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making a lighter body butter
Hi everyone. I’m very green and have only just started experimenting like a month ago after a long research period.
So I’m trying to formulate an anhydrous body butter that is exceptionally light for an anhydrous product as well as wanting it to be fairly firm, have a higher melting point so that it absorbs before it tuns fully liquid on the skin and great glide with a silky feel. I’m also trying to avoid silicons and keep my ingredients on the natural side of the spectrum.
Other than use butters that absorb quickly I’ve tried some esters, squalane, and caprylic/capric triglyceride. My plan was to use one of those at 10 %, but each one seems to have a jelling effect on the formulation, even the squalane. Worse is that the butter then has a low melting point even with high concentrations of butter and even if it originally feels very firm it immediately liquefies when i put it on my skin. Additionally the butter seems to go through a curing phase where it takes a few days to reach it’s final texture. This is even after it cooled in the fridge. after about 3 days it does improve to where its less jell like, has a higher melting point and better glide than it did the first day. still however the melting point is just a little too low.
I did buy some glyceryl stearate to try to create a firmer product with a higher melting point but I haven’t had time to try it yet.
Has anyone ever experienced this curing phase?
Any ideas on methods to counteract the jelling or other non jelling ways to reduce greasiness?
Any Thoughts?Thanks for any advice in advance.
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7 Replies
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These are examples of kokum butter, cupuaçu butter, squalane, and a little sea buckthorn berry oil and orange wax. i didn’t measure this time as it is for a coworker with the goal of just having nice smooth texture, not necessarily a butter.
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Something is wrong there. Waxes should thicken after an hour in the fridge. Post your formula.
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Orange wax is kind of runny and I only used enough to scent it so it didn’t have much impact on the texture. I don’t usually include wax in my formulations and it still comes out more or less like that. In the photo above I didn’t measure my ingredients because I was just making something for a coworker but i think it was close to 3 parts butter to 1 part squalane plus a couple drops of the wax and sea buckthorn berry. I’ve tried multiple formulations and the amount of jelling seams to coincide with the amount of non oils I use, meaning either the esters, squalane, or caprylic/capric triglyceride. My first attempt however was
55% mango butter
15 % cupuacu butter
10% olive squalane
6.5% meadow foam seed oil
5% alkyl ester
4% AquaSeal/ coconut extract
2% co2 extract of Mango
1% vegecide
1% sea buchthorn berry oil
.5% mango fruit extract (powder)
.25% rosemary extract
In that case it jelled less than the pictures above but the jelling was there and it had a low melting point which again improved after a few days but still not quite right.Sorry I don’t have exact measurements of the amounts for the pics
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Well you need to add some sort of wax to make it hard. It will be gelly and runny otherwise.
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Ok I’ll try that. Any ideas on which wax would best allow me to keep a silky texture? Is that typical for squalane and caprylic/capric triglyceride to jell?
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You can try a mixture of candelilla and beeswax. 10% to begin with.
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Thanks, I’ll try that if the glyceryl stearate I have fails. I’ve been hesitant with waxes as I don’t want to create a balm type texture.
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