My Homemade Lip balms are the skincare product that stands between us and dry, chapped lips. We’ve all been there. Super sore, throbbing lips that seem to get drier and drier every hour. It’s very common in winter.
And as your chapping gets worse, the skin begins to crack and soon begins to flake away. That makes things so much more painful, and it makes your lips look more and more unsightly! This lovely DIY lip balm with coconut oil can put a stop to this, and they’re a lot easier and cheaper to make than you’d think.
Introduction
Amazing looking lips are the beauty world’s new great obsession. From lip kits to lip fillers, everyone wants beautifully plump lips.
While all this sounds like a lot of fun, your first step to perfect lips is keeping them healthy and looking fresh. A good quality lip balm can help you on your way.
Let’s Talk About The Ingredients
So what’s in my coconut lip balm recipe? Let’s take a look!
Cosmetic Wax
The most important ingredient in any lip balm is always the wax. It provides the main structure of the product – without it we’d have something closer to a DIY body butter.
But when we think of cosmetic waxes, we often first think of beeswax. This is because it’s an excellent ingredient, but it can be a little problematic for anyone who is vegan.
Therefore, when needed, we can turn to our plant-based waxes to help make our vegan lip balms. We did just that for this formula!
We’ve selected candelilla wax for this balm. This is because it’s the most readily available plant-based cosmetic wax. But it also has some fantastic therapeutic benefits.
Candelilla is deeply soothing and nourishing for the skin. Much like beeswax, it actually forms a barrier between your skin and your environment – helping to keep your skin cleaner and seal in moisture for longer.
It also provides some excellent slip and glide for this product, as well as some nice natural gloss too. In fact, this product glides on like a dream, perhaps better than anything I’ve ever made.
Carrier Oils
We’ve selected 3 different carrier oils for this lip balm. The first up is our only solid carrier oil, coconut oil!
Coconut oil is a fantastic moisturizer and great at keeping the skin, scalp and lip slake-free. It provides excellent shine to a product, and again helps with the slip and slide.
Furthermore, coconut oil is becoming one of the easiest carrier oils to find. You can pick it up in your local grocery store, but it is equally available cheaply and in bulk from most cosmetic suppliers.
You’ll notice this recipe doesn’t contain any cosmetic butters. That’s because candelilla is a very stiff wax in general, but also because coconut oil is a solid and will help do some of that stiffening work instead.
We’re pairing our coconut oil with some olive oil and apricot kernel oil. Olive is a heavier oil, which should help keep our lips soft, smooth, and supple. Apricot kernel oil also provides skin-softening benefits but absorbs faster, so should balance the absorption of our olive oil.
Essential Oils And Other Aromatic Oils
Lip Safe Essential Oils
Like all products intended for the lips, using essential oils can be problematic. This is because EOs are very strong, concentrated extracts that are often toxic if ingested.
However, there are a handful of essential oils that are lip safe. Take a look at the DIY lip balm basics to learn more about essential oils that are safe to use in your balms, and how to make use of them in this formula.
It’s also worth noting that synthetic fragrance oils are totally unsuitable for a lip balm formula, and should never be used in products intended for the face.
However, synthetic flavoring oils CAN be used, and are fantastic. These are oils that are designed to smell and taste just like real foods, fruits, and beverages. You’d be surprised what you can get as a flavoring oil, and can turn a boring balm into something quite special!
Selecting the right flavoring oil is entirely your choice, be we recommend matching colors with flavors. For instance, an orange flavor oil could be paired with some orange pigment. But feel free to experiment!
If you wish to use a flavoring oil, we recommend using it at around 3%.
The Pigments
While you can happily forget about adding a pigment to your balms, you might want to. Using a pigment can turn a boring balm into something fun, eye-catching and interesting.
The best pigment you could use in your lip balms is mica. They come in a huge variety of colors, with metallic and sparkle options available too.
They also provide a rich, intense color from a very small amount, making them very economical and easy to store in your pantry.
Micas are available from many of your cosmetic suppliers, but you can also find them easily on amazon.
As all micas vary in color and intensity, you might need to do a bit of experimentation to get it right. We’ve found 1.5g of our micas make a beautiful shade of whatever color we’re using, so we recommend starting there. Then, you can always add more if you want a richer color.
OK Let’s Make Coconut Oil Lip Balms
How To Make Lip Balm With Coconut Oils
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Equipment
- Lazer Temperature Gun optional
Ingredients
- 20 grams Coconut Oil
- 9 grams Candelila Wax
- 7 grams Olive Oil
- 10 grams Apricot Kernel Oil
- 0.5 grams Vitamin E Oil
- 2 grams Flavor Oil
- 1.5 grams Mica Powders
- 5 Small Lib balm jars
Video
Instructions
- Weigh the candelilla wax, coconut oil, and olive oil into a heat-proof beaker.9 grams Candelila Wax, 20 grams Coconut Oil, 7 grams Olive Oil
- Place the beaker into a water bath or bain marie. You can create a water bath by filling a saucepan with a couple of inches of water and bringing it up to a gentle simmer. Let the beaker sit in the simmering water until the wax and oils have melted.
- Once fully melted remove the beaker from the saucepan, but keep the water bath close by as you may need it again. Stir in the Apricot kernel oil, If it starts to become hard and cloudy you can pop the beaker back into the water to gently re-melt it.10 grams Apricot Kernel Oil
- Add your vitamin E and your flavor oil stirring after each one.0.5 grams Vitamin E Oil, 2 grams Flavor Oil
- Now it's time to stir in the mica, this can sometimes thicken the oil slightly, so you may need to place it back into the water bath before pouring it into your chosen containers.1.5 grams Mica Powders
- Once you have poured the balm into containers, leave the lids off and put them into a cold place to solidify. A fridge is a perfect place for cooling them quickly, they shouldn't take much more than 30 minutes. When they are completely cooled and are solid, pop the lids on and leave them to sit for 24 hours before using.5 Small Lib balm jars
Notes
How To Use
Using your coconut oil lip balm is the same as any other lip balm. Just apply a thin layer to the lips, which you can either allow to sink in or massage in with the tips of your fingers.
As we’re using pigments in this lip balm, try not to apply too much. While this isn’t likely to give you any extra benefit anyway, you’ll probably look a bit silly with bright green lips!
But remember that balms are not just for your lips. If you get dry feet, elbows, or knees you can also apply your balms here for an intense, skin conditioning treatment.
How to Store
Some lip balms are stiff enough to be able to store in wind-up or push-up lip balm tubes. Unfortunately, this recipe is not one of them.
While it would be nice if all of our balms could be used in lip balm tubes, it simply isn’t possible. This would only be possible if we formulated every balm with the intention of being used in a lip balm tube. But we like some variety here at SavvyHomemade.
So, if you’re following this formula, make use of some small cosmetic jars with screw top lids, and remember not to apply the lids until your balms have reached room temperature.
Final Thoughts
I just love how these little balms turned out. I think the colors are great and I’d definitely make them again. I can imagine these sitting beautifully next to other products in a skincare hamper for a friend or loved one.
But feel free to experiment! You can substitute many of these ingredients, although I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not experienced at making balms yourself.
Any problems with my recipe, let me know in the comments section below and we can try and troubleshoot it together.