Green Your Life: Soothing Homemade Lip Balm

Reader Contribution by Dani Hurst
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I don’t know about you, but I go through lip balm like it’s going out of style. I have a few favorite brands, but every time I run out I have to wait until the next time I can get to the store before my lips feel quenched. So, I decided to make a batch of my own. Since making my own body scrubs at home, I’ve been looking for more body care products to whip up, and lip balm seemed like the perfect next project.

You probably won’t have most of the ingredients on-hand, but a quick trip to your local health food store should get the job done. The following recipe (thank you Design Sponge) makes about 2 to 2.5 ounces of lip balm.

Peppermint essential oil, coconut oil, honey and beeswax are all you need to mix up a batch of lip balm at home. When you make your own body care products you control what goes into them, allowing you to avoid unnecessary or harmful ingredients and chemicals. Plus, they’re totally customizable! Photo By Dani Hurst.

What you’ll need:
4 tablespoons beeswax, grated or finely chopped
2 tablespoons coconut oil
5-10 drops of essential oil of your choice
2 teaspoon honey (for flavor, optional)

What you’ll do with it:

1. Put some water in a pot (about 1½ cups) and bring it to a boil. Once boiling, place the grated beeswax and coconut oil in a glass container with a pour spout (a small glass measuring cup worked well for me) and put it in the water, double-boiler style. As the wax and oil melt, stir the mixture with a metal spoon to fully incorporate the two.

2. Once they’re completely melted, remove the glass container from the water (you’ll want to use oven mitts) and set on a flat, heat-safe work surface. Pour in your essential oil of choice and the honey if you’re using it, and stir well.

3. Pour the mixture into your selected container. The lip balm is ready when it solidifies.

This recipe made just enough to fill this 2.5-ounce baby food jar, which I decorated with old ribbon and repurposed chipboard. And it’s just the right size: larger than a tube of lip balm, but still easy to tote around in my bag. Photo By Dani Hurst.

You have a few options when it comes to selecting storage containers. You can buy small tins (there were some right by the beeswax at my local health food store), but I always prefer to reuse and repurpose when possible. So I opted for an empty glass baby food jar, because that combination speaks to my two great loves: creative repurposing and baby food desserts. Plus, it’s another great way to repurpose your extra glass.

Decorating your container is another fun aspect of this project. Just as you can customize the ingredients in the balm itself–always a perk of making it yourself–you can do the same to the vessel in which you put it. I took some old ribbon and colored chipboard and glued them to the sides and lid, respectively. You can also customize the ingredients, so try out different essential oils and flavoring agents (such as lavender essential oil with almond, or pair orange with cinnamon essential oil).

Be aware that the equipment you use for this project will be exposed to high heats and coated in wax, so use metal and glass whenever possible instead of plastic. I grated my beeswax with a small metal cheese grater and days later I still can’t get all the wax out of the grooves and holes, so it has become my official beeswax grater; in short, expect that some of your tools won’t fully recover to food-grade standards, so procure some that you can dedicate to making lip balm alone. 

  • Published on Feb 21, 2011
Tagged with: Reader Contributions
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