A Slice of Orange Soap

Recipe (Cold Process Soap)
Olive oil - 30%
Coconut oil - 25%
Shea butter - 20%
Canola oil - 15%
Castor oil - 10%
Orange oxide ~1/2 tsp dissolved in 1 tbsp. water (based on making 2-2.5lbs of soap)
Sweet orange essential oil - 1 oz (or more or less depending on your preference)
Optional: ~1 tbsp bentonite clay dissolved in water
4-5 bars of already made orange soap, coloured with red iron oxide

1 soap loaf mold (~3.5 lb capacity).

You will need to make approximately 2-2.5 lbs of soap. Take the above percentages and plug them into a soap recipe calculator (here's the one I use) to figure out how much lye and water you will need.

Follow basic cold-process soap making guide.

Before pouring the soap into the mold, take your 4-5 pre-made bars, and place diagonally and evenly spaced out through the lined soap mold. Pour orange soap around the bars, shake the mold gently to make sure soap fills every crevice around bars. Once it has set for 24 hours, slice the loaf into individual bars. Each bar will have a unique stripe of red running through it.

Shea Coconut Body Butter

Here's another body butter recipe. It uses coconut oil and sweet almond oil, in slightly different amounts.

Recipe
10.0 oz - shea butter
4.0 oz - aloe vera gel
3.0 oz - beeswax
3.0 oz - coconut oil
2.5 oz - sweet almond oil

Optional: vitamin E oil
Optional: essential oil(s) of your choice (reminder: citrus essential oils can cause skin to become sensitive to the sun)

Follow the directions from my original body butter post. Modify the amounts depending on how much you want, but keep the ratios the same.

If you don't have a double boiler, you can melt your beeswax, butter, and oils in the microwave in very short intervals (I melted the shea butter in 20 second intervals).

Instead of rush-ordering metal tins, I picked up some canning jars at my local grocery store for a decent price (the price of these jars versus plastic or metal containers is pretty comparable). I washed them and dried them before hand. Although they were labelled as being 4 oz jars, I found they could only hold about 3.5 oz. 

Using Coconut Oil
I really enjoyed the coconut oil in this recipe. I bumped up the total amount of oil used a little bit, so the final butter is a little creamier and melts quicker. The unscented body butter smells like shea butter, I didn't use enough coconut oil for it to scent the final product.

I love using coconut oil in a lot of things, soap, lip balm, sugar scrubs, etc. Everyone has unique wants/needs, and some people don't like the smell of coconut, or find that the oil doesn't absorb well into their skin.

You can take this body butter recipe (or the previous one) and change the types of oils used to suit your own skin needs (or the needs of whoever you are making the butter for).

Shea Body Butter

Creamy Shea Body Butter

I really love this body butter. It's creamy enough that you can scoop it out with your hands, and starts melting instantly when it touches your skin. It has a wonderful natural smell of shea butter and beeswax. I used unrefined virgin shea butter which has a very light golden colour plus other golden oils, so the finished product has a warm hue. Sunflower and sweet almond are fairly scentless, and avocado has a nice golden colour and is awesome for skin.

Recipe
9.0 oz - shea butter
4.0 oz - aloe vera gel
3.0 oz - beeswax
2.0 oz - sunflower oil
2.0 oz - avocado oil
1.0 oz - sweet almond oil

Optional: vitamin E oil
Optional: essential oil(s) of your choice (reminder: citrus essential oils can cause skin to become sensitive to the sun)

Substitutions: The oils that I used (sunflower, avocado, sweet almond) can be swapped out for other oils (i.e. olive oil, coconut oil, etc.), just keep the ratio the same. Some oils, like hemp, don't keep for a long time at room temperature so I wouldn't advise the use of hemp or similar oils. You could also slightly increase the ratio of liquid oils if you want the butter to be creamier/lighter.

Makes about 21 oz, have clean, dry containers ready before you start mixing up your body butter.

Directions

• Melt beeswax in a double boiler.
• Once beeswax is melted add shea butter; melt.
• Once beeswax/shea butter melted and mixed, add oils.
• Once everything is mixed and heated, remove from heat and pour into a large mixing bowl. Using a whisk, stir mixture as it starts to cool. It will begin to thicken as it cools.
• As the oil/butter/wax mix continues to cool, keep whisking; this will take a few minutes but keeps the mixture homogeneous and creamy. Once it has thickened/cooled to the consistency of pudding, add in aloe vera gel. Whisk for a couple of minutes.
• The butter should look creamy at this point and be fairly cool (but not quite room temperature). You can add vitamin E oil at this point, or add in some essential oils. Mix well.
• Scoop into containers, let stand and cool.

While it's still warm it will look like lotion, but as it cools completely it will get creamy and buttery.