When I started making my own body butter and cream 15 years ago, one of my struggles was to find out how to make body butter less greasy. Often my legs would end up looking way too shiny and greasy. Through the years, I learned tips to make creams and body butter less greasy and heavy on the skin, which I will share and discuss in this blog post.
As someone with dry skin, I cannot skip a day without applying body butter and body cream. They’re my only hope at keeping the dryness at bay, especially during the harsh winter months. A few years ago, I decided to make the switch from my store brought chemical-laden body butter to one that I made at home myself, using an easy DIY recipe.
While that amazing feeling of nourishment and moisturization is still there in this homemade version, it’s often marred with that sensation of being all too greasy. If you’re a fan of body butter yourself, you’ll know how there’s a pretty fine line between having your skin glow with a beautiful, healthy sheen—and feeling like you just rubbed a tub of grease on.
The whole process of making body butter is fairly simple and straightforward. Combine together butter (like shea) and good carrier oil. Add to the mix an oil-absorbing ingredient like arrowroot powder and mix, and voila! You’re done! You may add essential oils if desired.
If you are just starting your own journey towards a healthier lifestyle and want to ditch the chemicals, making your own body butter and body cream is a great first step. I am sharing a non-greasy body cream recipe down below which requires only 3 ingredients! Shea Butter, safflower oil and arrowroot powder. You will find this easy body cream recipe below!
By choosing the right ingredients and carrier oils, you can create body butter at home that absorbs quickly and moisturize your skin without a greasy feeling.
The trick to non-greasy body butter is to use a fast-absorbing carrier oil. These include the following carrier oils:
Each carrier oil carries its own skin benefits as well.
Camellia seed oil, typically sourced from Japan, is highly emollient, is rich in Omega-6 linoleic acid and antioxidants are known as polyphenols that fight aging.
Safflower oil contains about 78% of linoleic acid and helps to fight against acne problems. It has a very light texture and absorbs well into the skin.
Apricot kernel oil contains high amounts of gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), which helps to tighten and firm the skin. It also contains high amounts of vitamins A and E.
Grapeseed oil is a very light carrier oil that is rich in vitamins A, C and E. It contains both Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids that help to combat inflammation. Grapeseed oil has been used to normalize oily skin and to reduce the appearance of stretch marks.
Rosehip oil is high in antioxidants that have an anti-aging effect on the skin. Rosehip oil has a neutral pH that helps maintain the skin’s mantle and has been used to diminish scarring and combat damage from UV rays. The only thing is that it is a little bit expensive so its best to use this oil only on your face.
In addition to using a fast-absorbing carrier oil, you can add ingredients that absorb excess oil. Both arrowroot powder and tapioca powder help to minimize the amount of oil in your body butter.
Arrowroot powder is starch extracted from the root of tropical plants. In addition to absorbing oils, arrowroot powder is high in B vitamins, helps to improve circulation and can also improve your skin’s ability to absorb other nutrients.
Quite a celebrity in the beauty world, arrowroot powder offers quite a host of skin and beauty benefits. Not only does it absorb excess oil and sebum (making it perfect for reducing the grease in body butter), it’s also rich in vitamin B, improves blood circulation, makes skin soft and heals blemishes.
Tapioca powder is another type of starch and is derived from the South American cassava root. While it is not nutrient-rich, it can help to thicken your homemade body butter. Tapioca powder is another oil-absorbing agent that you can use in place of arrowroot powder.
Cornstarch: Another alternative that you can use is cornstarch. Used in body butter, it helps with the absorption of the product into the skin. Personally, though, I try to avoid it on account of it being a GMO, unless you buy non-GMO certified cornstarch.
In addition to or in place of your carrier oil, you can use plant-based butter to create a thick and luxurious feeling body butter. To create a homemade body butter that will not feel too heavy on your skin, use shea butter, cocoa butter or mango butter.
Shea butter is made from the fruit of the Shea tree, and is a veritable superfood for your skin! It contains high amounts of cinnamic acid, which helps to reduce inflammation. It also has a skin-smoothing effect due to its high fatty acid content.
Cocoa butter is another favorite, that is high in anti-aging fatty acids like oleic and palmitic acid. Its high antioxidant content helps to reduce the appearance of stretch marks, scars, and even skin tone.
Mango butter is made from the fruit kernel of the mango tree. It is very emollient and is often used to help soothe eczema, sunburn, rashes, insect bites and poison ivy. It is also high in antioxidants and can help to prevent UV damage.
If you do not like your body butter greasy on your skin, you should avoid using the following oils:
These are rich oils and while many of them do contain important nutrients from the skin, it’s best avoided if your skin is not dry. Palm oil, neem oil, coconut oil, and macadamia oil should be reserved for especially tough and dry parts of the skin where their oiliness can help to form a protective residue.
By carefully selecting the ingredients that you add to your homemade body butter, you can create a light formula that has major health benefits for your skin!
Add the oil and butter together in an aluminum or glass container.
Add the arrowroot powder
No need to melt on a double boiler here.
Start mixing with a hand mixer like this one for 2 – 3 minutes until fully combined and creamy consistency.
Then, pour in pretty containers!
If you’ve only used oils and butter in your body butter, you don’t need to add a preservative to it. However, if you use water in your recipe, you’ll need to add a preservative, or it’ll go bad after a while.
One simple way of reducing the grease in body butter is by ensuring that your quantity of oil used is less than that of the butter used. For example, depending on the recipe, you could use 80% butter and only 20% oil. However, note that it’s important that you don’t melt the butter first. If you already have, then you need to wait until it has solidified in the fridge or freezer before you attempt to mix it in with the oil.
If you went a little overboard with thickening the body butter, and find that after some time it becomes too hard to use, you can still make it soft enough to apply. The key to keeping the right consistency is to not over mix your ingredients. You can also increase the amount of oil relative to the amount of butter used.
If an existing batch becomes too hard to apply, you can salvage the situation by melting it down again and adding more oils and whipping it again so that it’s not a total loss.
An important piece of advice here: if you’re using Shea butter to fix the consistency, you can save time by cold-whipping it instead of melting it, which will achieve the same, if not better, results.
If you find that you’ve added too much oil into your body butter mixture and now its consistency is a little too runny, you can fix it by adding a wax such as a beeswax.
You can also reformulate your recipe by increasing the amount of hard butter used in the concoction, such as mango butter or cocoa butter.
While you may be tempted to apply some of that rich goodness of body butter to your face, too, we’d advise that you first look at the ingredients. Contrary to how it’s commonly advertised, you can, in fact, apply body butter to your face, but only if your recipe doesn’t contain a comedogenic ingredient. Coconut or cocoa oil, for instance, would be a huge no-no, since they’re rated comedogenic 4 and will clog your pores and cause breakouts. Click here to check out the full list of oils. On the other hand, a body butter made from butter like Shea butter is safe to use on your face since it’s rated comedogenic 0. If you personally do not like shea butter, here is a recipe you can use for your body butter that contains cocoa butter.
I’ve love to hear from you about this DIY beauty recipe, do you think this was helpful to learn how to make your own body cream or body butter?
Please take two minutes of your time to let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
When I started making my own body butter and cream 15 years ago, one of my struggles was to find out how to make body butter less greasy. Often my legs would end up looking way too shiny and greasy.
As someone with dry skin, I cannot skip a day without applying body butter and body cream. They’re my only hope at keeping the dryness at bay, especially during the harsh winter months. A few years ago, I decided to make the switch from my store brought chemical-laden body butter to one that I made at home myself, using an easy DIY recipe.
While that amazing feeling of nourishment and moisturization is still there in this homemade version, it’s often marred with that sensation of being all too greasy. If you’re a fan of body butter yourself, you’ll know how there’s a pretty fine line between having your skin glow with a beautiful, healthy sheen—and feeling like you just rubbed a tub of grease on!
Through the years, I learned tips and tricks to make creams and body butter less greasy and feel less heavy on the skin, which I will share and discuss in this blog post.
The whole process of making body butter is fairly simple and straightforward. Combine together butter (like shea) and good carrier oil. Add to the mix an oil-absorbing ingredient like arrowroot powder and mix, and voila! You’re done! You may add essential oils if desired.
If you are just starting your own journey towards a healthier lifestyle and want to ditch the chemicals, making your own body butter and body cream is a great first step. I am sharing a non-greasy body cream recipe down below which requires only 3 ingredients! Shea Butter, safflower oil and arrowroot powder. You will find this easy body cream recipe below!
By choosing the right ingredients and carrier oils, you can create body butter at home that absorbs quickly and moisturize your skin without a greasy feeling.
The trick to non-greasy body butter is to use a fast-absorbing carrier oil. These include the following carrier oils:
Each carrier oil carries its own skin benefits as well.
Camellia seed oil, typically sourced from Japan, is highly emollient, is rich in Omega-6 linoleic acid and antioxidants are known as polyphenols that fight aging.
Safflower oil contains about 78% of linoleic acid and helps to fight against acne problems. It has a very light texture and absorbs well into the skin.
Apricot kernel oil contains high amounts of gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), which helps to tighten and firm the skin. It also contains high amounts of vitamins A and E.
Grapeseed oil is a very light carrier oil that is rich in vitamins A, C and E. It contains both Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids that help to combat inflammation. Grapeseed oil has been used to normalize oily skin and to reduce the appearance of stretch marks.
Rosehip oil is high in antioxidants that have an anti-aging effect on the skin. Rosehip oil has a neutral pH that helps maintain the skin’s mantle and has been used to diminish scarring and combat damage from UV rays. The only thing is that it is a little bit expensive so its best to use this oil only on your face.
In addition to using a fast-absorbing carrier oil, you can add ingredients that absorb excess oil. Both arrowroot powder and tapioca powder help to minimize the amount of oil in your body butter.
Arrowroot powder is starch extracted from the root of tropical plants. In addition to absorbing oils, arrowroot powder is high in B vitamins, helps to improve circulation and can also improve your skin’s ability to absorb other nutrients.
Quite a celebrity in the beauty world, arrowroot powder offers quite a host of skin and beauty benefits. Not only does it absorb excess oil and sebum (making it perfect for reducing the grease in body butter), it’s also rich in vitamin B, improves blood circulation, makes skin soft and heals blemishes.
Tapioca powder is another type of starch and is derived from the South American cassava root. While it is not nutrient-rich, it can help to thicken your homemade body butter. Tapioca powder is another oil-absorbing agent that you can use in place of arrowroot powder.
Cornstarch: Another alternative that you can use is cornstarch. Used in body butter, it helps with the absorption of the product into the skin. Personally, though, I try to avoid it on account of it being a GMO, unless you buy non-GMO certified cornstarch.
In addition to or in place of your carrier oil, you can use plant-based butter to create a thick and luxurious feeling body butter. To create a homemade body butter that will not feel too heavy on your skin, use shea butter, cocoa butter or mango butter.
Shea butter is made from the fruit of the Shea tree, and is a veritable superfood for your skin! It contains high amounts of cinnamic acid, which helps to reduce inflammation. It also has a skin-smoothing effect due to its high fatty acid content.
Cocoa butter is another favorite, that is high in anti-aging fatty acids like oleic and palmitic acid. Its high antioxidant content helps to reduce the appearance of stretch marks, scars, and even skin tone.
Mango butter is made from the fruit kernel of the mango tree. It is very emollient and is often used to help soothe eczema, sunburn, rashes, insect bites and poison ivy. It is also high in antioxidants and can help to prevent UV damage.
If you do not like your body butter greasy on your skin, you should avoid using the following oils:
These are rich oils and while many of them do contain important nutrients from the skin, it’s best avoided if your skin is not dry. Palm oil, neem oil, coconut oil, and macadamia oil should be reserved for especially tough and dry parts of the skin where their oiliness can help to form a protective residue.
By carefully selecting the ingredients that you add to your homemade body butter, you can create a light formula that has major health benefits for your skin!
Add the oil and butter together in an aluminum or glass container.
Add the arrowroot powder
No need to melt on a double boiler here.
Start mixing with a hand mixer like this one for 2 – 3 minutes until fully combined and creamy consistency.
Then, pour in pretty containers!
If you’ve only used oils and butter in your body butter, you don’t need to add a preservative to it. However, if you use water in your recipe, you’ll need to add a preservative, or it’ll go bad after a while.
One simple way of reducing the grease in body butter is by ensuring that your quantity of oil used is less than that of the butter used. For example, depending on the recipe, you could use 80% butter and only 20% oil. However, note that it’s important that you don’t melt the butter first. If you already have, then you need to wait until it has solidified in the fridge or freezer before you attempt to mix it in with the oil.
If you went a little overboard with thickening the body butter, and find that after some time it becomes too hard to use, you can still make it soft enough to apply. The key to keeping the right consistency is to not over mix your ingredients. You can also increase the amount of oil relative to the amount of butter used.
If an existing batch becomes too hard to apply, you can salvage the situation by melting it down again and adding more oils and whipping it again so that it’s not a total loss.
An important piece of advice here: if you’re using Shea butter to fix the consistency, you can save time by cold-whipping it instead of melting it, which will achieve the same, if not better, results.
If you find that you’ve added too much oil into your body butter mixture and now its consistency is a little too runny, you can fix it by adding a wax such as a beeswax.
You can also reformulate your recipe by increasing the amount of hard butter used in the concoction, such as mango butter or cocoa butter.
While you may be tempted to apply some of that rich goodness of body butter to your face, too, we’d advise that you first look at the ingredients. Contrary to how it’s commonly advertised, you can, in fact, apply body butter to your face, but only if your recipe doesn’t contain a comedogenic ingredient. Coconut or cocoa oil, for instance, would be a huge no-no, since they’re rated comedogenic 4 and will clog your pores and cause breakouts. Click here to check out the full list of oils. On the other hand, a body butter made from butter like Shea butter is safe to use on your face since it’s rated comedogenic 0. If you personally do not like shea butter, here is a recipe you can use for your body butter that contains cocoa butter.
I’ve love to hear from you about this DIY beauty recipe, do you think this was helpful to learn how to make your own body cream or body butter?
Please take two minutes of your time to let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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View Comments
Hi there, Just to note that oils do not contain Vitamin C, as Vitamin C is only water soluble. You can add synthetically made esterified forms of Vitamin c however. Also, you state that Rosehip Oil is pH neutral. Whilst oils are regarded as neutral, until they turn rancid, they do not actually have a pH, as this requires the presence of Hydrogen in the form of H2O (water) in order to present a pH reading. So, in short, oils do not have a pH.
Have you ever used vegetable glycerin as an ingredient? I have some organic that I’ve used to sweeten tea, it’s also for skin. I’ve never tried it for the skin tho…not sure how to use it. Wondering if it could be incorporated in this body butter?
Thank you!
I love this recipe, however, with summer quickly approaching and living in a very hot climate, I am really worried about shipping these whipped body butters. I understand that I can add beeswax to this recipe to help increase the melting point so I am wondering if anyone had a recommendation as to how much beeswax I should add to keep the fluffy consistency when shipping across the US. I increased the recipe to yield 64 oz so currently, from this recipe, I am using 32oz of shea butter, 32oz (or less) of Safflower oil, and around 6oz of Arrowroot powder.
If anyone has any recommendations that would be great because I want to make sure that whoever receives this whipped body butter is satisfied!
I made this with a little tweek. I didn't have safflower oil on hand so used sweet almond oil. I had never thought to use arrowroot powder to lessen the greasiness. That is so awesome. I divided it in two and made some spearmint and some lavender, but I also would like to try it with infusing some spices to the soft oil. So next time..... loved this!!
Where do you get your essential oils ? ??
I just made this beautiful recipe and it turned out wonderful!!! I do find that if I follow your recipes they all turn out!!!! thank yo for explaining in detail the benefit properties of oils and butters used. I always wondered what the real difference was in shea butter (thought the grainy feel was due to overheating it.) Interesting to read in the comments that the grocery aisle products are on par with your health food stores at a much lower cost.
Thank you very much for all your time spent on research it sure is appreciated by all of us.
Yvonne
I tried making this. My Shea butter is hard and leaves lumps in the lotion. I tried to soften in the microvpwave but it always melts then, which is not good for consistency? Please help. Thank you!
Rayna
Hi Rayna, shea butter must be soft, like a butter. If it is really hard I would advise adding more oil slowly while mixing with a hand immersion blender like this one: https://amzn.to/3bXMGqX
You have to continue mixing until it is smooth with no lumps like a cream. Melting would not work here.
I am looking forward to trying this recipe for my first trial! I appreciate that you have shared the “don’t” list as I am such a noob.
I do have a question about the powders. You gave great info for arrowroot powder and tapioca powder. I have non-GMO cornstarch and wondered if you will expand on how it helps with absorbing the oils, please?
TIA!
Cornstarch works fine and absorbs the excess of oil but I do prefer using arrowroot!
This recipe absorbs nicely into the skin as promised! I often don't add any essential oils for scent and it still turns out perfectly:)
thanks Danielle, glad to hear!
I've made body butter before but no matter what I use I CANNOT get the mixture to solidify even a little bit. I live in Arizona so it's pretty hot, but even at 80° F in my house the body butter is still runny. I keep going back and forth between mixing and putting it back in the freezer but it's so tiring. Any tips? I'm not the biggest fan of beeswax but I'm open to other ingredients (mine is anhydrous but I use a preservative anyways).
Hi zari, did you follow the instruction of my recipes for body butter? This recipe is not a body butter but a cream. I've never had any issues making body butter even when its 100C in my kitchen.
Please try this recipe https://www.organic-beauty-recipes.com/diy-whipped-body-butter/
If your body butter is still runny, then you need to freeze it for longer just before it becomes too hard to whip.
Once its whipped, then keep it in the fridge if its really hot.
Hope this helps!