Red lipstick is a french legend, and we indeed use it a lot here, but tinted balms are still way more popular when it goes to everyday make-up. And these days it seems like everybody is making homemade tinted lip balms – it is easy to make, look good and take good care of your lips.
HOMEMADE LIP BALM
Basically, you can make your own lip balm with only 2 ingredients – oil and beeswax. Different oils provide different properties (some moisturize, some protect and nourish the skin, and some work to restore skin).
Commercial products usually are made with silicons and synthetic waxes. As you can imagine, natural oils and beeswax in your homemade balm are way more beneficial for your skin than petroleum-based components.
And homemade lip balms are so easy to make that you should definitely try to!
The basic recipe:
- 3 parts of liquid oils
- 1 part of natural butter (shea, coconut, etc.)
- 1 part of beeswax
That’s it! You melt it in a double boiler, transfer it to a container and let it cool down. Done!
WHICH OIL & BUTTER TO USE
You can use different oils and butters for your lip balm, and depending on your choice, your lip balm will have different properties:
- Jojoba oil – they call it “liquid wax,” as it has a very particular chemical composition. In your lip balm, jojoba oil provides protection as it covers your lips with the film, which locks up the moisture and protects your lips from dryness.
- Almond oil – easily penetrating, nourishing and moisturizing oil, a great choice for almost all skin types.
- Castor oil – nourishes and protects your skin, leaves your lips shiny;
- Avocado oil – is an excellent choice for dry lips as it contains essential fatty acids and deeply moisturizes and nourishes dry skin.
- Pomegranate oil – vitamin cocktail for mature skin, great for anti-age homemade cosmetic products.
- Shea butter – protects, nourishes, and restores lip skin, I would recommend using it in all your lip balm recipes.
You can also add some of those ingredients to your lip balm:
- Lanolin – profoundly moisturizes your skin, protects it, and restores dry and damaged lips. An excellent component for your lip balms if you live in an area with a harsh climate – here in French Alps, we use it a lot. Please make an allergy test before adding it – lanolin is known as an allergen. You can add from 2% up to 5% of lanolin to your lip balm
- Vitamin E – it is beneficial both for your skin and for your lip balm, as it protects oils in it from oxidation.
- Raw honey – moisturizes and heals dry and bitten lips, a prevalent natural care ingredient here in French Alps as well.
Important note: shea butter and honey can not stand the heat – you should not expose them to high temperatures (above 60 C or 140 F). On the other hand, beeswax starts to melt at 70-80 C, so you should separate shea and honey from the rest of the ingredients. First, melt the wax with other oils, remove it from heat, let it cool down a bit and then add and steer honey and shea butter.
HOMEMADE TINTED LIP BALM
If you want to add some sheer color to your lips, you can make your own tinted balm. To make it just cut a little piece of any red lipstick you have, add it to other ingredients, and melt and steer. The intensity of color depends on the size of lipstick bite you add – the bigger it is, the more pronounced color you get.
Here I made some samples to show you how you can vary the color of your lip balm from light pink and to almost deep red:
If you add more beeswax and butter to your recipe, you will get a thick and more substantial texture, if you increase the amount of liquid oils, your balm will be more mellow, balm-like. Use it within the next 6 months.
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