After all these years—and the countless body butters, scrubs, and makeup items I’ve posted about—I realized I have never once given a recipe for lip balm. Loco! Especially since this is one that I make pretty regularly and one of the first things I learned how to make all those years ago when I was a young girl watching my mom concoct all sorts of cool potions and lotions in our family kitchen.
I love this recipe for so many reasons. It’s inexpensive and easy and keeps your lips kissably soft. I reused my old chapstick tubes or pretty lip balm tins to make them. It’s a great way to avoid mindless consumerism especially if you are participating in Plastic Free July and trying not to buy things with unnecessary packaging. It’s also less expensive to reuse what you have.
And speaking of less expense, instead of paying $1-3 dollars for a small tube of chapstick everyday time I go to the store, I now spend roughly $2 on making over half a dozen lip balms! Plus, I know the ingredients in it and can tailor it to my preferences, which includes plenty of beeswax to seal in moisture.
It takes all of twenty minutes to make—and most of that is spent waiting for the wax and oil to melt and then, once poured into the containers, for them to cool. I make a big batch every few months. My measurements are rough guesstimates. I’ve been making lip balm for so long I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing what I need for how many containers. The measurements here will give you a big stash of lip balms to carry around, something I like because I use a lot—and keep some in all the rooms of the house. But you can always cut the recipe in half if you don’t want that much. I add shea butter to my recipe because I find it really helps to soften and hydrate lips. I avoid using essential oils or other scents, because it is on my lips. I also enjoy the soft honey scent it gets from the beeswax.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup shea butter
1/4 cup coconut oil or olive oil
1 tablespoon grated beeswax
Special tools:
saucepan
clean BPA free tin can or other heatproof bowl
cleaned old chapstick tubes or lip balm tins
Directions:
Place the saucepan on low heat and fill halfway with water. Then place the clean tin can in the center of the saucepan. Put the beeswax in the tin can and let melt slowly.
When beeswax is melted, add oil and shea butter. Let sit until combined, about 5-10 minutes.
While oil melts, set up chapstick tubes, making sure that the tube is wound all the way down. If you’re using only tins, make sure they are open.
Remove oil and beeswax mixture from heat and pour into lip balm tubes or tins.
Let tubes or tins sit until the mixture is set, about one hour.
Enjoy! Makes roughly six tubes or tins.
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