How to Make Lip Balm with Herbal Oils
How to make lip balm using oils, waxes, and skin-loving herbs. This fantastic winter skincare recipe is fun to make and soothes chapped lips. It also includes two methods to make lip balm — the quick version and the cold-infused method.
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Winter weather can take a toll on your skin, especially your lips. They can dry out, crack, and become sore and uncomfortable. If you suffer from cold sores, winter stress can cause also cause a break-out. Keeping your lips protected and moisturized is key to ensuring they don’t suffer, and the best way to do that is with lip balm. Though you can buy it easily enough, lip balm is easy to make at home. It requires very little in the way of ingredients and is a fun and natural project that you can enjoy and share with friends. In this project, I’ll show how to make lip balm with simple ingredients, including waxes, herbal oils, and essential oil. You’ll have a fun time making them too!
One of the best things about making your own lip balm is that you get control over the ingredients. Depending on your philosophies or health needs, you might want to avoid using petroleum jelly, nut oils, and animal products. The recipe below is flexible, meaning you can use whatever you’d like or have on hand. The important thing to remember with lip balm is that the final consistency reflects the balance of solid to liquid oils/waxes.
Herbal Lip Balm Recipe
This herbal lip balm recipe makes approximately three 10 ml containers. You can double, triple, or otherwise adjust the recipe to make a lot more, though. If you’d like, you can omit the herbs and essential oil to make unscented, natural lip balm.
- 1 tsp solid oil or wax* such as beeswax, candelilla wax, or cocoa butter
- 4 tsp infused liquid oil* made with oils such as grapeseed oil, sweet almond oil, or rice bran oil
- Dried skincare herbs – peppermint, chamomile, calendula, lemon balm, or other skin healing herbs.
- Organic essential oil (optional)** – three drops of a skin-safe organic essential oil or natural flavor oil such as peppermint, lavender, and/or orange.
* For harder lip balm, use less liquid and more hard oils. And vice-versa if you’d prefer a softer balm.
** Organic essential oil tends to be more skin safe for leave-on skincare products, especially those for your lips.
Lip Balm Containers
Once you’ve melted and mixed the lip balm ingredients together, you’ll need to pour the warm liquid into containers. You can use any small tubes, pots, or jars on hand, providing they are clean and sterile. If you reuse containers, just make sure to clean them and let them dry completely. You could reuse lipstick tubes, lip balm pots, Altoids tins, or any other food-safe tin, glass, or plastic container.
To clean containers for use in beauty products, wipe all the oily residue out first. Then run them through the dishwasher, and they’ll be ready. If you don’t have a dishwasher, wash them in hot soapy water, rinse them in scalding water, and then dry them with a clean cloth. Only use containers that are fully dried since moisture can cause oils to go rancid.
Alternatively, you can buy lip balm containers. Lip balm tubes are better for lip balm recipes that are firmer, and lip balm pots are better for more creamy recipes. This lip balm recipe is in the middle regarding consistency, so you can choose either type. The best place to buy small quantities of lip balm containers is online, but you may also be able to find them in craft shops.
Herbal Skincare Recipes
- Cocoa Butter Lip Balm Recipe
- Healing Skin Salve Recipe
- Chamomile Skin Cream Recipe
- Gentle Herbal Skin Cleanser Recipe
How to Make Lip Balm
There are two ways to make this herbal lip balm recipe. The cold-infusion method takes much longer, but you can be assured that the oils and herbs in your recipe aren’t overly affected by heat. Mix eight teaspoons of liquid oil with three teaspoons of dried herbs in a glass jar. Seal the jar and place it in a warm place out of direct sunlight. Leave it there to infuse for two to four weeks. Give it a shake every day or so, and then strain the infused oil off to use in this recipe. You can do this by pouring the oil and herbs through a sieve or through cheesecloth. Discard the herbs, but reserve the herbal-infused oil to make lip balm.
Next, mix four teaspoons of the herbal oil in a small saucepan with one teaspoon of your chosen solid oil(s). Melt them together using the double-boiler method. Essentially, floating the pan in another pan filled with simmering water. Don’t leave the pans unattended, and ensure that water doesn’t splatter out of the larger pan and get in the oils. When the oils are fully melted, add the essential oil, stir well, and pour it into lip balm containers. You can use homemade lip balm as soon as it’s cooled.
Hot Herbal Infusion Method
There’s a second method to making this lip balm recipe that’s a lot quicker. The hot infusion method uses a double boiler to make herbal-infused oil. Instead of weeks, making homemade lip balm will take under an hour.
To begin, place all of the ingredients for the lip balm recipe (except the essential oil) in a glass jar or small steel pan. Then place this container into another container of hot water. This heats the oil evenly but not to the point where the oil and herbs are so hot that it affects its properties.
Make Herbal Lip Balm
If you’re using a glass jar, don’t seal the top, and set it in a crockpot shallowly filled with simmering water and set at high. If you’re using a small saucepan, set the pan inside a slightly larger pan filled halfway with simmering water. The heat from the water in the larger pan warms and melts the content of the smaller pan. Simmer the water in the outer pan for thirty minutes, then strain the oil using cheesecloth or a sieve. Discard or compost the herbs, and pour the herbal-infused oils into a clean pan. Your infused oil may have herbal residue – this is perfectly fine. Add the essential oil, stir well, and pour into your chosen lip balm containers. The lip balm is ready to use as soon as it’s cooled to room temperature.
Shelf Life of Herbal Lip Balm
Once poured and cooled, lip balm can have a shelf-life of up to two years. The longevity is based purely on the nearest expiration date of your ingredients. Look on the backs of the ingredients’ bottles, containers, and packaging and find the closest best-by date. Use that date as the best-by date for your homemade lip balm. For more ideas on making beauty recipes browse these soap & beauty recipes.
Wish there were a printable recipe.
If there was, I couldn’t find it. Looks like a nice recipe though..
Hi Tanya! Can’t wait to try this! Are there any differences between using those lip balm tube containers and small tins? Could you also recommend where to buy them?
Thanks again for sharing your recipes!
The lip balm tubes are better suited for recipes that are harder (more hard oils) and the tins are great for both hard and soft recipes. Also, the tins are 100% recyclable which I see as a great bonus!
Hello, i made lip balm few weeks ago, i made 5 tins, i used new aluminium tins but when i open one after few weeks i found white mold or bacteria growing in a lip balm :( why this hapend if tins were dry and new?
thank you
Hi Inga, the white you’re seeing is not mold, but an effect that sometimes happens if the beeswax in the balm wasn’t melted enough. If you’d like to fix it, place the tins in the oven on low heat until they are melted. Then turn the oven off, stir each lip balm with the end of a clean skewer, and allow them to cool inside the oven.
Can I leave petals in the lip balm for aesthetics? Or could this cause issues?
Hi Maddie and yes you could, but ensure that they are completely dried before.
Hi Tanya,
I have mango butter and coconut oil on hand, could I use either of those for the solid oil/butter item?
Thanks for all the recipes, and happy holidays!
Bailey
Hi Bailey, both of those oils are a lot softer than the hard oils I recommend in the recipe. If you use them in their place, then your lip balm will be the consistency of a soft ointment, rather than a balm. You can of course use shea and mango butters to make lip balm, but they would need to be in different ratios to the liquid oil. Coconut oil is softer than mango butter so the ratios would be different for each. If you’d like to have a play, begin with a 3:1 ratio (butter to liquid oil).
I live near the east coast of South Africa where we can get very high temperatures. Would beeswax be the better oil to use as it is the hardest? And should I adjust to add more of the hard oils/waxes and slightly less of the grapeseed to ensure that I don’t get a melted mess when the temperatures rise?
You should always try to make a small batch of a recipe to see if there’s a problem with your ambient temperature. Adjust afterward, but based on an oil or wax’s melting point.
I made this recipe yesterday and had issues. I shaved Cocoa Butter to fill 1 tsp and then used 4 tsp of Grapeseed Oil, melted the butter and added the oil to it and thoroughly mixed over double boiler, then removed from heat and stirred in 4 drops of Vanilla Ice Cream flavoring oil. Poured into 4 clear plastic tubes and only 1/4 of the tube solidified and the rest is lovely smelling oil. For the hard butter, how should I measure out 1 tsp? Did I make a mistake in shaving it? Thank you for your help!! I’m excited to try this again!!! :)
You’ve used the wrong kind of flavoring. Food flavouring, including vanilla extract, will not mix with oils as its water-based. As for measuring the beeswax and butters, it doesn’t have to be exact. Eyeball a teaspoon of solid oils and it will do.
Good to know!!! Thank you!!! :)
Hi from Sunny South Africa,
Couldn’t you whip the water-based flavouring and oils into an emulsion to create a balm that would solidify?
I saw that Vicky used an ice-cream flavouring Oil – so why would it not solidify if it is oil-based? Just curious.:)
Because oil and water don’t mix and will always eventually separate.
Hi Tanya!
Thank you for this recipe! However, mine didn’t solidify. I used 1 tsp of shaved Cocoa Butter and 4 tsp of Grapeseed oil (my daughter-in-law is allergic to Almond oil) and 4 drops of Vanilla Ice Cream flavoring oil. Is it because I shaved the Cocoa Butter? How do you get a tsp of something so hard…..or are you saying 1 tsp of melted Cocoa Butter?
So excited to try this again and get it right! :)
Thank you!!
Vicki
Do you have a print friendly version of this recipe?
I love making lip balm! Its so easy and as you say, you can avoid all the dodgy ingredients in the bought ones. I made one lately with chamomile infused in macadamia oil, and shea butter/beeswax, with peppermint essential oil, I love it.
For the liquid oil would Olive Oil or Coconut Oil work well? Those are the only two I have on hand at the moment.
Thanks for posting this recipe! Do you suppose I could use coconut oil instead of cocoa butter, or would that make it too liquid?
Simply wonderful! This I must try, I might have to shuffle my to do list though ;)
I never use lip balm as such preferring lipstick but it is interesting to learn how simple it is to make. Well done you.
My my Elaine…aren't you the posh gardener? :) It is quite simple to make so if you're interested in trying it out you could possibly make it as a gift. It might be especially nice if you use herbs from your own garden.
Clever, clever – thank you :)
Have fun making some Dani :) You probably won't have chapped lips this time of year but if you use hemp seed oil or even red raspberry seed oil for your liquid ingredient then it will give some sunblock protection.
Lip balm is something I will never attempt to make, so I will just sit back and admire your creation. I bet it's really lovely and luxurious to use. I occasionally buy high street chemist ones, use them once then they end up in a drawer for years.
You must be one of the lucky people who doesn't suffer from wintery chapped lips then! Must be nice :)
This is a lovely simple recipe Tanya – I might even try making some as my lips do crack at this time of the year. I usually use something like Nivea on them rather than a lip balm.
Nivea is something I also use from time to time but it's not the tastiest lip cream. Hope you have a good experience in making lip balm yourself :)
That sounds easy enough. I bought some Body Shop Lip Butter, but it makes me sneeze so badly that I can't use it.
It's easy and also quite satisfying to make. Once you start making your own beauty products the more you question why you pay for it at the shop – especially if you've had reactions to store-bought as you have done.
What a great idea. I am looking for some more natural skin products and this fits the bill nicely. Thank you xxx
Glad to pass on the recipe Fran :)