Homemade Winter Body Balm Recipe

This homemade winter body balm recipe contains ingredients that work together to help promote healing for damaged skin while also locking in much needed moisture. The end product of this winter body balm recipe makes wonderful homemade gifts for anyone who suffers from persistent skin conditions.

It’s also appreciated by anyone who washes their hands continuously throughout the day such as hairdressers, crafters and teachers who work with children. Check out my homemade winter body balm recipe below to learn how to make it. You’ll also find a tutorial for creating your own homemade labels after the recipe.

Homemade Winter Body Balm Recipe

© Rebecca D. Dillon

Ingredients:

1 oz. beeswax
.5 oz. traditional emulsifying wax
1 oz. mango butter
1 oz. coconut oil (76° melt point)
.5 oz. lanolin
.5 oz. 100% neem oil
.5 oz. carrier oil (liquid at room temp)
2 mL (approx. 40 drops) rosewood essential oil (or ho wood eo)

Instructions on How to Make a Winter Body Balm:

Using a digital scale, begin by weighing out the waxes and mango butter in a glass Pyrex measuring cup. Then heat in the microwave at 50% power until the waxes and butter have melted completely. (Alternately you can use a double boiler.)

Next, weigh out the coconut oil and lanolin. Stir into the melted wax and butter mixture until these ingredients have liquified completely. (If you are allergic to coconut oil you may substitute the coconut oil with shea butter.)

Now weigh out the neem oil – learn more about neem oil here – and your carrier oil and mix into your previously melted ingredients. (I used my homemade chamomile infused olive oil as my carrier oil. A calendula infused carrier would be equally nice. However, it’s not necessary to use an infused oil. you can simply use any carrier oil you prefer as long as it’s liquid at room temperature. Good options include hemp seed oil, olive oil, rosehip seed oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, sweet almond oil or avocado oil.)

Finally, using a graduated transfer pipette, measure out the rosewood essential oil blend and stir into the winter body balm recipe ingredients. Stir to combine thoroughly. (Pure rosewood essential oil is terribly expensive as rosewood is endangered. A rosewood essential oil blend – which is a combination of essential oils that are blended to smell like rosewood – makes a nice alternative and will completely cover the smell of the neem oil without being overpowering. Alternately, you can use any other skin safe essential oil of your choice.)

Now simply pour your completed healing winter body balm into containers of your choice and allow the product to fully solidify before placing the lid onto your container.

I chose to use eco-friendly 1/2 ounce brown paperboard jars from SKS Bottle & Packaging as my winter body balm containers. (This winter body balm recipe will yield ten .5 oz. jars.) Alternately you can also use any other container(s) of choice. A 4 oz. Ball jelly mason jar from the grocery store – like the ones I used for my homemade cranberry body butter recipe – also works great for this particular product.

This winter body balm recipe yields 5 oz. of product. To determine how many containers you’ll need based on your container choice, simply divide 5 by the number of ounces your containers hold.

How to Make Custom Labels for Your Winter Body Balm

To create the labels for my winter body balm containers, I purchased Winter Snowflake Clipart from Lilmade Design on Etsy. (She offers several lovely variations of snowflake designs that you can choose from that work perfectly for the lids of round containers including her Nordic Snowflake Clipart and Snowflake Galore Clipart.)

I used OpenOffice to create my labels using the clipart from Lilmade Design. I use OpenOffice as it’s a free open source program similar to Word. However, you can also use Microsoft Word if that option is available to you.

To create your own sheet of custom labels begin by creating a new text document in OpenOffice. Now format your page with three columns by clicking on Format > Columns.

As I was using 1/2 ounce jars with a diameter of just over 1.25″ I increased the spacing to 1.60″ which made the width of my column the size I needed (1.24″) to fit onto my lids. Now hit OK. (Adjust this as necessary based on the diameter of your own container lids.)

Next you’ll simply import your image(s) by clicking on Insert > Picture > From File. Choose the image you’d like to use and click OK.

Your image will appear on the page in the size needed without you having to rescale the image size. With the image selected – you’ll see the green boxes around the image – hit COMMAND C (on Mac) or CTRL C (on Windows) to copy the image.  Now click just below the image and hit the enter bar. Then hit hit COMMAND V (on Mac) or CTRL V (on Windows) to paste the image again below the first one. Repeat this until you have the number of images needed for your containers.

Finally, print out your page of labels you just created onto a full label sheet -I get mine for a great bulk price from World Label – then cut them out and adhere to the lids of your containers. (You can find other easy to follow instructions for creating your own custom labels on my tutorials for making homemade chocolate body butters, custom wedding soap favors and DIY mix tape soap favors.)

If you like my healing winter body balm recipe, then you may also enjoy my homemade chamomile balm recipe.

Also be sure to follow me on Pinterest to discover more of my own homemade bath, body and beauty recipes you can make for your family or as homemade gifts as well as some of my favorite beauty recipes from around the web. You can also find and follow me via Blog Lovin’,  Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.