Swirled Body Butters – have you seen these amazing looking things?? They’re super catchy and seem to be all over Instagram, so I got obsessed and experimented with them.
Here’s my version. It is a simple way to achieve a good consistency body butter that can be squeezed out of a pastry bag in a smooth, swirled motion, and with vibrant colors that make your body butter stand out from the rest.
Body Butter Base Recipe – 60% butters & 40% oils
A little secret I’d like to reveal as someone who has formulated and played around with DIY skincare for 10 years (omg where did the time go??), is to first decide on the main percentages of my butters vs oils.
In this article I will not talk about skincare products that contain water as that is a different conversation and once you introduce water in a skincare formula, you have to also add an emulsifier and a preservative. Long subject, we can talk about it in a later blog.
Back to my little secret, there are 3 common base butters that are used in DIY skincare: Shea, Mango and Cocoa. All other butters can be similar to these in firmness and consistency, and once you try them all out, you will be able to categorize them accordingly.
But if you are a beginner or occasional DIY skincare creator, just stick to these 3 butters and to these ideal ratios:
Shea Butter – use a ratio of 70% shea and 30% oils
Mango – Use a ratio of 60% mango and 40% oils
Cocoa – Use a ratio of 50% cocoa and 50% oils
These ratios make a semi-hard body butter that melts on skin contact. I did a DIY tutorial and wrote a blog on this here.
In today’s Swirled Body Butter recipe, I have used both Shea and Mango, and I kept the butters at 60% and the oils at 40%. This gave me the perfect consistency butter that I could easily push out of a pastry bag into that beautiful swirled look that I am so obsessed about.
Swirled Fruit Loop Body Butter Recipe
For this recipe I used the following ingredients, I was able to fill 10 8-oz jars. Please note that because of the empty space that the swirling creates, each jar contains less than 8 ounces of product.
Ingredients
- 16 oz Shea Butter
- 8 oz Mango Butter
- 8 oz Jojoba Oil
- 8 oz Almond Oil
- 0.5 oz Bergamot Essential Oil
- 0.3 oz Peppermint Essential Oil
- 3 teaspoons of each: pink mica, purple mica and violet mica
To personalize your Swirled body butter, you can replace the Essential Oils and the mica colors with whatever you like (for example you can use fruit loop scent if you love that). Otherwise, make sure you keep the ratios and measurements the same as this recipe and it will turn out beautiful.
How To Make A Multi-Color Body Butter
Put Shea Butter, Mango Butter, Jojoba and Almond oil in a bowl, put this over a pan with some water and turn the heat on low. Let everything melt completely, stirring occasionally. This will take about 15-20 minutes.
Remove from the heat and let it cool down to the lowest flash point of your Essential Oils.
Note: The flash Point of an essential oil is the temperature below which the scent of the oil will stay strong and fragrant. If you heat an EO over its flash point, it will start to evaporate, and the scent will diminish.
I used Bergamot EO, which has a flash point of 131 F, and Peppermint EO, which has a flash point of 156 F. Because Bergamot has the lowest flash point, I waited until my melted butters + oils were cooler than 131 F, then I added my essential oil blend.
I then placed everything in the fridge for about 2 hours, or until it was mostly solid.
I then put everything in my kitchen mixer with a whisk attachment, and I whipped it until it was fluffy, lighter in color and almost double in size. This took about 10 minutes.
I then separated the mixture in 3 bowls, added a different color mica in each, stirring and folding it in until fully incorporated.
Piping Sequence
For this step you’ll need:
- A large, star shaped pastry tip
- A large pastry bag
- Plastic food wrap. I used Press’n Seal since that’s what I had in my kitchen, but you can use a regular one
Step #1
Cut the tip of your pastry bag, insert the tip securely at the end of it
Step #2
Cut off about 1.5 ft of the plastic food wrap and lay it flat
Step #3
Make 3 even lines of your 3 colored body butters, make sure you leave some empty room on all sides of the plastic to make it easy to wrap everything up.
Step #4
Carefully wrap the long side so you have a sausage-looking pastry bag with your 3 colored butters snug inside.
Twist close each of the two shorter ends of the plastic wrap
Step #5
Cut off one of the short ends, and place this inside the main pastry bag (the one with the pastry tip).
Step #6
Place the tip at the bottom of your jar and squeeze the bag contents in a circular and spiral motion until the jar is filled.
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YOU DID IT! Yup, you’re done, and I bet it looks like artwork.
This body butter has a long shelf life, about 12 months. Make sure you store it in a cool place so it doesn’t melt. Apply this on your skin 2 times each day and your skin will love it.
Recipe Video
As always, please leave any questions or feedback you may have below.