Homemade Lip Balm Tutorial

Following my candle making success I thought I’d have a try at lip balm (my obsession with all things ‘wax’ continues).

So this is what I did…

Ingredients

The basic ratio I worked with is as follows:

• 40% cosmetic grade oil which is liquid at room temperature (such as sweet almond, olive, apricot kernel etc)
• 25% cosmetic grade oil which is solid at room temperature (such as coconut, palm, lanolin etc)
• 20% cosmetic grade beeswax (white or yellow, pellets or solid block)
• 15% cosmetic grade oil which is brittle at room temperature (cocoa butter, palm kernel etc)
• Plus essential oils for fragrance/flavour

To make 10 small tins of lip balm (15ml tins like these) with a little left over, I used:

• 40ml organic sweet almond oil
• 40ml organic jojoba oil
• 50g organic coconut oil (solid)
• 40g organic yellow beeswax pellets
• 30g organic cocoa butter (solid)
• Approximately 2ml organic peppermint oil

You will also need:

• 10 small containers (approximately 15ml each) for your lip balm.  You can purchase these online or recycle old cosmetic containers.  Either way, the containers should be sterilised
• A saucepan
• A heatproof container to melt your ingredients (ideally a jug)
• Stickers to label your lip balm containers – available online

This is what I did…

Place your containers on some newspaper or a tea towel on a tray.  Your containers should be sterile.

Melt all ingredients together (except the peppermint oil – this is added later).  It is recommended that you melt everything in a ‘double boiler’.  To do this, I use an old, but very clean, metal jug that I don’t use in the kitchen any more (it is reserved for projects like this).  Any heatproof vessel will be fine but a jug is useful for pouring.

I place the ingredients in the jug then place the jug in a pan of kettle boiled water.  The pan does not need to be full – just a third full is fine.  Then pop the pan (with the jug in it) on a medium heat and gently boil the water which will melt the ingredients together.

Keep your eye on the contents of your jug as everything melts fairly quickly!

Ingredients before heating:

Once your ingredients are totally melted, add the peppermint oil and stir in.  I used a wooden skewer to stir the mixture.  How much peppermint oil you use is really up to you – I added a bit at a time and when it smelt quite minty I stopped.  I used roughly 2ml.  There is a little trial and error involved here…!

Pour the liquid into the prepared lip balm containers.  The liquid solidifies quickly so I poured liquid into each tin so it was nearly full, and then did a second pour to fill them right to the top.

Carefully place your lip balms in the fridge, leaving the lids off.  I let them solidify a little before I carried them to the fridge so I didn’t spill any.  Only put the lids on when the lip balm is totally cool and solid.

Your finished lip balm should look something like this:

The finishing touch is a label (I put one on the top and an ingredients label on the bottom).

 

Enjoy!  Please let me know if you give this a try.