How to make Herbal Lip Balm
Learn how to make herbal lip balm using a flexible recipe of oils & skin-loving herbs. The perfect winter project to make the perfect winter skincare recipe
Winter takes a real toll on your skin but especially your lips. Keeping them protected and moisturized is key to making sure they don’t crack. If you suffer from cold sores, winter stress can cause also cause a break-out. Instead of buying your next lip balm, make your own! It’s easy to do, requires very little in the way of ingredients, and is a fun and natural project.
In this project I’ll show how to quickly infuse oils with dried herbs like peppermint, chamomile, and calendula. Use the infused oil to create homemade herbal lip balm.
One of the best things about making your own lip balm is that you get control over the ingredients. Depending on your own philosophies or health needs you might want to avoid using things like petroleum jelly, nut oils, and animal products. The recipe below is flexible, meaning you can use whatever you’d like or have on hand.
Herbal Lip Balm Recipe
Makes approx. three 10ml containers. Feel free to double or triple the amounts.
- 1 tsp solid oil, wax, or butter* – Such as Beeswax, Soy Wax
, or Cocoa Butter
. Use just one or a mix.
- 4 tsp infused liquid oil* – choose one with conditioning properties and a mild flavour such as Grapeseed oil, Rice Bran oil, or Sweet Almond oil.
- Herbs. Your choice of dried peppermint, chamomile, calendula, plantain, or other skin-loving herbs
- Optional – three drops of an appropriate and skin-safe essential or natural flavour oil. Peppermint and Chamomile are excellent choices.
* If you’d like your lip balm to be harder then use less liquid oil and more hard oils. And vice-versa if you’d prefer a softer balm.
Containers
Use any small tubes, pots or jars you have on hand. If you reuse containers just make sure to clean them let them dry completely. You could reuse lip stick 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 to go. If you don’t have a dishwasher, wash them in hot soapy water, rinse them in scalding water and then dry with a clean cloth. Only use containers that are fully dried since moisture can cause oils to go rancid.
Infusing the herbs into oil
There are two ways to infuse dried herbs into oil. The cold infusion method or the hot. In the cold infusion method, mix 8 tsp liquid oil with 3 tsp dried herbs in a glass jar. Seal and place in a warm place, like a window sill or in the kitchen and leave to infuse for 2-4 weeks. Give it a shake every day or so and then strain the infused oil off to use in this recipe.
There’s also the hot infusion method. Place the same amount of liquid oils and herbs into a small double boiler. A double boiler is essentially a pan floating in another pan of boiling water. Simmer the water in the outer pan let the oil infuse with herbs for 30 minutes. Strain the oil out at the end and use immediately.
Your infused oil may have herbal residue in it — this is perfectly fine.
Make the Herbal Lip Balm
Use the same double boiler method to melt the solid oils/butters. Once melted, pour in your infused oil and then keep stirring until all the oils are completely melted — when you add the liquid oils it’s likely that you’ll see some solidification. When fully melted, add your optional essential and stir.
Pour the hot melted oils into clean lip balm containers and allow to cool. Cool until they’re room temperature which could take an hour or more. Afterwards, you can put the tops on the containers and your lip balm is ready to be used.
Shelf life of homemade lip balm
Once poured and cooled, lip balm is good for up to two years. The longevity is based purely on the nearest expiration date of the ingredients you’ve used. Look on the backs of the bottles and tea boxes and find the closest date. Use that date as your best-by date.
Herbal lip balm is a fun and easy project to make on your own or with friends. Make them during the colder months to use on your own lips or as handmade gifts. The sky’s the limit for how you customise yours! For more ideas on making beauty recipes browse Lovely Greens’ soap & beauty recipes.
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 :)