DIY Lip Balm: Easy and Natural DIY Lip Balm Recipe

The cost-effectiveness, personalization, and different use options make lip balm an excellent DIY project. This is especially true if you prefer all-natural beauty products. Here are other reasons you may want to make a DIY lip balm:

• You can control the ingredients. If you’re sensitive to lanolin, a waxy substance used in conditioners, body lotions, and other body moisturizers, buying lip balm at the store can be risky. If you make the lip balm yourself, you know exactly what’s in it, and you can substitute recipe ingredients that take your lip sensitives into account.
• It can be cheaper. If your goal is to make a bulk amount of lip balm, the end cost could be much cheaper than continuously buying individual tubes of lip balm at the store. This is especially true if you use ingredients you already have on hand—for example, essential oils, olive oil, or honey, just to name a few.
• There are many customization options. Since essential oils are a commonly used ingredient in homemade lip balm recipes, you can choose your favorite scents and try different combinations as long as the total number of drops remains the same per the recipe. You can also customize the color of your homemade lip balm using natural or artificial colorants, and you can use shea butter, cocoa butter, or another base, depending on what texture you prefer.
• It makes a great gift. Thanks to its wide appeal, DIY lip balm makes a unique homemade gift. You can even customize it further by making personalized printable labels for your lip balm vessels.

A basic lip balm recipe will help you achieve the right consistency and texture for the final product, and beyond that, you can customize your lip balm color, scent, and moisture level.

• Color: If you want to add color to your lip balm, you can use powders, food, or even other lip products. Mica powders, also used in soap making, come in many different colors and are common in lip balm—there are matte colors, shimmery colors, metallic colors, and even neon colors. However, if you want to use natural ingredients, you can make your own colorants from dried and pulverized beets, red onion, carrots, or other foods. Another way to add color to your lip balm is to melt old lipstick along with your other ingredients.
• Scent: Scent can also be referred to as flavoring when it comes to lip balm since people associate many of the most common lip balm scents with foods. Adding a scent to a natural lip balm is easy since many of the core ingredients in an easy recipe carry scents of their own. Essential oil scents like peppermint, grapefruit, sweet orange, and vanilla are popular. Keep in mind you can use vanilla extract in place of vanilla essential oil if you already have the former in your pantry.
• Moisture level: In addition to shea butter and cocoa butter, there are moisturizing oils you can add to your lip balm, such as olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil, or jojoba oil, which can be used on their own or in conjunction with body butters. Some recipes will call for a butter and an oil, while others may call for just one of the two. For extra moisture, add vitamin E oil or the contents of a vitamin E capsule. If you can’t find pure vitamin E oil, there are other oils that contain vitamin E that would be good substitutes, such as argan oil, rosehip seed oil, or jojoba oil.

The shelf life of homemade lip balm is shorter than that of the store-bought variety, mostly because of the use of natural ingredients. If you don’t use it within three months, discard it to avoid using expired ingredients on your lips and inadvertently ingesting them.

Safety with DIY lip balm is very individual. If you are allergic or sensitive to certain ingredients, don’t use them in your lip balm. It’s also best to avoid spicy essential oils like cinnamon, eucalyptus, or clove since they can be skin irritants. Peppermint is not considered a spicy essential oil, as it doesn’t have the same effect on skin in the context of lip balm as the others do.

Before getting started, it’s a good idea to study other beauty products you have used that haven’t triggered any skin reactions. If you’re iffy about any particular ingredient in your DIY lip balm recipe, test a very small amount on the back of your hand to see how it reacts. If you notice any irritation on your wrist, it means it could cause a negative reaction on your lips, so it’s best to avoid that ingredient.

DIY lip balms are highly customizable, so there are many ingredients you can use, including:

• Wax pellets: Use 3 tablespoons of beeswax, carnauba, or candelilla.
• Body butter: Some options include shea butter or cocoa butter.
• Oil: You can use almond, jojoba, or coconut oil.
• Essential oil: This will depend on your scent preference.
• Optional: Vitamin E, colorant, and additional scents can also be added.

The following recipe takes about 45 minutes and makes enough lip balm for 15 containers of 10 ml:

1. 1. Melt the base ingredients. Melt 3 tablespoons of wax, 2 tablespoons of body butter, and 1 tablespoon of oil in a glass measuring cup in a microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each heating period. You can also do this in a double boiler, by setting your ingredients in a glass bowl over a pot of water simmering at a low heat and stirring regularly.
2. 2. Add the oils. Add 10–20 drops of essential oils and any other oils.
3. 3. Add any colorants. Add ½ gram of colorant and stir the liquid until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.
4. 4. Fill the containers. Slowly pour the formula into the lip balm tubes or lip balm containers and then leave it undisturbed to cool and set at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.

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