between a body butter.

00:10:53

And a lotion is that body butters are anhydrous or water free and lotions are emulsification so an emulsification of oil and water so I.

00:11:06

Understand I think now and thanks for that great explanation. So I understand the difference between a lotion and a body butter. I guess my next question is what would you choose to use one of the over the other? Like what are the benefits and?

00:11:23

You know pros and cons of each.

00:11:26

Yeah, so both products, they have their own benefits and drawbacks. So it really does depend on what your end goal is. So body Butters, most handcrafted skin care makers, they start with a body butter because you know when they look online at recipes, the recipe seems very simple and the ingredients seem very simple. So the benefit.

00:11:53

Of body butters is that you don't need any type of specialty ingredients. You can make them very simply with even just two ingredients, a cosmetic butter and an oil. So they're very, very simple. The barrier to entry and making these products are very, very simple.

00:12:11

So that is a a benefit of the the body butter. Another benefit is that you can easily make an all natural body butter because you're just adding oils and butters, very simple ingredients. Those are obviously natural ingredients. So body Butters are very, very easy to make 100% natural if that is important to you, if that's a concern of yours. But the drawback to using a body butter.

00:12:42

Is that just by the very nature of the product is they're going to feel a little bit greasy on the skin, OK? And there's really not a whole lot we can do to change that fact, OK. And that's probably the question. The number one question that I get from my students when they've been making body butters for a while is how can I make my body butter feel less greasy on my skin? And we do have to be just kind of realistic.

00:13:12

About what the body butter is going to feel like because it's made of nothing but.

00:13:20

Oily products, OK, so it is going to feel a little bit greasy on the skin. You can do things that combat that that greasiness a little bit. Some crafters put arrowroot powder or tapioca starch in their body butter because those powders kind of absorb some of that greasiness you could definitely use.

00:13:43

Oils and butters that are fast absorbers, they're going to feel lighter on the skin. So fast absorbing butter would be mango butter. A really nice dry oil would be camellia oil is a great dry oil, so that that means it it doesn't feel as heavy on the skin. It absorbs pretty quickly, OK, but that drawback to the body butter is that it's always going to feel a little bit greasy.

00:14:13

A little bit heavy on on the skin. So we just have to know that that is is just the nature of that product. OK. And then?

00:14:24

Kind of conversely then we have our emulsified lotion. So the benefit of using an emulsified lotion or making an emulsified lotion is that whereas body butters are like 100% made from oil, so they are definitely going to feel out oily on the skin. And the multifield lotion is the majority of that product is water and only about 15 to 20% of an emulsified lotion.

00:14:55

Is made-up of oil, so it's going to feel a lot lighter on the skin simply because it has less oil in it. You're really massaging mostly water across the skin with a little bit of oil. So the water helps to kind of disperse that oil and disperse the butters across your skin. And it feels a lot lighter because we're using a lot less oil. And some people are like, but aren't I getting a watered down product? I know I would. I thought that.

00:15:26

Many years ago when I first started learning about cosmetic formulation, I would look at a lotion and the very first ingredient is water. And I went, oh, I'm getting a watered down product, why would I want water in my skin care? But water is not a filler ingredient in your lotion is actually chosen specifically for a very important role, and that is to add hydration to the skin. So hydration just means water. Your skin doesn't create hydration naturally it.

00:15:56

Has to be hydrated either from the inside, from water that you drink or from the outside. So this can be your skin kind of absorbing water from the atmosphere. So if you live in a very humid area, your skin is going to be a little bit more hydrated than somebody who lives in a very dry arid area. Or you can put a skin care product that adds hydration to the skin on your skin like like a lotion.

00:16:27

So that water isn't watering down your product, it's actually hydrating the skin. So this is a key benefit that kind of lotion has above a body butter is that it adds hydration to the skin, it hydrates your skin and then the oil seals that water in. So that's a really that's why lotions feel much more moisturizing than a body butter alone, so.

00:16:57

If your skin is already dehydrated, it's already lacking in water. You can put a body butter on and your skin will feel emollient and occlusive, but it can still feel dry. So if you've ever used a body butter and your skin felt dry, and then you put the body butter on and you're like, wow, I feel kind of oily and moisturized but still dry, it's because that body butter isn't adding the hydration that your skin needs. OK, so.

00:17:27

Um multiplied lotions are really good at hydrating and moisturizing the skin. So if you have dehydrated skin, dry skin, you're going to get a better result with an emulsified lotion than you would a body butter, and you can use both. You can put your emulsified lotion on and then do a body butter on the top to kind of get some extra protection, but in general you're going to get more hydration from a.

00:17:57

Minimal supplied lotion. So that's a big benefit of making an emulsified lotion. But there are a few drawbacks to making lotion versus a body butter. So the first drawback is that you do need some specialty ingredients, so you will need an emulsifier. And for beginning lotion crafters, I recommend an emulsifying wax. So this is a product that is it's actually.

00:18:27

A blend of two emulsifiers which is Sedol or satariel alcohol and a polysorbate, and this emulsifying wax is what helps your oil and your water stay blended together. So I'm multiplying. Wax is not 100% natural, strictly speaking you can buy animals applying wax that is made from vegetable sources, but it is not a 100% natural.

00:18:58

Product. So that's a concern of yours. That might be a drawback to making animals applied lotion. Emulsified lotions also need to be preserved. And I know preservatives are kind of like a a a scary buzzword in the handmade skin care industry right now. Some of it deserves, some of it not, but there are.

00:19:22

Plenty of very safe preservatives that are available to the Home Crafter and the reason why an emulsified lotion absolutely needs to be preserved is that without a preservative it is going to grow mold. It can grow bacteria, it can grow yeast and that definitely not stuff that we want growing in our lotion and putting on our on our skin and because water is.

00:19:52

The breeding ground of life. So anytime you have water in any type of skin care product, you're going to need a preservative to keep that product safe. If you think about, if you have like a jar of water and you set it out on your kitchen counter, it can sit there for years and years and it would be completely fine. But if you add maybe a little chicken bullion to that water and let it set out on your your kitchen counter, it's only going to take, what, two to three days?

00:20:23

And you're going to have mold and yeast and a lot of nasty stuff growing in that jar. And that's because we have created a hospitable home for all of these microbes to grow. And that's what you're doing when you're making emulsified lotion. They blend of the oil and the water makes a really hospitable home for microbes. So emulsified lotions are not safe to be left unpreserved, unlike a body butter, because the body butter is anhydrous.

00:20:53

It contains no water. It just isn't.

00:20:58

It's it's not likely to grow any type of microbes, just doesn't make a good home for them. But an emulsified lotion does. So it's really important that you do use a preservative for the home crafter, especially the beginning crafter of synthetic preservatives or what I recommend. And there are some natural preservatives out there, but they are very, very difficult to use for the beginner. So I don't recommend natural preservatives if you're just starting out making emulsified lotions.

00:21:28

You may grow into that, but just starting out it's easier to stick with the synthetic preservatives and really the risk of.

00:21:38

Using an unpreserved lotion is infinitely more risky than any impossible risk of the preservative itself. Does that make sense? So it it's it's really important that we're using that preservative in an emulsified lotion. So again the the benefit of the body butter is that you can easily make a natural body butter 100% natural body.

00:22:08

Water, but they tend to be oily and greasy and they don't add hydration and the emulsified lotion. They add the hydration they feel like they absorb. You're going to get that professional feel and that professional look with an emulsified lotion, and then the drawback is you are going to need those specialty ingredients.

00:22:31

So Angela, thank you for kind of doing the pros and cons of each of those. For all the beginners out there, let's say that I just wanted to get started and kind of dip my toes in creating smart my, you know, my own lotion or body butter. Where can I buy the ingredients and what should I start with?

00:22:56

That's a really good, that's a really good question. There are because handmade skin care has become like so much more mainstream, which is awesome. There are so many really great places to get these ingredients, and you can get certain oils and butters at the health food store. So if you want to shop locally, you can go to your health food store and yeah, the same oils that you use to cook with, you can use in your handmade skin care. It's not like there's a.

00:23:26

Cooking oil and a separate skin care oil. They're all the same type of oils, so you can get them at the health food store, but there are also some really great online suppliers. I really like mountain Rose herbs. That's a great place for getting the oils and the butters for your body butter and your lotion. Mountain Rose Herbs also has my personal favorite emulsifying wax. It is a vegetable.

00:23:57

Based emulsifying wax. So it's sourced from palm oil, but it is the palm that they use is a responsibly sourced. It's from the Rs PO roundtable for Sustainable palm oil. So it's a really easy, almost dying wax to work with. It's has great stability and it feels good on the skin. It's not super waxy. Certain almost dying products can give like a waxy feel or a soapy.

00:24:27

Feel on the skin, but the mountain rose herbs are most fine. Wax is great wholesale supplies plus is also one of my go to places to buy ingredients and they have everything there. Like literally everything that you could possibly need to make any type of handmade skin care product. They have all the oils and the butters. They have emulsifying wax. They have preservative. My favorite preservative for lotions for the beginner is liquid germal.

00:24:58

Plus super simple preservative to use. You use it at a very low usage rate, half a percent or less. So very very small amount of preservative and you can get that wholesale supplies. Plus you don't need a wholesale license. I think the minimum order is like $25.00 but you can easily spend that because they have lots of cool ingredients there. So those are some of my recommendations for for finding some really good quality.

00:25:29

Skin care ingredients at really good price.

00:25:33

So Angela, thank you so much for walking us through how we can make our own lotions and body butter body butters. I don't know why they keep getting tripped up on that. Before we go, can you tell the audience where they can find you? And I also think you have a free gift for them.

00:25:51

I do so you can find me at www.angelapalmer.com. So on my site I have lots of recipes.

00:26:04

Not only how to make lotions, but facial products and bath products and basically any type of skin care. If you are wanting to get into handmade skin care, I've got recipes there for you, soap recipes and and all that fun stuff and you can I think you've got the I sent you the the link.

00:26:23

We have the link and we'll make sure it's in the show notes for everybody.

00:26:27

I can't remember it right off the top of my head, but you can get a 10 best oils and butters for making body lotions and body butters. So these are like my ten favorite oils and butters, plus some of the other ingredients that you would need for like an emulsified lotion. And listed out the benefits of each oil, the absorption rate.

00:26:58

Of each oil. And that's really key when you're trying to figure out, you know, what oil or what butter is going to be best. For me, if you have oily skin, you're going to want a fast absorbing oil. If you have drier skin, you're going to want a more occlusive oil. So the absorption rate is on there and just everything you need to know about each specific oil so that you can read through and pick out one or two that would work best for you. So it takes a lot of the guesswork out of getting on one of these cosmetic suppliers and they have.

00:27:29

Literally hundreds of different oils and butters and it can be very overwhelming. And you don't want to buy an oil or a butter and get it home and try it and it's you don't like the way it feels or you don't like the way it smells. So this guide is going to help you narrow your choices down and help you choose the best oils and butters to get started with.

00:27:54

And Angela, thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with us. We'll make sure all of those links are in the show notes so people can go & up for your ebook.

00:28:06

Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having.

00:28:08

Me thank you.