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King of the skin – LUSH solid body conditioner – duplicate recipe
In this post, I show my duplicate recipe of the King of the skin – favorite LUSH solid body conditioner and my method to crack the recipe.
I love solid body conditioners and yes, I do really admire LUSH, although I do not agree with their incredibly high prices.
Being a home-made cosmetics and home-made soap freak, LUSH recipes are one of the things I had to try – they are very well thought and a lot of them is fairly easy to break and admirably simple to make…
My first attempt was duplicating the King of the skin, and I think it went pretty well…
The recipe
| % of final weight | For 100 grams | |
| Cocoa butter | 54 | 54g |
| Shea butter | 23 | 23g |
| Fresh bananas | 7 | 14g |
| Oatmilk (infusion) | 4 | 4g |
| Fresh avocado | 2 | 2g |
| Extra virgin coconut oil | 2 | 2g |
| Perfume | 2 | 2g |
| Jojoba oil | 2 | 2g |
| Sweet almond oil | 2 | 2g |
| EO Tangerine | 0.5 | 0.5g |
| EO Lavender | 0.5 | 0.5g |
| EO Sandalwood | 0.5 | 0.5g |
| Rose Absolute | 0.25 | 0.25g |
| Frankincense Resinoid | 0.25 | 0.25g |
I would add some vanilla fragrance in place of Perfume. I used classic coconut oil, the same as I use for soapmaking. 7g of banana is about three thin (1mm) rounds.
Instead of Tangerine EO which I didn’t have, I used another sweet citrus fruit EO – red sweet orange EO.
I prepared oatmilk by infusion as follows: In 185g of distilled water I let boil 3 TBSP of oat flakes and let cool down. I filtered the infusion and used 4 grams of it in the recipe.
Instructions:
1) Mix well bananas, avocado and oatmilk. I tried both blender and hand stirring – blender is better.
2) Melt the butters and coconut oil and add all liquid oils – let it cool down, but not solidify
3) Slowly mix in the banana/avocado/oatmilk puree. Again, blender is better than hand stirring – otherwise you will have in your product very small banana pieces that will get brown.
4) Put the mix in the fridge for 10 minutes and let cool down a bit more. Then again mix well. This is important, otherwise the emulsion will separate as you can see on this picture (this is after I poured the mass in molds, without chilling it in advance)
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| This is the emulsion separation after I poured it at 25°C in molds. It was still liquid. |
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| After I noticed this, I mixed it again – while mixing, the liquid separated and chilled mass became thick and did not separate anymore. |
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| After the second mixing – homogenous, no more separation! |
It is important to let cool in the fridge, mainly if you are stirring by hand, otherwise it will separate again, as you can see on this picture – this is the mass after second mixing, that I let to cool down outside. I broke it into small pieces (which was very easy), so that you can see the bottom of different color, containing pieces of bananas that settled down.
And how does it work? Perfectly! It also smells similarly. I am very happy with it, next time I put in also the rose absolue, sandalwood and frankincense.
After abount two months in the fridge, the mold started growing inside – it appeared as darker spots. Therefore – if you can, either use it up soon, or add 1% preservative to the oatmik.
How did I duplicate it?
In order to duplicate a recipe, you first have to know the ingredients:
Ingredients Cocoa Butter, Shea Butter, Fresh Organic Bananas, Oat Milk, Fresh Organic Avocado, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Perfume, Organic Jojoba Oil, Almond Oil, Tangerine Oil, Lavender Oil, Sandalwood Oil, Rose Absolute, Frankincense Resinoid, *Limonene, *Linalool
and than of course their proportions.
The good thing is that ingredients are listed in a decreasing order, therefore we know that cocoa butter is the most abundant, followed by shea butter.
Perfume is usually not used more than 3%, although I believe LUSH uses more than that (if you have ever entered a LUSH store, you know what I am talking about…).
Apart of proportions, there are more questions to ask for example, how can LUSH use fresh fruits without preservatives? Susan in her blog discuss the use of fresh fruit in LUSH products and concludes that either it is not really fresh, or there are unlisted preservatives in their product.
As LUSH recently started to post How is it made videos, we definitely know that they use fresh fruits. So either LUSH is hiding something, or it just miraculously works without preservatives … so I tried it without them too.
This is the video for King of the Skin, it helped me to set up the proportions…
Another question was, how is the oat milk mixed in the butters without an emulsifier? Then I found somewhere that both bananas and avocados are a bit of natural emulsifiers for water in oil emulsions. Because the oat infusion was of much less quantity than the oils, this idea seemed reasonable.
Of course, I had no idea what is their Perfume, but I am very happy with the result – it actually smells verz similar although I did change red orange EO for tangerine EO and did not have rose absolue.
ASIDE ON LUSH MASKS: I also found out that although LUSH in many products claims not to use preservatives, very probably there are preservatives in their perfume part of the recipe. How did I found that? You know their fresh masks – to be used within two weeks, because of no preservatives added? Well, I kept the rest of mine in the fridge for MONTHS! And nothing happend to it!!!!!
Then I tranferred it to the bathroom and it has been sitting there for weeks now. And guess what – NOTHING HAS CHANGED! No mold, no nothing. It smells still the same…I do not like how they make fools of us, because there is absolutely no way it could survive this long if there were no preservatives….
What do you think? Did you try to make your own King of the skin? Did you try to duplicate the recipe? How did it went? Do not hesitate to leave me a comment!
Have a nice day!
Evik
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Hi A,
thanks for the comment. I still have one of this batch and nothing happened to it in terms of mold growth or change of odor which might be a sign of bacterias growing. Recently I have made another batch – so much I like it.
In general, for home-made use or give-away for friends, it is OK, however, if you want to sell, I would recommend a preservative – just to be sure. -
I love that you were able to reproduce this recipe. I too wonder how they are able to use fresh fruit without a preservative. One piece of advice though, spoilage can be insidious in fresh all natural products. Sometimes you neither smell nor see any sign of mold or fungus growth and yet it IS THERE. So, just be careful about using anything on your face that is that far past its safe date. 🙂
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#4 written by admin 4 years ago
Hi Jennifer,
thank you for the comment! Yes, you are right, we cannot see everything growing, although as to my experience, usually I know the spoilage is there because the odor and/or color changes – the changes are subtle, but are there. For me it is clear that LUSH uses preservatives that are in their perfume. However, in case they do not, given the amount of perfume they use, it is impossible to smell the difference between spoiled and good product :). On the other side, in such a yummy, unpreserved face mask, given the moisture in my bathroom for example, the mold should be happily growing … and it is not…
But do not worry, I did not use their mask since, I keep it just for observational purposes 🙂
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#5 written by Joanna 4 years ago
Hi there!! So I’m so happy I found this I love lush but I rather make my own and save my piggy bank! haha. I would like to mention thought that I used to work at a lush! not for long though i was hired straight out of high school and a lot to keep up with because every one who works there has lots and lots of training to do! But while working at lush there are parabians* or what everyone is calling preservatives. The parabains are only used with items that contain foods in them like king of skin because of the bananas and when you go in the store and you see the signs of what items are it’ll list if parabains are in them or not because we used to get some very strict customers about not wanting parabians so we would show them the items in the store that didn’t have any(which usually it was mostly all vegan items) but all the parabians are at food grade level, which means its at the safest level of a preservative and as for the perfume its not the perfume you’re really thinking about, it’s secret ingridents that makes lush so wonderful and of course its okay for the body but they don’t mention because pages like this, because I was told while working there they didn’t want everyone being able to produce the same product! But all aside i really can’t wait to try this out I love lush but its breaking the bank :/
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#6 written by admin 4 years ago
Hi Joanna!
Thank you very much for your valuable and indeed interesting input! I was just wondering, if King of Skin contains parabens, why it is not listed on the ingredient list? Also, I think if someone lists Perfume in the list of ingredients, then it should be perfume and nothing else. I know that perfume can be secret, but hiding other ingredients as perfume (and I think then the parabens are there) means that LUSH is not fair, which is pity.
I would love to hear once you try my recipe, what do you think about it!
Evik
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#7 written by Carol 4 years ago
Hi! Just came across your blog…love your
dupes of the Lush products. It’s my opinion
Lush is using Phenoxyethanol aka Rose Ether
as their preservative and loosely calling it
perfume since it can also be used as an aromatic
fixative. See the attached reference:
http://www.kose.com.cn/book/book4.pdfSeems like sneaky marketing to me 😉
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Hhhhhmmm…I do like some Lush products (I don’t use their soaps and shampoos because they have sulfates) so I’m glad to see that someone was able to recreate the recipe without too much difficulty. As for preservatives, tea tree oil is a natural preservative and so is St. John’s oil. So I know Lush uses tea tree oil in their stuff in small amounts and that helps to preserve some things, but generally my king of skin bar only lasts me a few weeks, I never kept it as long as two months! And same for their facial cleanser I only buy enough to last me a month or so…And all of my masks have spoiled if past the expiration date.
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#10 written by evik 4 years ago
Hi TheGirl, thank you for sharing your experience. I am not really a mask person,that is why I forgot it in the fridge for months… 🙂 I can imagine some essential oils definitely help preserving, not sure about their effect that long time, though… I think that the truth is somewhere behind essential oils, parabens and what Carol says about Phenoxyethanol – the preservative and perfume in one.
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Hi guys.
I see you are really believing in advertising, sorry they are almost lying to you. Lush do not use raw fresh bananas, raw fresh eggs, raw fresh apple juice or any other same as yours “fresh” ingredients. Don’t get me wrong- bananas was fresh when they come to lush factory, but lush manipulate with them before they put them inside them products. If you don’t believe me, look at them patents. For example this is shampoo bar with fresh eggs and fresh lemons – http://www.google.com/patents/US4996006 (Examples 1 2 3 4 EMPICOL LXV 90.00 95.25 92.00 89.00(Sodium Lauryl Sulphate)Water 5.00 2.00 5.00 (see below)Propylene Glycol 1.25 2.00(Binding Agent)Almond Oil 2.00 2.00Ground Almond 2.00Dead Sea Salt 1.00Egg Powder 1.00Lemon Juice 2.00(providing required water)Lemon Peel Powder 5.00Crocin (dye) 0.50 0.50Chlorophyllin (dye) 0.3Perfume 0.50 0.20 1.00 ). Every “fresh” ingredient they use listed as a dry powder.
To preserve them product from mold and other problems they are using preservative known as “Naticide” in Europe. This is preservative with nice smell and it’s INCI name is “Fragrance”.
I hope my tips will help you. Love your ideas, need to try some myself. Have a good one.-
#12 written by evik 4 years ago
Hi Alaska-Beauty!
Thank you very much for your input. I was searching also for some LUSH patents, but did not really succeed, thanks for the link! In the how it is made video of king of the skin, they show fresh avocados and bananas going into the batch. If this is not true and they show it in the video, than I am really disgusted – I do not expect them putting everything really fresh, but I believed if they claim it in the video, than at least in this case…
Well, I can imagine they would use fresh fruits in this case and some good preservative – actually, I have nothing against using them. I have also read multiple times that these preservatives are hidden in the perfume part, thanks for the Naticide hint! It seems its INCI is “Perfume” or “Fragrance”, which prooves the point…
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#13 written by Sonia 3 years ago
Hi there! I LOVE your site, it inspired me to get into natural products like this!! I currently have your Soft coeur duplicate LUSH massage bar dupe in my fridge 😀 I was wondering, do you think this massage bar recipe may still work without the fresh fruits? I want a moisturizing bar without the mold inside, because I don’t know how fast I’d use it. Thanks for the recipes, your blog is wonderful!
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#15 written by Nik Fauzi 3 years ago
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#16 written by evik 3 years ago
Hi Nik,
do you mean their Jungle conditioner? I never tried the hair conditioner. I look at the Jungle composition and find it weird… it contains cocoa butter – why would I want to put that on my hair… than some sodium lauryl sulphate based emulsifier – this makes the grease come out of the hair (which is necessary if you have cocoa butter there!) and there cetrimonium bromide, which is the actual conditioning agent. I believe cocoa butter is there just to keep it solid. I would have to think about it…
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#18 written by Janice 3 years ago
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I have solid shampoos – SLS free. And they are wonderful , specially for traveling . I done couple conditioner bars to, but they are not perfect. First was very hard to melt in your hands it’ was close to crafty monkey recipe. Another I found on aroma zone – more soft , but it’s start molding. Again fragrance preservation missing. Third was last forever and like to grow. I has another idea will see.
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#21 written by Jc 3 years ago
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One things is trying to duplicate another someone using your duplicate tutorial as them own. Look what I found today. I was wondering where I see this photos before 🙂 . I don’t see any links in post related to original author. http://otvetkak.ru/hands/tverdyj-kondicioner-dlya-tela-svoimi-rukami.html
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#24 written by evik 3 years ago
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#25 written by Ellen 3 years ago
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#27 written by Stefania 3 years ago
You are absolutely amazing Evik! Best blog I have found for trying to work as naturally as possibly making lotions and potions. Sorry about the link of someone stealing your hard work and taking credit. I just read that above, and I think it’s absolutely disgusting! You would have to get a lawyer I think, and then to prove you were first to make it would be so hard. Very low of her! I hope Karma gets her back for not linking you to this recipe and giving you the credit.
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#28 written by Gunhild 2 years ago
Thank you for this great post! I definitely feel the same way about Lush. Although I like their products I always feel cheated by the high prices and small quantities. Recently I have also been watching the videos and reading the ingredients and one thing I found out (by talking to a local soap maker and supply store owner) that limonen (and linalool), although it is annotated as a natural component in essential oils (true), it is a molecular extraction, and most likely not extracted from lemons and lime (but pine wood). As such, it is sold in large quantities to be used in cleaning products, food preparations, bugsprays and in cosmetics as – you guessed it – a preservative. If you look at Lush’s products list, you will see that they put limonene and linalool in almost everything. When I spoke to the soap maker he said “why? it’s s–t”. When you watch the videos you see the preparations when they add the colors and scents – it’s usually quite a dose. Also, they do use parabens as well, in specific products. Thanks for blogging!
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#30 written by Heather 2 years ago
Hello. What a nice looking recipe! I too had a face mask in my fridge for months just to see how it keeps. I’ve also heard they use preservatives in their fragrance. Vanilla stabilizer used to keep products from browning from vanillin is listed as ” fragrance”. So it could be they find a way to sneak it in like that. I have a question. The wiccy magic massage bar has cocoa and Shea ( with a little coconut and jojoba I think). Like all their bars, has no beeswax. I have tried to make bars with a very high percentage of cocoa and a little Shea. It never turns out like their bars. They are always too soft and melt very fast. The wiccy bar is hard and when you rub it on your skin it doesn’t seem to melt as fast as cocoa does. I am unsure how the two butters combine to make a hard bar that melts slower. I did read on their website they use some sort of aeration technique. Maybe that’s the secret? I just can’t get a nice hard bar like I want without beeswax. I did try high melt Shea thinking that might make a difference but It didn’t. I might never know lol
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#31 written by evik 2 years ago
Hi Heather, the Wiccy bar has these ingredients: Cocoa Butter (Theobroma cacao), Aduki Beans (Phaseolus angularis), Shea Butter (Butyrospermum parkii), Organic Jojoba Oil (Simmondsia chinensis), Cinnamon Leaf Oil (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), Peppermint Oil (Mentha piperita), Extra Virgin Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera), Cinnamyl Alcohol (Cinnamyl Alcohol), *Cinnamal (*Cinnamal), Coumarin (Coumarin), Eugenol (Eugenol), Isoeugenol (Isoeugenol), Benzyl Benzoate (Benzyl Benzoate), *Limonene (*Limonene), *Linalool (*Linalool), Perfume (Perfume)
I think it is a question of balancing well the shea and cocoa butter. There is really not much jojoba or coconut oil. I would add 1 teaspoon of corn starch to 100g of the formulation, it helps to keep the greasiness down and makes it feel melting later.
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#32 written by Heather 2 years ago
Just wondering what you would suggest for a preservative and in what amounts if one did want to use the fresh ingredients, but also did want to extend their shelf life? Thank you so much in advance!! I love your postings. You have saved myself and my loved ones a great deal of money by recreating some of my favorite beauty products at a reasonable price. Thank you!!!
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#35 written by Tiffany 1 year ago
Hello and thank you for this.
I have been amazed by Lush cosmetics at the thought of using fresh fruits in their products. I’ve watched tons of videos and they do turn the fruits into juice. They use tons of detergents. Speaking of this, did you find how to dupe their shampoo bars? There is another company using fresh bananas and beer to make hair mask. Whether they are using fresh fruit or powders or extracts, they are using broad spectrum preservatives. I called Lush one day and they indeed told me they use preservatives after telling them my concerns for moldy products and the fear of buying them. -
Several of the EO are preservatives- also, if you have true raw (never been heated over 90-100 degrees) honey- that has excellent preservative nature. Unless you know the person you get your honey from it will be hard to get true RAW honey- don’t trust a store label that says that, they all heat it to get it into the bottles faster
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So since you made these have they lasted? I have been trying to figure out how they did it for a while now and I don't want to waste the ingredients if they are just going to spoil. It's pretty awesome that you came up with a recipe for it though, props to you girl!