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I have wanted to try my hand at making lip balm for a long time. I tucked the idea in the back of my mind, especially since Grant has such skin allergies and dry lips. We have been through many tubes of lip balm, and at the price of “natural”, my wallet is chapped!
At one of my thrift store excursions, I came across a brown paper bag that was full of little empty glass jars. They were sample jelly jars like you used to get in restaurants. It was definitely something my grandmother would have saved. “I can’t throw it out because someone might need it!” Granny always said. The bag of 10 jars was 50 cents. Sold! It was just what I needed to spur on my adventure in lip balm.
I boiled the jars and lids to sterilize them, then spray painted the lids silver. I did not want to spray them at first because they had cute little pictures of raspberries and peaches on them, but Cowboy said it would be confusing if that is not the scent that was in the jar. Eight-year-old wisdom wins.
We already make our own soap here at the Frontier, so I was not too afraid to venture into lip balm. I had all the ingredients for a basic lip balm, so after looking through Pinterest and getting glossy-eyed, I picked a few recipes that seemed similar. My usual motto when trying new ideas is to go all out and make a bunch on my first try.
Fortunately, wisdom from past experience gave way and I only made enough for two jars on my first recipe. It was a good thing too because my first batch was BAD! It was too stiff and stuck to my lips like a clump of stick glue. I figured out that this recipe’s beeswax ratio was off. I remelted it and tried again.
After looking at a few more recipes, I discovered that oils to beeswax are a 2/1 ratio, depending on your own taste of gloss to hardness. I decided to go for a creamier mix that Grant could do with ease. Success!
Watch our video tutorial on lip balmI used organic coconut oil, beeswax, local raw honey, vitamin E oil, tea tree oil, and I added passionfruit flavor oil for scent. Read the directions on your essential oils before putting them in lip balms. Some can be an irritant to skin close to mucous membranes. I order most of my supplies from Bramble Berry and had read about
the flavor oils for lip balms that should not cause a skin reaction.
I put the coconut oil, honey and beeswax in a double boiler and melted them. Beeswax takes a little while to melt, so just keep stirring. Once melted, I took it off the stove and added in my oils and stirred well, then poured into the jars. I let it sit for about 15 minutes for it to cool and harden. To fully harden, I would wait longer or put in the frig.
It looked so pretty, just like creamy butter and the smell was amazing. Grant and I lathered up our lips and tested out our new lip balm. It had a glossy feel at first, then after a while, more creamy that stayed on the rest of the afternoon. Wow, I actually made lip balm! Then, I went full-on and decided to fill the rest of the jars
and give some away for mother’s day gifts and sell the rest at an upcoming craft fair we are participating in.
Now we needed to come up with a name for our cute little jars of lip balm. After careful consideration with the boys, they came up with “Sweet Lips” butter balm. For some reason, this name sounded familiar, like perhaps it was a name on our chicken list we compiled to name our chickens. Well, it fits our brand so I went with it.
Next, we needed to come up with a design. My thought was that if you are going to give it a chicken name, you might as well have a chicken in the design. The biggest problem with that is that chickens don’t have lips! One child came up with the idea of kissing a chicken, he shall remain nameless. If you can figure out which boy it is in the photo, he asks that you keep it to yourself.
We had our photoshoot outdoors. Fortunately for me, my models work for scratch and granola bars, although one of them was quite the diva (the lipless one). It is difficult to photograph a chicken, just letting you know. We have tried countless times to get good hen photos, but their quick jerky motions make for bad photos.
Once I got a good photo, I cropped it and cut it down to fit into the lid of the jelly jar. I used Mod Podge to glue the photo to the lid and put a layer over the top. After that dried, I used Mod Podge dimensional magic to put on top of the photo. This creates a glossy, three-dimensional dome that I thought would be good for this project. Some were better than others, but most turned out pretty good. If I continue on the lip balm venture, I will order tubes and tins.
I am thrilled with how the “Sweet Lips Butter Balm” turned out. It is a simple project that the boys can make next time. The only difficult part is deciding what flavors! I want to try peppermint and blueberry next time. My little glass jars hold 1 oz of balm, which will last a long time. Most lip balms are .15 oz.
We will see if it sells well on Saturday and if the Moms like it on Sunday for Mother’s Day.
The recipe that I ended up using is as follows:
8 Tablespoons of coconut oil
3 Tablespoons of beeswax
1.5 Tablespoons of honey
4-6 drops of flavor oil (optional)
To make a test batch, just half or quarter this recipe. This made approximately 4-5 1 oz jars. A trick I learned after the first batch is to put a spoon in the freezer before you get started, then once your mixture is melted, dip the spoon in. The balm will quickly harden and you can test how you like it. If it is too hard, add a touch more oil, if it is to slick at a touch of beeswax. I found this trick at Bramble Berry on their Soap Queen TV.
I want to hear about all of YOUR new lip balm adventures! What flavors or combinations did you come up with? I also really want to hear that others get just excited about lip balm as me, or maybe I have been cooped up here
on the Frontier a little too long!
UPDATE: I just got the lip balm tubes in the mail and made this same recipe,
it filled 18 .15oz tubes!! Adjust the recipe accordingly!
