Tuesday, June 16, 2009

My first stab at creating my own lip balm


I’m not what anyone would call crafty, and I’m not especially into “natural” or homemade. I just really love the cute little containers full of good smelling balms - I always have. I have a huge collection of half-used pots, jars and tubes. I guess I just figured I’d like to give it a try.
Here’s what I did…

First I looked for lip balm recipes. There are lots of different versions, some use the microwave, and some use a double boiler. I think I’ll start with the microwave version (in case I have to ruin a pan with the double-boiler plan)
3 tablespoons of petroleum jelly
1 teaspoon of honey
Melt in a microwave-safe glass container on low
Pour into containers and let cool

Okay, I need containers. I found some at http://www.thesage.com/I ordered a set of 10 little jars - although I briefly considered ordering 100 with visions of a home-based business passing briefly through my mind.

5 days later my cute little jars arrived. I had to keep my kids from pilfering them so I enlisted their help with my lip-balm project.

First, we threw everything into a glass measuring cup and melted on low power in the microwave. Guess what? Honey melts WAY faster than Vaseline. THAT didn’t work.
Okay, we threw that batch out, cleaned and dried the measuring cup and tried a second time. This time we melted the petroleum jelly first and then whisked in the honey. It looked better than the first batch. We poured it into the cute little jars and let them cool. Unfortunately, after a couple minutes the honey and Vaseline separated. We decided this didn’t work either.
I’m on a mission. I love the idea of a honey lip balm, so I’m giving up on the petroleum jelly base and opting for beeswax. Makes sense, right? Beeswax…Honey… I guess I should have thought of it earlier. Anyway, I went back to http://www.thesage.com/ and ordered some beeswax “prills” (which I guess are little pellets). Let’s see if I can do better with those.

I’ll keep you posted, do you have any advice?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you can buy little plastic containers at the dollar store.