'Heeling' Lemongrass Foot Balm

The first body care product I ever made was a foot balm.  My inspiration came from Nezza Naturals's Healing Hemp Foot Balm.  Their balm is a great product but it isn't locally available (I bought it while on vacation) and there were a few changes I wanted to make.

The original product had the following ingredient list: shea butter, avocado oil, castor oil, beeswax, lecithin & lanolin, essential oils of eucalyptus, peppermint, tea tree, rosemary & patchouli.

After doing a little research on the internet I came up with the following recipe:

 

'Heeling' Lemongrass Foot Balm

4 oz shea butter

1 oz mango butter

30 mL avocado oil

30 mL calendula oil

5 mL beeswax pellets

2.5 mL lanolin

2.5 mL essential oils (10 drops patchouli, 8 drops lemongrass, 4 drops tea tree, 1 drop lavender, 1 drop oil of oregano)

Melt butters and beeswax in a double boiler or microwave.  Mix in remaining ingredients.  Pour into clean containers.  This yields approximately 200 mL.  Notes: It takes a while to fully set up even after it seems to be cool.  When warm, the smell is pretty strong, but it is fine in the finished product.

 

Rational

I used shea and mango butters simply because another of my favourite body butters uses these.  I used approximately 30% oil and 70% butter.   Why?  I'm not sure.  There was a lot of variance in this ratio in all the different recipes out there.  I will experiment more with this in the future.

I changed the castor oil to calendula oil for the healing properties of calendula and because I believe it has less shine than castor oil.

I omitted the lecithin as I was unfamiliar with it, didn't think it was necessary, and some is naturally contained in avacado oil anyway.  I may experiment with it in the future. 

Since I had lanolin on hand from when my son was a newborn I put some in.  I doubt I would have bought any as I'm not sure how I feel about the use of lanolin.  Something I need to research.

I chose my essential oils for their antifungal/antibacterial properties.  Plus I love the scent of lemongrass!  I used the blending guidelines of base note (patchouli) 45-55%, middle (lemongrass) 30-40% and top notes (tea tree and lavender) 15-25%.  I doubt the one drop of oregano oil is enough to do anything at all, but I threw it in there anyway.  Here is a resource I found on essential oils, their properties and how to blend them.

Preservatives are not needed in this recipe as it is anhydrous.

 

Consistency

The Nezza Naturals Balm has a consistancy more like Vasoline.  My recipe produces a more solid body butter which melts on contact.  Initially, I thought it was too solid, but I have grown to really like it.

 

Experimenting

I played around a little and tried whipping during cool down vs leaving it.  I also increased the beeswax to 15 mL in one batch.  In the end, I liked the texture of the unwhipped with less beeswax the best.  My only problem is that it is a little granular.  I believe this is from the shea butter and will try to remedy then in the next batch.  I think it may help to cool the product more rapidly (i.e. stick it in the freezer) so that the shea butter doesn't crystallize (I'm not sure if it is actually crystallizing or just clumping, but rapidly cooling may help anyway).  If that doesn't work, I will try replacing some of the shea butter with more mango butter or with a different butter.

 

I've been using the balm daily and am pretty happy with it.  I was surprised at how easy it was to make and will definitely be making more of my own products.

 

Update May 10, 2009

Rapid cooling of the next batch did improve the texture and colour.  (Similar concept to hail vs. snow: both made from rain, but the final product depends on if they are frozen rapidly or slowly.)  Making this batch, I realized the granular texture was more likely from the mango butter as the mango butter had that granular appearance before I added it.