If you’d like to see more of our DIY beauty potions, click here. You’ll find everything from deodorant to face oils and body scrubs to customized perfumes. Here you’ll find our recipe for a DIY floral lip balm.

Today I’m sharing the most scrumptious yet simple lip balm recipe.  The addition of comfrey and calendula-infused olive oils adds creates a super nourishing base. The blend of unrefined cocoa butter + peppermint essential oils produces an amazing scent.

I’ve talked in greater details about essential oils in this post. This post reiterates many of the lip-balm making tips that are also discussed in our floral balm post.

Ingredients

If you’ve never experimented with lip balms before, they are relatively easy to make. Lip balms usually contain a variety of oils (carrier oils) that act to protect and sooth your lips. In order to turn those oils into a solid stick, they are mixed with a wax, we prefer beeswax. The oil and wax combination form the foundation for any lip balm, and from there you can add essential oils for both their aroma and cosmetic properties. You can also add other emollients to enhance the recipe; for example, I like to add a touch of lanolin.

Carrier Oils and Waxes

I prefer measuring my ingredients by weight and have found that a ratio of 44 grams of carrier oils to 15 grams of beeswax makes a good balm. The more wax you use, the harder your balm will be, and as expected, the less wax you use, the softer the balm will be. In this recipe, we add unrefined cocoa butter – since that has a consistency similar to what we’d like the final balm to be like, we don’t have to adjust the core ratio of 44 to 15 for the oils to wax.

In the recipe below, I rely on a couple of infused olive oils and sweet almond oil as the carrier oil base. Infusing olive oil with herbs transfers both medical and aromatic properties from those plants. In this case I’m using peppermint-infused O.O. for it’s aromatic properties and the calendula-infused O.O. for its healing properties (look for more info on calendula in a future post!).

Substitutions

You should look at the ratio of oils to wax+cocoa butter and the vitamin E as the core recipe. You can easily substitute one carrier oil for another if you don’t have what is listed below. For example, if you don’t have peppermint and calendula-infused olive oils, try the recipe with just plain olive oil.

In addition to olive and sweet almond oils, you could use other plant-based oils like coconut, jojoba, avocado, apricot. You can also use cocoa butter, as I do below. And as mentioned, because cocoa butter is a solid at room temperature, it could be added to any lip balm recipe without having to add more beeswax (i.e. you could add some to the recipe below without compromising the texture). The sky’s the limit!

If you don’t have lanolin, that’s not a necessary ingredient. And when it comes to essential oils, have fun and do what you want!

Tools & Materials

Since all you have to do to make this balm is measure and warm ingredients, there are very few tools needed and it’s likely that you already own most of them. You’ll need a scale to measure the ingredients by weight and measuring spoons for the couple of things that are measured by volume. You’ll have to create a simple double boiler using a small glass measuring cup and a sauce pot. And then you’ll need something to stir the mixture – I prefer to use wooden skewers and then just toss them so that I use a clean one for each new batch of balm and don’t have to worry about contamination.

The Water Warning

While you’ll be shocked at how easy it is to make quality lip balms at home, there is just one thing that you have to be careful about : never let any water get into your mixture and into the lip balm tubes. Why? If water gets into the mix, it can cause mold to grow. Don’t let it happen and you won’t have any problems.

Cocoa Peppermint Lip Balm

Ingredients

• 23 grams peppermint infused olive oil
• 11 grams calendula infused olive oil
• 10 grams sweet almond oil
• 1/2 tsp lanolin (optional)
• 1/2 tsp vitamin E
• 15 grams beeswax
• 6 grams unrefined cocoa butter
• 8 drops peppermint essential oil

How-To

1. Create an improvised double boiler : place a 1 cup pyrex measuring cup into a small sauce pot and fill the pot with water so that it comes half-way up the outside of the measuring cup. Place the pot on a burner over medium-low heat. You want the water to be warm, but just below simmering.
2. Add the wax+butter : add the beeswax and cocoa butter. Allow it to melt completely, stirring once in a while with a wooden skewer.
3. Remove from the heat : once the beeswax is completely melted, remove the measuring cup from the double boiler. Add the peppermint essential oil. Stir the mixture, smell it, and decide if you would like to add any additional drops.
4. Fill your containers : pour the warm mixture into lip balm tubes or tins. Allow the balm to cool completely before putting the lids on the containers. You do not want any moisture to build up inside the container, so it’s essential that everything is completely cool before you add the lids.