What do you think?
Kokum or Mango Butter for lip balm, sugar scrub, and bath bombs?
- Thread starter MelissaG
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I haven't gotten around to making scrubs or bath bombs yet but I use Kokum in everything and Mango in my skin and face creams. It's my top ingredient in lip balm and I mix tempered Cupuacu butter in there also for some extra moisturizing.
So no experience with bath bombs and sugar scrubs here. I like my lip balms to be more 'meltier' than lotion bars and mine are similar to Burt's Bees in consistency. The 'hardest' oil in my lip balm is coconut. I like kokum and mango but not sure about using them in lip balms. Kokum is a really hard butter. Mango is too but also super absorbent. Maybe try a small test batch and report back to us?
I've been thinking of buying a pound of each and see what happens. I paid $35 for my last 5 pounds of cocoa butter. These each are about $42 for 5 lbs but at least they're wayyyyy cheaper than cocoa butter.
Go for it! They are reasonably priced and have similar soap qualities & fatty acids. 
The key with hard butters is to balance them with the oils and waxes that are being used. Important to remember when doing so, is that it takes an extra day or two to fully harden up, so start with really small test amounts, use a micro scale and be patient. I pop mine in the freezer for 30 minutes then the fridge for a day or two before I test.
I always use the heat gun on the outside of my metal jug (esp the spout) before pouring to ensure most of the balm goes in the tubes.
This is the ingredient list from my latest lemon-lime vegan lip balm. If you ignore the oil variety and just use a single oil, a flavor instead of the essential oils, take out the herbal extracts, use beeswax instead of the wax blend, it can be pretty basic but you get the idea of managing percentages of butters, oils and waxes to get the texture/glide you like. (All extracts are oil based)
Kokum Butter, Rice Bran Wax, Cupuacu Butter, Squalane, Hibiscus Seed Oil*, Jojoba Oil*, Laurel Berry Wax, Argan Oil*, Rosehip Seed Oil*, Daikon Seed Oil, Lauryl Laurate (Coconut, RSPO Palm), Herbal Extracts:Calendula*, Chamomile*, Comfrey*, Helichrysum, Lemon Balm*), Elderberry Fruit Extract, Castor Oil*, Lime Essential Oil (steam distilled), Lemon Essential Oil (steam distilled), Helichrysum Extract, Calendula C0₂ , ChamomileC0₂*, Vitamin E (Non-GMO Sunflower), Vanilla Planifolia Fruit Extract*.
Fantastic tip, thank you!
