Making your own lip balm is easy, fun and rewarding. Lip balms with exotic butters can cost up to $7.00 per tube but you can make your own for a fraction of that price! The best part is that you get to choose your ingredients! Be as natural as you want, as fancy and flavorful as you want or create specialty healing balms for different lip problems.
Ingredients:
Lip balm bases are recipes that consist of light oils and hard oils or butters usually at a 50/50 ratio. Light oils are in a liquid form like, castor, olive, jojoba etc. Hard oils are solid like beeswax, soy wax, cocoa butter etc. Below is a list of popular hard and light oils used in lip balms.
| Hard Oils, Waxes or Butters
Beeswax Soy Wax Cocoa Butter Shea Butter Mango Butter Coconut Oil – 92 degree Petroleum jelly Crisco |
Light Oils
Olive Oil Jojoba Sweet Almond Avocado Oil Vegetable Glycerin Aloe Vera Gel Castor Hemp |
If your base is too soft – add more hard oils. If your base is too hard – add more light oils.
Use any of the above light oils for roll on lip glosses.
Flavorings and Sweeteners
We recommend only using flavorings specifically recommended for lip balms. Food extracts may be sometimes be used but they contain alcohol and sometimes do not give good results.
Flavors Recommended:
-
- Lip Balm Fragrance (may need sweetener)
- Cool Aid
- Crystal Light
- Jolly Ranchers
- Chocolate Chips
Sweeteners:
- Aspartame (artificial)
- Honey
- Aguave
Healing Essential Oils:
- Comfrey
- Rosemary
- Tea Tree
- Camphor
Coloring
Coloring is not necessary but if you want to add coloring the rule of thumb is a little goes a long way. You will only need small amounts to tint your bases. If you are using Cool aid, chocolate chips, jolly ranchers etc., keep in mind that they will add some tint to your base too.
Recommended:
Lip Safe Mica
Lipstick (use small shavings)
Eyeshadow or powdered makeup
Beet root juice for a natural red
Measuring
Here are some guidelines for measuring your base amounts that will save you lots of time with a calculator.
1 ounce = 28 grams (it’s easier to measure in grams for a small batch with more than 2 ingredients)
1 oz. makes 6 to 7 standard lip balm tubes
7.5 oz. makes 50 tubes or a full tray
Have fun experimenting and developing your own creations!