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A Newbie with a few questions about making body butter


krodriguez

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Hello everyonel.:smiley2: I just started making my own body butters and have a few questions.

1. What types of coloring will work best in body butters? And at what point in the process would I add the colorant?

2. What is the standard ratio of butters to carrier oils in body butters? I made a small batch with 3oz of cocoa butter to 1oz of sweet almond oil.

3. Preserving - is polysorbate a preservative? What is the best natural way to preserve aside from extracts?

4. What natural products can be used to preserve for longer periods of time if, I am going to sale my products in a retail store?

I have been looking at the TK website and their colors..love them! I just don't know what color to use for what. lol

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Hi and welcome to the board. You may want to post these questions in the B&B secion instead of Soap Making for more responses.

Start by checking out the B&B Recipe section. There are many wonderful butter recipes. At the top of the B&B section is a permanent "sticky" explaining preservatives.

Also, at the top of every page you'll find the search feature...enter some keywords and it will pull of lots of info from previous threads for you.

To get you started, you will need an oil soluable/body safe colorant for non emulsified butters. Polysorbates are not preservatives...they are thickeners and emusifiers. There are NO safe natural preservatives...to properly preserve a product you need to use the real thing.

Have fun!

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Hi & Welcome! :)

Search is definitely your friend! I've learned SO much by just reading and researching!

I just wanted to say, i don't personally add color to my body butter... but if you did want to color, you'd probably want to add it at the end. Once everything's cooled down, preservative added, fo added... then color! :D

Even just for yourself, you'll want to use real preservatives. :) I make stuff for myself, and family, and I got a few different preservatives to use in products. :) I really like Germall Plus :)

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Thank you for the advice. Have you heard of the preservative Cosmocil CQ? I've read that this is the new rave in natural preserving.

Well for starters, it's not "natural" but is paraben free.

And it won't work in your application because it's water soluble.

A quick search on google brought me to the Snowdrift Farms site which had the information http://www.snowdriftfarm.com/cosmocil.html . Suppliers are a great source of that type of thing so I'd suggest doing some searching and reading. You will learn an enormous amount. Take notes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This site is a wealth of info.

However, when it comes to preservatives, IMHO NOTHING is natural.

But to someone else, because it doesn't have parabens, they MAY consider it natural.

To answer your ??s

1. What types of coloring will work best in body butters? Dependent on the other ingredients in your product you will choose either oil soluble or water soluble colorants. Also make sure they are SKIN SAFE. I don't color. It's one less thing I have to remember!

And at what point in the process would I add the colorant? Most likely with the FO

2. What is the standard ratio of butters to carrier oils in body butters? I made a small batch with 3oz of cocoa butter to 1oz of sweet almond oil.

Whatever YOU are happy with. What I like someone else may hate.

3. Preserving - is polysorbate a preservative? What is the best natural way to preserve aside from extracts?

Polysorbate is NOT a preservative. IMHO there is no such thing as a "natural" preservative.

4. What natural products can be used to preserve for longer periods of time if, I am going to sale my products in a retail store? IME there aren't any. If you are intending on making this product now for retail in say a couple of months, go with a premade base.

I have been looking at the TK website and their colors..love them! I just don't know what color to use for what. lol

TKB has links you can click on to find out if that particular color is skin safe.

HTH

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