These DIY lotion bars are homemade lotion bars that you can make to pamper your skin this fall and winter! These lotion bars are really easy to make and effective remedies for dry skin. Just click on the image or the “get the recipe” button to access the recipes for the lotion bars. Press the “Load More” button to see more lotion bar ideas.
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
DIY lotion bars can be such a delightful little treat to yourself! While our skin needs to be moisturized all year long, these DIY lotion bars can be particularly handy during the cooler months when our skin tends to be the driest and in need of some added moisturizers.
As you probably already know, different oils, butters, and creams are not made all the same. Therefore, one of the wonderful things about making your own lotions bars is you can use oils and butters that you know you like! Since a specific lotion bar recipe is provided with each one of the DIY lotion bars, this page will be used to introduce you to the basic concept of making a beeswax lotion bar recipe.
The main ingredients needed to make lotion bars can be divided into 4 main categories: (1) butters, (2) oils, (3) wax, and (4) fragrance. And if you really want to pamper yourself with these DIY lotion bars, you can add another category (5) colorants.
1. Butters
There are many different types of butters that can be used to make DIY lotion bars. A butter is solid at room temperature, but melts when heated. Therefore, the best butters for making lotion bars will have some degree of firmness when they are at an average room temperature. Below is a list of some of the most common butters used to make lotion bars.
- Cocoa Butter – This butter has a wonderful natural chocolate-like aroma when it is a naturally scented unrefined cocoa butter. You can easily incorporated a scented cocoa butter into some of your sweet smelling chocolate inspired DIY lotion bars. However, you can also get a more versatile unscented refined cocoa butter that can be scented any way that you like.
- Mango Butter – The mango butter is another wonderful feeling butter that you can use in the DIY lotion bars. It is mostly fragrance free and can therefore be scented with any fragrance that you like.
- Shea Butter – The scented unrefined shea butter or unscented refined shea butters are both very popular butters used to make skin care products for dry skin because it is highly moisturizing.
- Kokum Butter – This is another popular butter that is used to make lotion bars, soaps, and balms. The kokum butter has a very hard texture when it is at room temperature. However, the butter melts easily when applied to the skin making it a perfect addition to a DIY lotion bar recipe.
2. Oils
There are many different oils that can be added to your DIY lotion bars. However, this is just a short list of my favorites.
- Avocado Oil – The avocado oil is a heavy oil with basically no scent. Therefore, it can be a great moisturizing oil to add to your DIY lotion bars. It coats and penetrates the skin to keep it looking hydrated.
- Coconut Oil – Coconut oil is a highly penetrating oil that does not leave a greasy layer on your skin. While it is definitely one of my absolute favorite oils to work with and use for a variety of reasons, the unrefined coconut oils can be a bit tricky to work with. First of all, unrefined coconut oil will have a coconut scent that will clash with any fragrance you add. And secondly, it is somewhat volatile in different temperatures. Unrefined coconut oil will go from a complete solid in a cool room to a complete liquid in a relatively warm room. In my experience, it is best to just use a fractionated liquid coconut oil that does not have a scent or turn solid in cooler temperatures. In this way, you can make your DIY lotion bars smell any way that you want and keep them with a consistent texture.
- Vitamin E Oil – This oil is used primarily as a preservative that helps to keep your oils and butters fresh while you are using them. However, this oil alone is a wonderful ingredient to apply to your skin. Therefore, vitamin E oil is a wonderful addition to your DIY lotion bars.
3. Wax
- White Beeswax – White beeswax is basically a clear or white colored wax. While it works just the same as yellow beeswax, white beeswax is easier to use when you are trying to make your own color.
- Yellow Beeswax – Yellow beeswax is the natural color of beeswax. Therefore your DIY lotion bars will have a yellow or golden tone when you use yellow beeswax. This works out well if you are making honey scented lotions bars or another scent that goes well with a golden tone.
4. Fragrance
For the most part, you can add fragrance to your DIY lotion bars with essential oils or fragrance oils.
- Essential Oils – Essential oils are all natural fragrance oils. Therefore, they all have their own unique aromatherapy benefits. Lavender essential oil is probably my favorite essential oil. The smell is sweet, flowery, and soothing. Besides being all natural, the chemistry of most essential oils mix well together when you mix 2 or 3 together. So, you may want to start with a small essential oil sampler set if you are just getting started with making DIY lotion bars.
- Fragrance Oils – The lovely thing about fragrance oils is that the behind the scenes chemistry is done for you! There is not trial and error in trying to mix your favorite fragrance – just choose one that is already made for you. There are also fragrance oil sampler sets that have some of the most popular fragrance blends available.
5. Colorants
The most popular colorants used to make skincare products are powdered mica colorants.
- Mica Colorants – The sky is literally almost the limit with the variety of colorants you can use to colorize you DIY lotion bars. Depending on the colorants you choose, you can also mix some of them to achieve slightly different colors and shades.
That is all for now! I hope you enjoy making a lotion bar recipe or two and using some of the DIY lotion bars!
THE RUHMAGE 