Homemade – How to make Lip Balm with Beeswax

Cold weather brings with it a nasty and painful side affect – chapped lips. Today we are going to learn how to make lip balm from our own beeswax to see if we can’t combat the cold and protect our lips.

There are a seemingly endless number of ways to make your own lip balm or chap stick. Different oils, different ratios, different additives like vitamins, coloring, flavoring and aromas. For our purpose we will be focusing on a simple and easy lip balm recipe using only coconut oil, vitamin E oil, and our own home-harvested beeswax.

Containers for Lip Balm

When it comes to making lip balm there are, generally, to main types of containers – tubes and tubs. Either you will be using your finger to apply the balm or you will be holding a tube to your lips. Pretty simple – but important.

Balms placed inside of tubs can be more forgiving in their consistency. They can be very soft or very hard and still be perfectly functional. Tubes, however, have to be “just right”. If not, then the wax & oil mixture of the balm will stick to the side of the tube and refuse to come up. If too soft the center post of the tube will spin, but still the balm remains down in the tube. We need the lip balm to be soft enough to slide up the tube, but solid enough to let the center post grab on to the balm and lift it out.

Since this is my first time making these I, of course, will be using tubes. It makes sense doing the hard one first, right?

How to make Lip Balm

The recipe is very simple: 50% Beeswax, 50% Coconut oil, and a bit of vitamin E. How much vitamin E? Oh, I don’t know. I used 12 capsules, but probably could have put more in if I wanted to.

The process is very simple too – melt all the waxes and oils together, mix, and pour into containers. Sounds too easy? Well, here is out it looks:

First, melt the Beeswax. It takes the longest to melt so it is best to start here. I am using a double boiler insert, which worked really well for me. It isn’t too big to be difficult to work with, like some candy making double boilers can be.

Next, add in and equal amount of Organic Coconut Oil. This soil is solid at room temperature but will quickly melt. Mix it in well with the beeswax. The overall consistency, or viscosity, of the mixture will lighten or lower (it will not be as “thick”). The color might also lighten as well, depending on how deeply colored your beeswax is.

Once the beeswax and coconut oil are mixed you are, in reality, done. Everything else is just an additive. For our use we wanted to try and add in some Vitamin E Oil. You can buy just the oil in a bottle, but I couldn’t find it locally, so I just purchased vitamin E capsules. I then used a quilting needle to puncture a hole through the capsule and then squirted the contents of the capsule into my beeswax and oil mix.

Once all the ingredients were well mixed I poured them into the lip balm tubes using a lip balm tube filling tray. These trays hold up to 50 lip balm tubes, but that doesn’t mean you have to use all 50. Whether you want to fill 5 tubes, 20 or the whole tray it just makes the process less messy.

Once the wax sets you can scrape off the excess from the top of the tray, return it to your double boiler, remelt it, and likely fill another tube or two, so don’t let it go to waste!

Once the lip balm has set there is nothing else for you to do! I would recommend letting the tubes sit for longer than you might expect, just to be sure that they solidified all the way to the core of the tube and not just the surface.

If you made too much lip balm and ran out of containers, don’t worry! Put the wax/oil mixture into ANY container and put it in the freezer for safe keeping. You can always re-melt and refill your lip balm tubes later!

Be sure to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see what other things do and make with stuff off our property, like the beeswax!

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