Is Shea Butter Good for Soap Making?

Each and every day there are people in this industry creating new soap making videos, tutorials, and recipes. These new ideas are constantly switching up the ingredients that they use. Most cosmetic recipes can be made in multiple ways, using a variety of ingredients. There are many ways to make soap and change it up by adding different combinations of butters and oils. Depending on the properties and benefits you are looking for an item to have, choosing the right combination is important. For example, if you want a bar of soap that is conditioning to the skin, you might combine castor oil with shea butter. This is one of the most common butters used by soap makers and when making cosmetic products. We love incorporating it into soap cupcakes, whipped soap recipes, facial soap, and more. There are many uses and beneficial properties of shea butter, especially for soap.

What Is Refined Shea Butter?

Shea butter comes in a few different forms. Natures Garden sells it on the website in two ways. The first one that we will discuss is refined shea butter. The term refined indicates that the original form has been altered in some way. Shea butter derives from the shea nut, which holds a natural butter within it, hence where the name comes from. When it is refined, the butter gets extracted from the shea nut and undergoes chemical alterations. It is filtered to remove impurities in the formula, which results in a few changes. This process causes the butter to lose its natural color and become more of an off white. It also removes most of the scent and odor it has. These alterations result in creating a pure and high quality product that is the perfect addition to cosmetic items.

What Is Unrefined Shea Butter?

Another form that shea butter comes in is completely unrefined. This means that when the natural butter is extracted from the shea nut, it is left alone and does not get altered like refined shea butter is. Therefore, this form will retain its natural color, which has a very light yellow tint to it. Unrefined shea butter also holds in the natural odor it comes with. There is not a very strong scent to this product, and it does not smell like chemicals. The odor is very mild with nutty and earthy hints to it. However, this slight odor goes away as opposed to lingering when products containing shea butter are applied to the skin, hair, lips, etc. Whichever form of shea butter you choose to implement in your cosmetics is entirely your preference. Either way, you will still be getting a high quality butter which offers great benefits to the skin and items that you create with it.

The Benefits of Shea Butter

There are multiple benefits that shea butter can offer to your homemade projects and recipes. One of the best things about this particular butter is how moisturizing it is to the skin. This makes it perfect to be used in multiple recipes, such as scrubs, lotions, lip balms, and soap. Many people want their bath and body products to leave their skin feeling great, and shea butter definitely delivers that. It has properties in it that nourish and condition the surfaces of the body. It also contains some essential fatty acids, including palmitic, stearic, oleic, and linoleic. These each provide additional overall benefits to this butter. Another pretty great benefit of shea butter is that it is not difficult to come by and is reasonably priced at many locations.

Other Benefits

There are more beneficial properties to shea butter besides using it in different cosmetics recipes. Shea butter is commonly used in other countries for medicinal purposes. It is known to help certain conditions of the skin. These may include things such as eczema, reducing wrinkles, as well as reducing swelling. Shea butter may also speed up the process of healing wounds. Some countries even use shea butter when cooking, especially in Africa. It can be substituted in for real butter or cooking oils, and it is said to enhance the flavor of your dish, giving it a richer taste.

Disclaimer: Natures Garden sells Shea Butter for external use only. We do not sell this as an item to be ingested or to be used for medical purposes. (The information we provide is for educational purposes only. This information is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration).

Why Shea Butter Is Great For Making Soap

Shea butter is a great ingredient for soap makers to use. It can be added to both melt and pour soap as well as cold process soap.

Shea Butter Melt and Pour Soap

Due to all of the benefits that shea butter contains, we wanted to incorporate it into one of our soap bases. Natures Garden carries and sells 11 melt and pour soap bases. Shea butter is one of these. It is a two pound slab of soap, unscented, gluten free, with no added detergents. This is made with the finest ingredients, it is SLS free, and creates items that are incredibly soft on the skin.

How to Use Shea Butter in Melt and Pour Soap

One way to make soap with shea butter is by creating melt and pour soap recipes. For example, we have a Soap Frosting Recipe that uses just a few simple ingredients. In this particular recipe, you will need to gather:

1. A Whipped Soap Base
2.  Vegetable Glycerin
3.  Shea Butter Melt and Pour Soap
4.  Buttercream Fragrance Oil
5.  Soap Colorant
6. Sprinkles for decoration

How to Use Shea Butter in Cold Process Soap

In addition to melt and pour soap, Natures Garden also has a ton of recipes for homemade cold process soap that use shea butter in them. This is another very common method that soap makers use to implement shea butter in their recipes.  We want to talk about our Wisteria Cold Process Soap Recipe.

Other Ways Shea Butter Can Be Used

Although a ton of crafters and people within this industry love using shea butter to make soap recipes, there are many other ways to use this product as well. Natures Garden has plenty of other products besides soap that contain shea butter in them. We wanted to share some of these with you all today! Due to the moisturizing benefits of shea butter, it is commonly added into products applied to the body, such as lotion. A good example of this is our Almond Body Cream Recipe. This is the perfect body lotion to apply to any dry patches of skin and will also soften your skin. Our Coffee Butter Scrub Recipe both looks and smells delicious! This scrub is also extra moisturizing because it contains mango butter and cocoa butter in addition to the soft shea butter. Another idea for recipes that shea butter works great in are bath products. We have a Gourmet Chocolate Bath Melts Recipe, which will make your bath smell amazing, while also leaving your skin to feel incredible! Lastly, we have our recipe for a Kahlua and Cream Lip Balm will make your lips feel softened and moisturized. As we can see, shea butter is an incredibly versatile product. In addition to all of these recipes we listed, it can also be used to make body scrubs, hair gel, hair conditioner, bubble bars, other balms.

We hope that you all enjoyed learning about the product of shea butter, along with its properties and benefits! as well as different ways and recipes that it can be used in!

Even More Shea Butter Fun

Now, if you are looking for other ways to use shea butter, check out this article from Mother Nature Network. They will talk about 12 ways to use shea butter. You can also take a look at all of our free recipes and classes for even more fragrance fun ideas.