Thrilled to find that homemade moisturising body cream actually suits my skin better than the rather expensive cream that I have been using - which also contains the ubiquitous palm oil and comes in a single-use plastic bottle. In recent years my skin has been getting drier and drier, so that it is often irritated by shower gels and by relatively rough materials such as denim. I found this very simple recipe on the wellnessmama website (I am sure there are lots of others) :
1/2 cup (8 tbs or 120ml) almond oil or jojoba oil (or any other liquid oil)
1/4 cup (4 tbs) coconut oil
1/4 cup (4 tbs) beeswax pellets or 2 x 30ml beeswax bars
optional:
1 tsp vitamin E oil
2 tbsp shea butter or cocoa butter
essential oils, vanilla extract, or other natural extracts to suit your preference
Method: Heat and stir the main 3 ingredients in a bowl above a saucepan of boiling water (with the butter, if using), cool slightly and stir in the other optional ingredients. Pour into a glass jar. If not liquid enough, heat again and add more almond oil.
Alternatively: Instead of putting the main ingredients in a bowl, they can be heated directly in the glass jar they will be stored in, if it is quite broad - place jar in saucepan on an upturned saucer (to reduce noise), and fill water to a quarter or half way up the jar; heat gently.
I used Lemongrass oil and didn't bother with the other optional ingredients. It is smooth, pale-beeswax (i.e. cream) coloured, and smells of lemon - lovely! And now my skin doesn't dry out by the end of the day, and I don't need as much of the moisturising cream as I used to (500ml used to last no time at all). There are other more complex recipes for moisturising body cream, but this suits me.
While checking out the ingredients of products that I use for palm oil, I was interested to learn that not only does the production of palm oil threaten the environment and climate, but it can actually also irritate the skin of some people, and cause blackheads amongst other things, unlike coconut oil. Also that there are over 200 terms for palm oil and its derivatives, including some products such as glycerine (used in soaps) that most commonly consists of palm oil, although in theory it could consist of coconut or soya oil.
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