Am dabbling in lip balm production, does anyone have any experience or tips they can pass on to me?

[overmydeadbody]

I've never made 'beauty' products before, my shea butter, cocoa butter and beeswax are melting over a doubl boiler as I type this. What are the pitfalls I should be careful of?

I have no idea but am shamelessly marking place

I don't know but I am also marking my place on this thread because it sounds fab.

Well I've just carefully spooned my melted mixture into 12 little pots, now I have to wait overnight to see if it actually worked!

I shall report back, hopefully someone with experience will be along in the meantime to enlighten us all!

I stink of shea butter and cocoa butter, it's rather nice actually...

Oh I've wanted to try this too! Where did you get the ingredients?

Soupy I got shea butter, cocoa butter and coconut oil, as well as some lip balm fragrance, from bathbomb biz

Well, this morning I got up all excited and my lip balm hasn't set hard . it has the consistancy of butter left out on a hot summer's day.

I have remelted it all and added more cocoa butter (the hardest one) in the hope that that will make it set harder.

Anyone know if that will save it?

No idea - there was a thread in Art and Crafts not so long ago from someone getting rid of lip balm pots as she wasn't making it any more. You could maybe pm her and ask?

like I don't have enough projects on the go.

Thanks Soupy.

I think having too many projects on the go at once is my problem actually, I am rushing around trying to do to much. I have bags to sew today.

I have loads of little lip balm pots, all unused if anyone wants them. I had a little bath bomb business and planned to make lip balm and never got around to it. PM me if you want them, I have little metal round pots and also clear pots with white lids.

ha ha just read the post above mentioning my post. x

LOL! Look - there she is! :o

My problem is that I can't decide which craft I want to do. I've done sewing, card making, scrapbooking, crochet... all just for pleasure.

Natzer thanks. I am waiting to see how this batch of lip balm turns out, fingers crossed it will actually set! If it does, then I would love to get my hands on your pots

I think I may have used the wrong beeswax, I was cutting corners and being lazy and just used DP's beeswax that he has for his dreads. I'll have ruined it now, in my sloppiness and haste.

Soupy in theory I do these things for pleasure, in actual fact I think I experience more stress over them than pleasure!

Well, yes. I used the phrase "for pleasure" simply to distinguish it from "as a business" :o

Overmtdeadbody - Did you use any oils, or was it just the shea, cocoa and beeswax? that should have set solid if no oils, I would have thought, so maybe you have a fairly warm kitchen?
Not sure if there are different types of beeswax, as in the one for dreads being different cos I know nothing about dreads, but you can get lovey beeswax from GraceFruit.

As a basic recipe, 15% beeswax, 35% Shea, 49% oils, 1% flavour oils. melt in a jug in a double boiler and pour into your jars. then pop in the fridge :)

(and I'm saying this just as I discovered this morning that at batch of my lip butters are all grainy and horrible. batch 156. I am gutted, as i sold a fair few of these at last weeks craft fair. Can;t sell the rest of them. but making a new batch tonight hopfully)

oh pollyteapot thank you!

I hardly used any beeswax actually, probably 5%. Didn't use any oil (nothing that is liquid at room temp.) I think my kitchen is quite warm though as I put some in the fridge and they are now nice and solid, but not too solid, just like you'd hope from a lip balm.

I think the beeswax for dreads is just beeswax and a sublte fragrance of some kind, so hopefully it will be ok. My tester pot from the fridge isn't grainy.

Looking at your basic recipe, I think I just didn't have enough shea in the first batch, but once I remelted and added more I think I brought it up to about 40% shea and 55% cocoa and coconut , and about 5% beeswax and 10 drops of the flavour oil and 5 drops of an essential oil. Hopefully that will work.

These will be for presents for people, not for sale!

When you have lip balm in pots, you want them solid but should melt on contact with your fingertip so you can apply to your lips. These should do that I think, coconut is a lovely oil and melts easily on the skin (and shea is simply my favourite butter ever). the good thing is is that as a balm, you should be able to use that anywhere on your skin (you got rough skin on your feet - try some as see the difference)

just watch the grains though - the little buggers can appear any time they feel like it. My grainy batch was made about 3 weeks ago and was fine at first, so somtime between then and now they've gone horrible. Shea in lip balms is notorious for going grainy. hoping yours stay well behaved lol

And what lovely presents, and sure to be loved - handmade goodies always are xx

Thank you Polly! I will watch out for those grains!

So far so good, they have all set beautifully and smell nice again!

I make lip balm but I don't use shea butter as it is too much hassle. I just use beeswax, cocoa butter, and coconut oil plus squeeze out 5 capsules of vitamin e oil. Great texture, very melty on skin contact but solid in tin and no issues with graineyness. l made some last year for the kids and just checked it is still fine but really you should chuck it out after 4 months. The vitamin E acts as a preservative and is also a great moisturiser. Here are photos of my stuff. www.workingnaturals.com

Also another tip is (I am getting carried away now as normally rubbish at crafts so I can pretend to be an expert) you could grate the beeswax but it glues up your grater so just be prepared for it to take a while but let the beeswax melt first and I find the ikea 365 pasta pan makes an ideal double boiler with a pampered chef jug mixing bowl jammed inside it.

After melting the beeswax then add the butter and oil and when they have melted switch off the double boiler before adding the vitamin e as it is quite a delicate oil.

Thank you vanillamum, I think in future I shall but some proper beeswax and use your recipe, without the shea butter.

My lip balm is fine if it is in the fridge, but goes soft if I hold the tip in my palm for any length of time, so can't really take it with me which defeats the whole object really. It's a bit too greacy too, needs the balance of the was which it is missing.

Thanks for your help!

If you buy from a soap maker site, no need to grate the beeswax - it comes in pellets. Fab. And personally I prefer the white beeswax to the yellow.

if you add Vit e, no need to throw out after 4 months, actually with Vanilla's recipe, it should last for a very long time. Coconut oil and cocoa butter are very stable oils with very long shelf lives (over 2 years), and vit 2 extends that.

Play around with some oils, you can even get some in you local supermarket too :)