Making A Moisturizer

Ah December. The weather gets chillier, the music gets more holiday themed, and I don’t know about you but over here ice rinks sure seem to pop up everywhere. With all the festive chills my dry skin that has been going on a journey of its own this year seems to be intensifying.
So I’ve decided to make myself a moisturizer because I still haven’t been able to find something quite suitable within my little budget!

This moisturizer is pretty simple to make. I used 3 ingredients.
1. Cocoa Butter
2. Safflower Oil
3. Olive Oil

Now cocoa butter smells like chocolate and solidifies at room temperature but melts into liquid when heated (I usually set the little jar in a bowl of hot water until I get a caramel colored liquid.) It would be great to use on its own if only it didn’t take so long to scrape little bits of it off, since it does melt when rubbed in between my hands.
Safflower oil is a cooking oil like olive oil except it has no scent, and is a little healthier to use if cooking. I actually really enjoy that it doesn’t have an odor. Plus like everything else here it is supposed to be moisturizing.
Olive oil does have a fairly strong smell if applied solo to the skin but is supposed to be pretty moisturizing. Although I think the safflower oil is supposed to be superior in that aspect.

Now to make this I used a plastic container, a bowl, some ice, and a fork. That’s right contrary to popular belief a hand mixer is not needed! Just takes a little work.

I started putting a few pieces of ice into a bowl. The put my little container in the bowl between the ice. Next I poured my melted cocoa butter into the container. I then poured in some safflower oil (less than cocoa butter)and then olive oil (even less than the safflower oil.) And the next step was to use the fork to mix it. This takes a while a good 4 minutes of stirring continuously. At first it looks like nothing is happening then after a few minutes it thickens up in consistency.  Right after it’s mixed it looks like a normal moisturizer in texture like a thick goopy liquid that isn’t watery, letting it sit a little it does start to get a little harder but a slight amount of pressure brings it right back to that easy to spread texture. It is actually pretty similar to the feel of normal butter. It feels smooth and melts right into the skin and has a nice chocolatey smell that isn’t too strong.

This is the finished product in all its creamy glory!