Body Butters

[kendall]

I'm looking at 2 recipes for body butters. Have seen on this forum that I may not need all of those ingredients to make a decent body butter.
Both have shea butter. I've been making soap for years and usually make my own recipes according to ingredient properties. A few questions please:

What is the relation of either beeswax or emulsifying wax to shea butter lotions?

What is the relation of liquid glyecerine to shea butter?

I like the properties of germaben II. I saw a recipe from Tabitha using 3 parts shea butter, and 1 part light oil? What is defined as light oil? Could I add germaben II to Tabitha's recipe?

 

[barefootbody]

I use shea butter in my recipes, & generally add a small amount of beeswax to firm it up a bit. Sometimes I use cocoa butter also. As for oils, I try to use the very fast absorbing types, sweet almond, sunflower, grape seed, rice bran, etc.
I have never tried ewax or glycerin, wouldn't glycerin be kind of sticky?

I don't use any preservatives in my butters, since water will not be introduced. If I were to use a preservative, I would consider tinosan SDC or optiphen as my first choices.

Barefoot

 

[JuBean]

I make whipped shea too. I love using almond oil as my other oil. I'm assuming that what Tabitha meant by light oil is a liquid oil.
I also put a tablespoon of cornstarch to my whipped shea. This really doesn't need beeswax as it gets really nice and hard after it is cool. I don't use a preservative either.

 

[barefootbody]

Doesn't cornstarch leave a gritty feeling since it doesn't really dissolve? I have tried Natrasorb, which doesn't leave any grit, but I don't care for the feel of that either, I can definately tell the batches that I used it in without looking at the labels.

I love almond oil, but rarely use it because I'm concerned about people who have allergies to nuts. Usually for teh oil, I use whatever I have the most of on hand at the moment, Jojoba, Avacado, Sunflower, etc . .

 

[JuBean]

Doesn't cornstarch leave a gritty feeling since it doesn't really dissolve? I have tried Natrasorb, which doesn't leave any grit, but I don't care for the feel of that either, I can definately tell the batches that I used it in without looking at the labels.

I love almond oil, but rarely use it because I'm concerned about people who have allergies to nuts. Usually for teh oil, I use whatever I have the most of on hand at the moment, Jojoba, Avacado, Sunflower, etc . .

Surprisingly, no. It actually leaves it really a silky feeling on your skin.