Organic Butterfly Pea Flowers
CTFA Name: Organic Butterfly Pea Flower
INCI Name: Organic Clitoria Ternatea (Organic Butterfly Pea Flower)
Country of Origin: India
Packaging: Biodegradable Bags
Description: Whole dried flowers and leaves
Applications: Skincare, Soap Manufacturing
Benefits: purple to blue colorant for skincare and soap making; antioxidant; reduce redness; anti-inflammatory; increase skin radiance; boost natural collagen production
Suggested formulas: dry facial masks; shampoo and conditioner bars; toners; serums; bath soaks/bombs; creams; soap bars (cp and hp)
Organic Butterfly Pea Flowers have a beautiful purple-blue hue to them. You can use them in a variety of ways in your formulation process, including making a tea water for the color and antioxidant benefits, or grinding the flowers down to make a powder and using that for color in products like dry masks, shampoo and conditioner bars, and body care products.
Butterfly Pea Flowers are traditionally used in Southeast Asian traditional herbal medicine both for the color and the bioactive compounds and antioxidants. Butterfly Pea Flowers are rich in anthocyanins, specifically delphinidin, which helps neutralize free radicals. This makes it an excellent addition to aging skincare routines.
Organic Butterfly Pea Flowers are also known to help reduce redness and reduce inflammation. If you’re creating a line to help target rosacea, eczema, psoriasis, acne, rashes, swelling and other types of skin inflammation. In addition to soothing irritated skin, organic butterfly pea flowers have also been said to help promote a more radiant complexion.
These same flavonoids make butterfly pea flower an excellent ingredient for use in hair care. Incorporating it into your shampoo and conditioners can help to strengthen hair and prevent hair loss. This is in addition to the purple/blue color, which can help reduce brassiness.
In a 2021 study published by National Library of Medicine, organic butterfly pea flower was shown to have the highest phenolic compound content of the three plants in the study. These compounds are what help fight free radicals on the skin. Organic Butterfly Pea Flower has been shown to help neutralize these free radicals, reducing the reactive oxygen species, which in turn makes the skin more youthful, helps protect the moisture barrier, and helps reduce appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
How to use Organic Butterfly Pea Flowers:
Our flowers are whole flowers, so you have two ways to use them: whole or ground. You can easily grind up the flowers using a coffee grinder. This will give you control over the fineness of the powder.
Using whole flowers:
- You can use the whole flowers in soap bars, bath soaks, bath bombs to add texture and color spots. When using in soap processing and you want to retain the whole flower appearance without changing the color of your soap bar, you’ll add them as surface decoration after poured in the molds.
- You can grind them to a more coarse grind and incorporate them into soap bars as an exfoliant. This most likely will affect the color of your finished soap bar.
- The most common way to use the whole flower in soap making will be to either steep it in water to create a tea, then use this as part of your water phase for coloring the soap bar. You can try extracting the flowers into an oil, but this will take longer and the color will not be as strong.
Notes about using as a colorant:
- The color is very dependent upon the pH of the final product. You can incorporate ingredients such as citric acid or lemon essential oil to help push the color more towards purple.
- The finished color will be reddish-purple in more acidic products; bright blue in more alkaline products.
Using powdered form:
- You can grind up the whole flowers to a very fine powder. This powder can then be incorporated into any product formulation just as you would a clay or other powder colorant.
- You can extract the flower into an oil, water or glycerin. Then use this in your formulations to add both color and antioxidant properties.
- You can use the powder in shampoo and conditioner bars to both make them purple (remember to add a citrus to push the purple), and it will help reduce brassiness and aging in colored hair. Butterfly Pea Flowers are also said to help stimulate hair growth.
- You can use directly in bath bombs, bath soaks and dry facial/body care masks. Start small as the color can be powerful. The skin soothing and aging benefits of organic butterfly pea flower make it ideal for skincare masks.
- To blend into a facial serum, you can extract into
Organic Butterfly Pea Flowers are sold in ½- pound biodegradable bags, 1-pound biodegradable bags, 5-pound biodegradable bags, 25-pound and 55-pound sizes. Any orders larger than 250-pounds please email us for pricing.
This information is for reference only. These recommendations have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not mean to treat, cure or remedy any diseases.