Make your own lip balm!

If you don't want to read the whole rambly post, you can just scroll down to the "how to make this stuff" section at the end...it's okay i won't mind. 

Do you hate lip balm as much as I do? I have a love/hate relationship with the stuff - I love that it makes my lips feel nice in the summer and not cracked in the winter... but I hate that in order to find a tube that doesn't taste like you've just licked a perfume bottle you found in a public bathroom you have to pay a bunch for it. If I wanted to taste cherries I'd go buy a bag of them.

Then I discovered Burts Bees. All Natural! Made with Beeswax! Essential oils! Peppermint! ... wait, what? Peppermint? Maybe I should have read the label, it clearly says "cooling" on it, so maybe i should have know that it was peppermint. Don't get me wrong, i L-O-V-E peppermint... but i feel like Burt uses a bit too much and my poor lips get all burned and red. That doesn't feel like "Soothing" or "Refreshing" to me (although they are cooled...until the fire kicks in anyway).

Just a small sample of my Burts collection...the poor guy to the right is MANGO I think.
I know i've got the "medicated" one somewhere, and the new one with Kokum butter at work.

Then I discovered Burts HONEY lip balm. YAAAAY no more burning lips! And it has a nice light honey scent to it without tasting like I just licked winney-the-poos fingers! Yippee! The only downside is that i keep forgetting it when i go places. So i buy a new tube. Why is this a downside you ask? Well...i think at one point i had about 20 tubes of it floating around. I've since given some to baby sister (because i swear she eats the stuff like it's candy), but i still have way too much to be normal in my house/desk/purse. And that stuff is expensive! I know $3 isn't much at once...but if you multiply that by 20, it makes me a little sad to realize i've spent $60 on lip goo that isn't being used. I could have bought a new computer game with that! (do you think game-stop will exchange 20 used lip balms for a computer game? yeah...me neither...)

So anyways, as i am wont to do whenever i get bored i poked around on the internet. Not really looking for anything in particular, just because i was bored and i'm paying for the internet (so why not use it, right?). 

Eventually i stumbled upon a really neat blog post on a blog called A Sonoma Garden; in which our intrepid heroine strives to make with world a less smelly, and generally more natural place with her homemade concoctions. Lo and behold, a super easy lip goo recipe! AAAAAND it's the kind that lives in a tube, so none of this "getting your fingers all goopy in the process" stuff!

So what did i do with this new found knowledge? Nuthin. I bookmarked the page and moved on. My brain said "ohhh this would be fun...and SUPER easy....let's go!" but myself decided that ordering the beeswax and oil was going to take a while, so i'll get there EVENTUALLY but it's not like i could do it today, right?

So...months later (like...6 or so) i get back around to being interested in making lip goo. Mostly because i wanted to try her deodorant recipe (which i'll talk about in another post...that's still a work-in-progress). I figured if i have to order the stuff for the deodorant i might as well order the lip goo stuff as well, save on shipping blah blah blah. 

O M G. My life is changed!

I ordered all of my stuff from the same place as the Sonoma lady (Mountain Rose Herbs, which is in california) figuring that since i'd seen that site all over the place and everyone loved it it would be a good place to start (i've since found out they're pretty popular amongst the crazy hippy population since they sell some pretty good quality stuff).

Lets see, i got some Beeswax Pastilles (aka pellets...5 pounds of them so i could make candles too) so i didn't have to shave the bricks down, i got a jar of cocoa butter, shea butter, some empty lip balm tubes, and a couple of oils. Then i went all crazy and stopped at Michaels on my way home from work, and got a few cute wooden craft boxes and some empty jars - to store my goods in (i didn't want the beeswax to start smelling like a plastic bag, so now it lives in glass canning jars i stole from hubby). I put myself together a little kit :)

My lip goo kit, version 1. Version 2 is quite a bit bigger to accommodate all of the other stuff i added...*sigh*

Next was to start making! I used the Sonoma lady's recipe to start with, since i had NO IDEA what i was doing...turns out making lip goo is easier than baking pre-mixed cookie batter... for real! I made a couple of changes (i substituted more cocoa butter for the coconut oil since we didn't have any, and left out the vitamin e for the same reason), and made me some lip goo!

Her recipe was a bit ambitious - the first thing i found is that she claims it fills 7 tubes...not sure what i did wrong but i got 3.5 out of it. oddsfish. The second thing i found is that it was REALLY greasy. like...i felt like i'd just dumped straight coconut oil on my face. Do not like. I don't like hand lotion for the same reason - if i feel like a greased pig when i'm done it's way too much for me. 

So i tweaked. I came up with this recipe that i've been using as a base, and OMG it's the best! I'm STILL working on coming up with different scent combinations. 

I also learned a few interesting things in making this. 

1) most lip goos are sweetened. Did you know that? i didn't. They put stevia or honey powder (only in the really fancy stuff, stevia is cheaper) in it to make it sweet. Apparently this tricks your brain into thinking that your tasting whatever scent the lip balm is - so raspberry scented lip balm *almost* tastes like raspberry. Except that it tastes fake and dull. This is why i hate regular lip goo... it's always got that fake plastic taste to it... this must be why. 

2) if you mess up your recipe you can just push it out of the tube and tweak it...you don't have to start all over! thank god! batch 1 was too oily so i pushed it out and added more wax, and voila batch 2 was great! It might take a few extra tubes but it's not a problem (more liquid = more tubes). 

3) this stuff is C-H-E-A-P to make. Like seriously. If you're really frugal and have old tubes you want to reuse it would cost about $0.20 to make. If you like to live on the wild side and buy new tubes that have never been tained it jumps up to about $0.50 a tube. Try not to cry... i know that might break the bank. The only down side is that you can't just buy 3 tbsp of beeswax so the initial purchase is more expensive, but this stuff can be used for all sorts of goodies (like candles, and deodorant, and hand cream, and christmas presents, etc) so in the end you'll win. 

4) cocoa butter is a pain. It's the ONLY part of the process that i dont like - mostly because cocoa butter is hard at room temperature. You have to scrape it with a metal spoon and then measure the scrapings into a measuring spoon. And it melts at skin temperature so the minute you get it on your hands it's liquid. And it smells like the best chocolate in the universe (so it's really hard not to just lick it off when you're making this..which you can, it's totally edible...but a bit expensive to just eat straight).

The next thing i had to figure out was Labels! I found this blog post on the Brambleberry.com website:  The Soap Queen: How to Label and figured i might as well play it safe. So after searching the internet for the correct size labels to use i finally gave up. I had some old clear mailing address sheets leftover and used a few of those (since permanent marker does NOT stick to lip balm tubes at all) just to write the flavors on. 

my 'temporary' labels. how brilliant!

Then i discovered you can buy whole 8.5x11 sheets of 'clear labels' at staples - all uncut. I thought to myself "i have a paper cutter...and a printer...squee!" so now i have some pretty nifty looking labels too. I'm still working on how i want them to look, and I try to make each flavor a different label (just to keep it interesting). It's sad...but kind of fun. 

And so now that your eyeballs are probably bleeding if you even made it this far, i'll just jump right into the tutorial part of this. 

HOW TO MAKE THIS STUFF.

I'll go over how to make the lip goo that I like. I know i haven't said it before, but if you do this you do it AT YOUR OWN RISK - so far i haven't burnt off any body parts by using the wrong ingredients, but if you don't research the oils you are using they could haven't some pretty weird effects (i.e. too much peppermint will rip the skin off your face as well as melt your eyeballs). 

Here are some miscellaneous things you'll need. I don't use the same ones i use for cooking because i find that no matter how much i wash they always have a slight waxy feel when they're cleaned and i don't want that in my dinner. 

- measuring spoons

- metal spoons (cheapo $1 walmart ones are fine)

- pyrex 2 cup measuring cup (for microwave or double-boiling)

- paper towels

- cloth towel

- an old hair tie (without any metal ends on it)

RECIPE 1: UNSCENTED COCOA BUTTER - PLUS HOW TO NOTES

This is a good base-recipe to use as a starter. This is what i use to start any of my new experiments now.

Ingredients: 

- 4 .15oz Lip Balm Tubes

- 1 tbsp beeswax pellets

- 1 tbsp cocoa butter *

- 1 tbsp olive oil

* i have found you can buy cocoa butter in little quarter sized rounds. I use a food scale (with grams) to measure out the cocoa butter rather than a tablespoon of shavings. It's much more accurate this way. Just weigh how much wax you're using and add the same amount of cocoa butter. 

Directions: 

1. put the beeswax pellets in your trusty pyrex measuring cup. Put into the microwave for 45 seconds. Take it out and swish it around a bit, then put it back in the microwave for another 45 seconds (you can also use a pot of boiling water if you don't like the microwave, just boil the water, remove the pan from the heat, and put your measuring up right on in until the wax melts).

2. scrape out 1 tbsp of cocoa butter and dump into the nice hot melty wax. If this takes too long and things start to solidify you can throw it back in the microwave for 30 seconds to fix it. 

3. add the 1 tbsp of olive oil. 

4. Mix with your spoon. duh :)

5. Take the tops off of the 4 lip balm tubes, and hold them together with the old hair tie. Works wonders. I always add one more tube than i think i need, just incase my measurements are off and i need to fill an extra tube (so if my recipe calls for 4 tubes, i use 5 just incase).

such a pretty shape!

6. VERY CAREFULLY pour the wax into the tubes. The tubes fill up really fast so go slow. If you go so slow that the pyrex gets a waxy wall on it throw it in the microwave again for 30 seconds to melt it. 

This was the Sonoma recipe i used. 3.5 tubes, see!

7. Put the stack of tubes in the fridge (upright please!) to set (about 5 minutes). Don't put the caps on you'll just make a mess.

This was a match i made for baby sister for her birthday. 6 flavors, 4 of each. 

8. A little trick i learned, when the tubes are cooled take a paper towel - twist the tubes so they stick up a bit and go around the edges so they're smooth. The mixture tends to have sharp pointy edges and i like my lip stuff to be all pretty and rounded when it's done.

9. Add labels!!

Here's the condensed version: 

RECIPE: UNSCENTED COCOA BUTTER

This is a good base-recipe to use as a starter. This is what i use to start any of my new experiments now.

Ingredients: 

- 4 .15oz Lip Balm Tubes

- 1 tbsp beeswax pellets

- 1 tbsp cocoa butter

- 1 tbsp olive oil

Directions: 

1) melt the wax in the microwave for ~2 minutes (swish every 45 seconds or so)

2) add the cocoa butter, olive oil, and mix until all is melted.

3) add the essential oils and stir (see below for some ideas)

4) pour into empty tubes and refrigerate for ~5 minutes.

5) take a paper-towel to the tops to smooth them out.

6) add labels. 

Some oils i've found that work well together:

* 20 drop of Lemongrass for a very lemony scent

* 10 drops of Lemongrass and 10 drops of Rosemary oil
* 10 drops of Peppermint and 15 drops of Orange Peel oil
* 10 drops of Lemongrass and 10 drops of Orange Peel
* 10 drops of Orange Peel and 10 drops of Lime Peel
* 20 drops of Lavender
* 10 drops of peppermint, 10 drops of eucalyptus, 15 drops of rosemary, and 15 drops of clove bud oil (similar is scent to a medicated lip balm)
* 15 drops sweet birch oil (smells like wintergreen)

et voila, home made lip goo that won't break the bank and feels AWESOME!

** 02/03/13 UPDATE: i've tweaked my recipe a bit, and found that equal parts beeswax, cocoa butter, and olive oil is the PERFECT consistancy. not too hard, not too soft. one batch is 1tbs of each plus oils - makes 4.5 tubes depending on how perfectly you measure.  also, some new pics :)