Shea Butter

Amazingfun

Anyone know a place to purchase shea butter for use in recipes? Skin cream recipes.....I see the body shop link but am hoping to cheaper/larger quantities maybe?

Thanks in advance.

Tilly

M&S do it. Not sure how much tho.

Amazingfun

Found this place.....http://www.sheabutter.co.uk/trade

Tabitharose

haven't used them, but these are based in Wicklow

http://www.bomar.ie/index.php?productID=143

beautybrain

I make my own products from scratch, by no means an expert but I can tell you that the shea butter in the Body Shop is an emulsified cream containing shea butter, water, fragrance and other additives. If you want to start creating recipes from scratch what you want is pure shea butter. This comes in two types, unrefined and refined.

Refined is usually pure white and has no scent. Unrefined is usually an ivory colour and has a strong, nutty smell. If you want to scent your products with fragrance or essential oils, I'd go with the refined, the scent of the unrefined is hard to mask.

Bomar are handy enough but can be a little expensive for certain items, the sites below sell a range of carrier oils, butters and fragrance/essential oils:

Naturally Thinking
Fresholi
Mystic Moments

Shop around for the best prices, if you have Parcel Motel they are super handy for lowering the cost of shipping.

Hope this helps!

Amazingfun

Thank you so much BeautyBrain (great nic btw)

beautybrain

Amazingfun wrote: »

Thank you so much BeautyBrain (great nic btw)

No problem, and thanks

rustyzip

beautybrain wrote: »

I make my own products from scratch, by no means an expert but I can tell you that the shea butter in the Body Shop is an emulsified cream containing shea butter, water, fragrance and other additives. If you want to start creating recipes from scratch what you want is pure shea butter. This comes in two types, unrefined and refined.

Refined is usually pure white and has no scent. Unrefined is usually an ivory colour and has a strong, nutty smell. If you want to scent your products with fragrance or essential oils, I'd go with the refined, the scent of the unrefined is hard to mask.

Bomar are handy enough but can be a little expensive for certain items, the sites below sell a range of carrier oils, butters and fragrance/essential oils:

Naturally Thinking
Fresholi
Mystic Moments

Shop around for the best prices, if you have Parcel Motel they are super handy for lowering the cost of shipping.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the Bomar recommendation
I have bought all the stuff needed to make a cleansing balm but I'd like it if it wasn't such a eadt film. Like I'm obviously using a hot cloth to cleanse it off my face but if I didn't there would be a film on it. Am I using too much beeswax.
I'm using 15g beeswax, 20g shea butter, 65ml avocado oil and few drops of essential oil.
Would really appreciate ypur advice

beautybrain

rustyzip wrote: »

Thanks for the Bomar recommendation
I have bought all the stuff needed to make a cleansing balm but I'd like it if it wasn't such a eadt film. Like I'm obviously using a hot cloth to cleanse it off my face but if I didn't there would be a film on it. Am I using too much beeswax.
I'm using 15g beeswax, 20g shea butter, 65ml avocado oil and few drops of essential oil.
Would really appreciate ypur advice

Hey Rustyzip, the film could just be that you have too much of one ingredient and it's thrown the recipe a little off balance.

For any recipe you make, you want to make sure you weigh everything in grams, even your liquid oils. Different ingredients have different densities so weighing everything in grams ensures your recipes will always be accurate.

Any recipe should always be listed in percentages so you can scale up and scale down if you need to. I followed a lot of Pinterest recipes I found when I started but a lot of them aren't accurate and I wasted loads of ingredients.

A super easy recipe I've used is this one:
20% beeswax or soy wax
25% shea or mango butter
54% liquid oil
1% fragrance or essential oil

So if we take your ingredients, and as an example we’re making 100g of hot cloth cleanser:

20% beeswax - 20g
25% shea butter - 25g
54% avocado oil - 54g
1% essential oil - 1g (0.5% Frankincense and 0.5% Mandarin is lovely!)

The percentages will always stay the same but you can scale this up or down if you have a smaller or larger container. Most kitchen scales can't measure 1g accurately so I bought a cheap jewellers scales from Ebay to measure out my essential oils.

I hope this helps!

rustyzip

beautybrain wrote: »

Hey Rustyzip, the film could just be that you have too much of one ingredient and it's thrown the recipe a little off balance.

For any recipe you make, you want to make sure you weigh everything in grams, even your liquid oils. Different ingredients have different densities so weighing everything in grams ensures your recipes will always be accurate.

Any recipe should always be listed in percentages so you can scale up and scale down if you need to. I followed a lot of Pinterest recipes I found when I started but a lot of them aren't accurate and I wasted loads of ingredients.

A super easy recipe I've used is this one:
20% beeswax or soy wax
25% shea or mango butter
54% liquid oil
1% fragrance or essential oil

So if we take your ingredients, and as an example we’re making 100g of hot cloth cleanser:

20% beeswax - 20g
25% shea butter - 25g
54% avocado oil - 54g
1% essential oil - 1g (0.5% Frankincense and 0.5% Mandarin is lovely!)

The percentages will always stay the same but you can scale this up or down if you have a smaller or larger container. Most kitchen scales can't measure 1g accurately so I bought a cheap jewellers scales from Ebay to measure out my essential oils.

I hope this helps!

Thanks so so much!
I love tangerine oil. Citrus oils are amazing.
How are you so knowledgable about these things, did you study it?
I'd love to do a part time course.
Realistically I suppose you can use the Internet as a guide!

beautybrain

rustyzip wrote: »

Thanks so so much!
I love tangerine oil. Citrus oils are amazing.
How are you so knowledgable about these things, did you study it?
I'd love to do a part time course.
Realistically I suppose you can use the Internet as a guide!

Citrus oils are lovely, especially in body butters, top notes so they don't last long on the skin but anchoring them with base notes like vanilla or patchouli helps

I actually got the majority of my info online. The best resource would be Point of Interest, or SwiftyCraftyMonkey's blog. She's a cosmetic chemist from Canada and she posts amazing recipes that you can tweak and make your own. She also has the profiles of all carrier oils and butters which is handy if your looking for a particular effect on the skin.

Soap Queen is a blog which has some great recipes too, mostly soap but some bath and body recipes too!

rustyzip

beautybrain wrote: »

Citrus oils are lovely, especially in body butters, top notes so they don't last long on the skin but anchoring them with base notes like vanilla or patchouli helps

I actually got the majority of my info online. The best resource would be Point of Interest, or SwiftyCraftyMonkey's blog. She's a cosmetic chemist from Canada and she posts amazing recipes that you can tweak and make your own. She also has the profiles of all carrier oils and butters which is handy if your looking for a particular effect on the skin.

Soap Queen is a blog which has some great recipes too, mostly soap but some bath and body recipes too!

Checked out those blogs they're great!
Another question I'd really love you to answer is what type of utensils do you use? I STUPIDLY used kitchen bowls and saucepans and they were near impossible to clean with beeswax. Should I invest in special utensils?!

beautybrain

rustyzip wrote: »

Checked out those blogs they're great!
Another question I'd really love you to answer is what type of utensils do you use? I STUPIDLY used kitchen bowls and saucepans and they were near impossible to clean with beeswax. Should I invest in special utensils?!

I'd definitely invest in separate bowls and utensils. Go for stainless steel bowls, they don't hold on to scents like plastic can. You can place them over a pan of hot water to melt your butters and beeswax. I got loads of cheap tablespoons in the 2 euro shop. I'd also take a look at Amazon for pipettes for measuring essential oils,gloves and I use isopropyl alcohol wipes to sterilise my utensils after washing just to make sure they are all super clean before I start. A cheap hand mixer is ideal for whipped body butters, scrubs etc.

Tesco do stainless steel eggcups, which are great for measuring your fragrances as the amounts are so low.

Also, when buying your ingredients, start off with 100ml of each oil you wanna try, 200g of each butter. You can try them and find out which ones you really like without committing to large amounts which can go rancid if not used in time.

Hope that helps!

Is there anywhere I can buy Shea Butter in a bricks and mortar shop in Dublin?

LinF

Amazingfun wrote: »

Anyone know a place to purchase shea butter for use in recipes? Skin cream recipes.....I see the body shop link but am hoping to cheaper/larger quantities maybe?

Thanks in advance.

I buy mine from Naissance/Amazon.co.uk. I normally buy the largest size together with jojoba oil and vit E oil, very reasonable. I know the shea butter and jojoba oil combination works great on my skin because it is in my Monsia Skincare so I made my own body, hand & feet mixture. Very simple, if you want recipe just ask, all done in the microwave and takes only a few seconds.