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Lip Balm made easy
February 15, 2016
I've been making the same lip balm recipe for years. I made it up by reading the ingredients on a tube of Burt's Bee.
The recipe served us well, until... it didn't.
I've always put honey in the recipe, and fielded a ton of questions over the years about what kind of honey exactly I use. Maybe the honey here in Quebec is different than in Maine but I've noticed the honey separating out of the mix consistently now for the last few years. As much as I love the sweet taste on my lips I find that seperation irritating so I've changed my recipe.
It's worth sharing. And so is the secret tool I used to fill the tubes.
I make small batches of lip balm so I've resisted investing in a one of those special lip balm filling trays that allows you stand up the tubes and pour the mixture over the whole lot.
But with this recent recipe I tried a new trick I learned when researching how to make lip gloss (which we did for Brienne's birthday).
I used a syringe to fill the tubes.
Using a syringe worked really well. The trick is to keep the mixture liquid because you don't want it cooling and clogging your syringe. Keeping the pot on the just-turned-off electric burner worked well for me. (You might have to do something different for a gas burner.)
Below is the recipe I used this time. It is double the old recipe. Because I used a syringe I could easily measure the yield of the recipe and the amount that went in each tube.
Easy Peppermint Lip Balm recipe
Yield: approx. 125 mL (or 4.2 oz)
I filled 21 lip balm tubes with this recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1 oz beeswax
- 1 oz coconut oil
- 1 oz cocoa butter
- 3 tsp lanolin
- 1.5 tsp vitamin E oil
- 1.5 tsp peppermint essential oil
Directions:
- In a small pot over low heat melt beeswax, coconut oil, cocoa butter, lanolin, and vitamin E oil. (Many people recommend using a double boiler, I don’t have one and as long as I melt over a low heat I don’t have any problems with oils burning.)
- When the oils and wax are just melted, remove from heat and add the peppermint essential oil. Whisk well with a mini whisk; or my favorite tool, a chopstick designated for this purpose.
- Pour into jars or containers, use a syringe to easily fill lip balm tubes.
Click here to view and download→ a printable copy of this recipe. (You should click, I worked hard to make a nice printable for you.)
We have been using this batch of lip balm since last fall and I really like its consistency.
I made a bunch of tubes and I gave away some at Christmas. I also like being able to stash lip balm in the car, my handbags and backpack and to keep a tube of lip balm in all the places I regularly use in our home - kitchen, desk, bedside. Because you know, walking the 15 steps through our apartment to the bathroom from any of these places is just so inconvenient.
The cost of making your own lip balm is pennies per tube, the most expensive part is the cost of the tubes and jars which I wash, disinfect and reuse. Except for the lip balm I make for gifts. In that case (germophobes breathe easy) I use brand new tubes.
Supplies
Now that I live in the big city I can find lip balm tubes locally. Here's a few places you buy lip balm tubes and those fancy filling trays online:
- Voyageur Soap and Candle (Canada)
- New Directions Aromatics tubes (International)
- New Directions Aromatics filling tray
- Elements Bath & Body (USA)
- Amazon (USA)
- Mountain Rose Herbs (USA)
- eBee Honey (USA), all manner of lip balm tube fun, including multicolored tubes!
If you try this recipe I would really like to know, for personal and professional reasons, how it worked for you. I welcome your feedback.
Resource Library
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Anna on Feb. 15, 2016, 3:28 p.m.
the business potential in selling kits to do this is staggering. Brianna get on this. honestly when I saw the list of all the different places for the supplies, I saw it
Kit with free recipe ...... No-brainer
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Julie on Feb. 15, 2016, 2:34 p.m.
I just want to clarify...1.5 tsp of essential oil? It seems like a lot since essential oils are pretty potent. How much of the bottle is 1.5 tsp any ideas? This is just what my girls were looking for. They made another recipe and I'm not convinced it was exactly what they wanted. I will give them this recipe and see if they want to try this!!
renee on Feb. 16, 2016, 6:39 p.m.
Julie,
Thank you so much for asking! You raise a really good point in your question that I failed to address in this recipe, or really any of my other lip balm recipes, and that is the quality of the essential oil you're using.
For the purpose of family health and remedies to treat sickness/illness I use high quality DoTERRA essential oils. For the purpose of soapmaking I use bulk esssential oils that have similar fragrance but are lower quality in terms of production, distillation and purity.
Somewhat ironically I use this lower quality essential oil in my lip balm recipe. This is ironic because I use the higher quality EO's in my homemade lotions, mostly because I love the variety of EO's I have in the smaller DoTERRA bottles, Frankinscense, Geranium, etc. I have less variety in my large soamaking EOs.
Your question makes me think I should create a lip balm recipe with higher quality oils also to see how the product turns out.
As for what to do in your situation: You can probably use less of the higher quality peppermint essential oil and get the same fragrance results. I should also mention I really love a tingly lip blam. If you like something less pronounced then less oil is the way to go.
What I'm not sure of is if the reduction in liquid quantity would affect the consistency of the product. That's something I need to test.
I've attached this picture to illustrate the difference in bottle sizes of the EOs I use for soapmaking and the ones we use for remedies and health. These bottles cost about the same amount.