Shea Butter Sugar Scrub Sunday

Sunday 13 January 2013

So I was browsing Etsy recently and found a really nice shop selling really scrummy-sounding sugar scrubs. I was thisclose to treating myself when I remembered I had pretty much all the ingredients to make my own and decided that would be much more fun and rewarding. It didn't take long to find a good, simple recipe online and I already have so much more shea butter than I could ever get through otherwise, so I decided to give it a go this afternoon.



This is the recipe I used (found here):

1/2 cup of shea butter
1/3 cup of carrier oil (I used grapeseed oil)
1/8 teaspoon of vitamin E oil (this is optional but I have some so I stuck it in)
1 teaspoon corn flour (this stops the butter being quite so greasy)
Essential/fragrance oil
1 cup sugar

I mixed my oils first. I used a blend of fragrance and essential oils, going for mango, peach, raspberry, strawberry, ginger, and cinnamon (I'm in love with peach and mango as a combination at the moment. My house constantly smells of it). 

Oils

Next I measured out my other ingredients. My landlord's teacups may never fully recover.

Ingredients

But that's okay, because you should see what we've done to the rest of the house. Next step was whipping the shea butter. As I've mentioned probably many times before here, I have nerve damage in my right arm from untreated/badly treated RSI, so hand-whipping the shea butter was really hard work! I made it easier on myself by doing the whipping on a hob set to a low temp so the butter melted a bit as I went.

Whipping

This really didn't look like a lot of butter to me, so I threw in a bit more halfway through. I easily ended up with enough mixture for a big-sized jar. Anyway, once I had the butter mixed to a creamy consistency, I started to add in the grapeseed oil, blending in a bit at a time. Once that was all in, I mixed in the vitamin E, corn flour, and fragrance/essential oil blend and stirred it all together. The recipe then said to add the sugar in a bit at a time, but I was feeling frisky so I just dumped a cup in and went for it.

And that was it! This is the (slightly blurry) finished product:

Finished

Ta-da! The scent isn't quite as strong as I hoped; next time I'll probably double the quantities. But otherwise it looks and feels beautiful! The only downside was cleaning up, as shea butter just got everywhere. Everywhere. My entire kitchen is really nicely moisturised now, I suppose. 

In an effort to use more shea butter, I also made myself a couple of new lip balms: one in absinthe and caramel, one in lavender and pumpkin. The absinthe/caramel one is gorgeous! I want to eat it. I added in a drop of aniseed EO to spice up the absinthe oil and it's all tingly and awesome. And now I'm off for a bath to test my scrub!

Alchemy Report

Thursday 3 January 2013

So it's 2013! We survived an apocalyptic year, apparently. I'm aiming to open shop on Etsy in February and I've almost finalised my launch range. I do have a few more potential additions now, as I just spent two hours making everything from anime-inspired to Lovecraft-inspired perfume oils. I only stopped because I ran out of room in the kitchen. A few of my favourites from today's session:

Rei - inspired by the character from Neon Genesis Evangelion, my favourite anime series. This is a sweet, ethereal blend of cherry blossom, white musk, gardenia, and magnolia. Really pretty.

Dunwich - from the Lovecraft story, "The Dunwich Horror," this is a surprisingly madness-free mix of hay, allspice, honey, cedarwood and oakmoss.

Noir - a revamped version of the Ethan Banning oil I made and scrapped a while back, this is sandalwood with notes of nectarine and apricot, with hints of coffee and whisky. It's pretty much exactly how I first imagined it now.

Shinji - another NGE mix, this is a unisex blend of lemongrass, green tea, grapefruit, musk, and kudzu. I wasn't sure I'd like this - I'm not keen on lemongrass but I aim to experiment with all my oils even if I initially think I don't like them. This is definitely a favourite from today - fruity and unusual.

I'll probably be back in the kitchen tomorrow; I've still got a Hobbit-themed perfume in mind, as well as more Lovecraft and a couple of voudun-inspired mixes. Unngh. I love being off work!