Lip Balm Formulation

Lip balm, lipstick or lip gloss all have the same function – to lock in moisture. A good lip balm is essential because it creates a protective barrier between your lips and the frigid winter temperatures. The skin on the lips is delicate and has no sebaceous glands, meaning it doesn’t naturally produce the moisturizing oils that the rest of your skin does.

Today I would like to share with you an easy Lip Balm formulation that can be altered to suit your individual likes and/or needs. The basic formulation consists of

25% Wax

30% Soft butter ( Shea butter, Mango butter) / Solid butter (Cocoa butter) combination

44% liquid oil

1% – 3% Essential Oil / Fragrance

BASIC LIP BALM FORMULATION

INSTRUCTIONS

Vegan Option

We generally use candelilla wax at half the amount of beeswax, so if you want to change the recipe to include only Candellia wax, divide the beeswax % and up the hard butter %.

Candelilla wax will produce a thin and smooth product that will spread thinly and absorb quickly.

Candelilla wax is a plant based wax, derived from the candelilla shrub. It has a melting point of about 70°C, compared to beeswax’s ~63°C melting point

The texture differences vary greatly. Beeswax helps create salves and balms that will stick around on the skin, whereas candelilla wax is very smooth and sinks right in.

It’s not very sticky, so balms made with it won’t get staying power from it—it would need to be paired with beeswax or something like unrefined shea butter.

Which oils to use?

When making these choices, consider the smell and flavor of the emollient as you don’t want something very strong under your nose all day. Oils like neem oil and Castor oil are not a good choice for lip balms. Unrefined Shea butter has an earthy flavor that most people will not like.

Mango butter and Cocoa butter or a good option as they will make a stiffer less greasy lip balm.

Coconut oil melts too easily to be the main hard butter rather use it as a 10% liquid oil in your formula.

An all Shea butter product will produce a less stiff balm and you might need to increase the beeswax to 30%. If you use all mango butter, the product will be stiffer and a bit drier feeling. A combination of soft and hard butter is a better solution.

What about flavour?

As this is an anhydrous formula, you can not add water soluble flavours only oil soluble flavours.

You’ll want to make sure they’re lip safe, and only use 1%. Remember this will be right under your nose.

When using Essential oil, start at 0, 5 % and test.

Colour & Micas

First, make sure you’re using oil soluble lip safe colours.

How much you’ll use will depend on how pigmented ( concentrated) you want it to be and the type of colour.

This is where you will need to test and experiment. Take notes of all your measurements so you don’t have to guess when you want to replicate it.

For micas: use about 5% to 10% mica to make it quite bright and sparkly.