Making your own, natural, Beeswax lip balm is fun, easy, and satisfying. You can make them using only the ingredients that you want, with none of the ingredients that you don’t want, letting you take control of what you put on your skin, as well as what you eat because, let’s face it … lip balm goes away because we lick it off and we don’t need to eat a bunch of synthetic chemicals or things that are not so good for us.
As a general rule you’ll want to use:
20% Beeswax or OliveWax
25% Oils / Butters that are solid at room temperature (Palm Fruit, Babassu, Coconut, Tucuma Butter, Shea Butter)
15% Oils/ Butters that are brittle at room temperature (Cocoa Butter, Cupuacu Butter, Mango Butter)
40% Oils that are liquid at room temperature (Avocado, Olive, Castor, Grapeseed, Apricot Kernel)
These are just some of our favorite oils / butters for a natural lip balm recipe (formula) but, the beauty of making your own natural lip balm is that you can use whatever oils / butters that appeal to you and your target market.
You can adjust your recipe (formula) to make them more firm in the summer and more soft in the winter, as you see fit, based on your chosen packaging. The best carrier oils to give your lip balm some shine are Olive Oil and Castor Oil but, be careful as too much Castor Oil can make them sticky. Coconut and Olive Oils will help your lip balm to have some residual moisturizing benefits. If you’d like to add some butter to your natural lip balm recipe (formula) that will give it residual moisturizing benefits, as well.
One of the nicest things about making your own natural lip balm is that you can easily modify them to suit your taste. To do this … after you’ve finished melting everything and before you fill your containers, dip the tip of a stainless steel spoon into the lip balm and give it a couple of minutes to harden, then test it and see how you like the texture. If it’s too hard reheat it and add more liquid oils to soften it, if it’s too soft reheat it and add more beeswax, or brittle oil / butter to make it harder. It’s that simple.
Directions:
Add the solid ingredients to the pot first, using a heavy bottom stainless steel pan, to control and distribute heat evenly, or a double boiler. Allow the solids to melt, then add the liquid oils, stirring to combine them, remove from heat. Test the consistency. Once it’s exactly what you want, add your essential, or flavor, oils, pour into lip balm tubes and allow to cool. You’ll want to work fast, at this step, because your lip balm will start to cool, in the pot, so you’ll have to re-heat it gently to get it all poured, or you can just have one small container ready, that you can scrape any left over into, that won’t look as nice, for your personal use. Don’t try to use a pipette, or some other squeezable dispenser as it will harden almost immediately and create a lot of waste (never reheat soft plastics with product in them as the chemicals in the he plastic can leach into your product). Once cool, apply the caps, and you’re done. You can also choose from a wide variety of essential oils, or flavor oils, to suit your taste. Natural Lip Balms won’t need preservative because you’ll use them so fast but, they will need anti-oxidant protection to keep the oils from going rancid. The best choice for this is Vitamin E, or Cranberry Seed Oil, which will prevent rancidity and are both healing, and nurturing, to the skin.
Enjoy making your own natural lip balm, and have fun making all different types by adjusting which essential oils you use in the formula; like peppermint/cinnamon for lip plumper, or vanilla/citrus for a dreamcicle flavor, or how about bergamot/ginseng for something different? What’s your flavor?
