A new season always triggers me to start from scratch in some way. I am going to start from the beginning, how The Body Buffet was birthed. For those of you who have been following awhile, you know that that I am a Cali girl who moved to Philly (nine years ago next week). I have always been fascinated with the East Coast because of the access to food and supply varieties that I never saw in San Diego. One of the first things I discovered was whipped shea butter. I couldn’t believe how much more moisturizing it was than lotion. It made my skin supple and left it was a sheen that no lotion had been able to match.
Since then, it is literally one of the only things I use to condition my skin year round, but especially in the winter to avoid dry cracked skin. Unlike many commercial moisturizers, it is not far down on the list of ingredients, it is number one in my body butters. I am still working on a blend that I can use on my face, as it can feel very heavy when you initially apply it, but I do use it for the dry patches on my face after exfoliating. Even when I tried to change up my body recipe and use mango butter, I realized that shea butter still wins hands down. This is why I choose to use it in the majority of my products from whipped body butter to soap to shampoo bars.
What ingredient works wonders for your skin? What is your skinspirational story?
Marquita Bell is soaper-in-chief and the owner of The BodyBuffet where foodie meets beauty. Based out of Philadelphia, The Body Buffet
aims to cultivate beauty inside and out from foodie adventures, self-care tips,
and via handmade artisan soap, shampoo bars, facial bars, laundry soap and
more. They use local ingredients when possible and have aimed to make
conditioning skin-loving, hair-loving, clothes-loving soap since 2009.
