Homemade Lip Balm

As I mentioned in the Christmas 2012 posts, I made some lip balm for gifts. I made a variety of flavors, including peppermint, lemon, orange, cappuccino, French vanilla, brown sugar, and pumpkin cheesecake, as well as a few others.

It's pretty easy and only takes about 30 minutes per batch. Most of the time is spent waiting for it to melt together and then harden again. I followed the "Flavored Lip Balm" recipe on the LorAnn Oils web site. One batch yields about eight standard lip balm tubes.

I did make one change, and that was to add a little bit more flavor oil (for most batches, I found that 1 tsp. was the right amount to cover the beeswax smell). I used the LorAnn Super Strength natural oils for the peppermint, lemon, and orange flavors. For the other flavors, I used some flavor oils I ordered from lipbalmtubes.com.

Supplies (see link above for recipe and instructions):

• 1-cup glass measuring cup* and small pan (for double-boiler)
• 1 Tbsp. and 1 tsp. measuring spoons*
• small spatula (for stirring)*
• 0.15-oz. lip balm tubes (lipbalmtubes.com)
• beeswax pastilles (lipbalmtubes.com) (these are much easier to measure consistently than grated beeswax); I used yellow (unbleached)
• shea butter (brambleberry.com)
• sweet almond oil (got it from Valli Produce, the international market in town); could use extra virgin olive oil or sunflower oil instead
• flavor oil (LorAnn oils from Hobby Lobby baking supplies aisle; other flavor oils from lipbalmtubes.com)
• 1.8"x1.8" waterproof inkjet labels (20 per sheet) (lipbalmtubes.com)

*If you want to make your own lip balm, be sure to dedicate the tools you use to lip balm-making only. It isn't recommended to make it in/with tools you use for cooking.

I printed the labels on our computer using the basic template they have on the lipbalmtubes.com web site. I also got some shrink bands (lipbalmtubes.com), but I couldn't get them to shrink for some reason.

Bonus: We'll never need to buy lip balm again!