Soft and soothing, this easy, homemade healing lip balm can be whipped up in just a few minutes, and will help heal chapped lips and skin.
Over the last few weeks, the weather has been crazy around here. We saw snow on the ground for the first time in over 30 years, followed by warm, sunny days, followed by cold, windy, stormy days. It's hard to know what to expect, and the harsh weather has finally gotten to my son's sensitive skin.
I've written to you in the past about my son's atopic dermatitis and how he's very prone to rashes and dry, flaky skin. One of his most sensitive areas, though, is the area around his mouth.
When we visited the dermatologist a few years ago, he clued us into the fact that the rashes could be exacerbated by certain foods. We found that after my son ate acidic fruits, bananas, and a few other foods that were problematic for him, that we would often see a rash form around his mouth within a couple of hours. By now, he can eat most of those foods again, most of the time, without issues, but at this time of year, the rash seems to end up forming around his mouth no matter what he eats. It's more a sign that the cold, dry weather is taking its toll.
No matter what the cause of the dryness of the lips and surrounding areas, this homemade healing lip balm will help soothe irritated skin. I purposely formulated the lip balm so that it would be soft enough to easily rub it over the most sensitive areas without causing anymore pain.
My son has been extremely sensitive to any sort of lip balm or cream being used on his lips and the area around them. He's picky about scents and picky about textures. That's why it was important to me to make a homemade healing lip balm for him. I controlled the quality of the ingredients, and everything else about it. For now, this is the only lip balm or cream that he will let me use!
I should have included a before and after photo. Instead, this is an in between photo. My son still has some redness around his lips, but it's starting to heal.
The benefits of mango butter
I chose to use mango butter in this lip balm for several reasons. My son hates the scent of cocoa butter and shea butter. Both of them, when bought unrefined, can have an overpowering scent and flavor. Mango butter is much milder and has a smooth and creamy texture. I like the texture much better than that of either shea butter or cocoa butter, and you could really just rub pure mango butter over your lips and/or irritated skin in a pinch.
Mango butter is very nourishing and hydrating, and is said to benefit rashes, eczema, sunburn, insect bites, and even frostburn. It's not greasy and is easily absorbed by lips and skin. It helps prevent wrinkles and sun damage, meaning that it's a great addition to lip balms year round! It also has antioxidant properties. What more could you want?
Choosing essential oils for your homemade healing lip balm
The great thing about making your own lip balm is that you can choose which essential oils to use to help aid in healing, or you could choose to not use any at all. If you are sensitive to certain oils, you can avoid them. You can also choose oils whose scents you enjoy.
I chose a mixture of lime essential oil and lavender essential oil because both lavender and the citrus peel essential oils are thought to aid in healing chapped skin and minor cuts and scratches. I would normally use lemon or orange oil, but I hadn't tried out my bottle of lime essential oil yet, and this was the perfect opportunity. The combination of lavender and citrus sounds a bit strange, but I actually quite like it. Interestingly enough, my picky son doesn't have issues with the scent of either oil either. Plus, they are relatively safe oils for using with somebody of my son's age.
In the photos, you'll see that I also photographed a pink colored chocolate peppermint lip balm that I made for myself using cocoa powder and peppermint essential oil (see notes on coloring below). Peppermint essential oil gives a cooling sensation to lip balms which I happen to love. Some people, though, may find peppermint oil to be irritating to their skin and lips!
Watch how to make the homemade healing lip balm:
Other healing ingredients for a homemade lip balm
Apart from the essential oils, this lip balm also incorporates tocopherol, or vitamin E. Vitamin E not only nourishes the skin, but it also helps prevent the other oils and fats from going rancid. Vitamin E is a fat soluble antioxidant that helps protect against free radicals which can damage cell membranes.
Next time I make this lip balm, I plan on adding a couple of drops of d-panthenol. D-panthenol is a form of vitamin B5 that can help bring moisture down to deeper areas of the skin. It's known to help with healing wounds, regenerating skin, and cell renewal. It helps relieve dryness and chapping. I just recently bought some because I've been formulating some new DIY hair conditioners, and d-panthenol is also a wonderful addition to hair products. I'm planning on sharing my favorite new recipe for a leave in hair conditioner soon!
If you want to add something like d-panthenol to your lip balm, you'll need to keep something in mind. D-panthenol is water soluble. Adding a water soluble product like this one can add moisture, albeit a very tiny amount, to the final product. Moisture in cosmetics can allow for the growth of bacteria and/or mold. After a bit of investigation, I found a Spanish recipe online for a healing lip balm (made with shea butter and cocoa butter) from an online natural products company that also uses d-panthenol. They sell natural preservatives, and didn't recommend any for that particular recipe. My gut feeling is that a couple of drops isn't going to add enough moisture to warrant needing a preservative. (It may even evaporate away during the elaboration.) All of that said, don't go overboard on an ingredient like this one. In large quantities it probably wouldn't combine well with the other ingredients anyway. When only using a drop or two, the beeswax should be enough to emulsify it into the rest of the ingredients.
Natural colorants for homemade lip balms
I really need to do a post just focusing on natural colorants that can be added to homemade makeup. I recently did an experiment using everything from fruit powders made from dried strawberries and raspberries (worked horribly!), to beetroot powder, etc.
I'll be doing further experiments using iron oxides and micas now that I plan on sharing more homemade cosmetics with you, but for now, I'd have to say that my two favorite super natural colorants for this type of recipe are alkanet root and annatto powder from seeds of the achiote tree.
homemade lip balm colored with annatto powder
Achiote is an orange colored seed often used as a spice/natural food coloring in Latin American foods. When ground into a fine powder, it easily disperses into the rest of the ingredients and works pretty well to color lip balms and other cosmetics.
Alkanet is an herb whose root gives more of a burgundy red color. I used a mixture of finely ground alkanet root powder and a touch of cocoa powder to the colored lip balm in the pictures.
Lip balms made using annatto powder (left) and alkanet root powder (Right). I also added more wax to make a harder lip balm that would have more staying power.
You can read more about how I used both in my non-comedogenic blush stick experiments. To get the color to be even, it's important to obtain a fine powder and make sure it gets mixed in well to the rest of the ingredients. I go more into detail about that in the other post.
For now, I'd like to concentrate on the healing lip balm part of this post…
DIY Homemade Healing Lip Balm
DIY Homemade Healing Lip Balm
Ingredients
- 2 tsp. sweet almond oil 8.5g
- 1 tsp. jojoba oil 2.5g
- 1 tsp. mango butter 5.5g
- 1 tsp. beeswax I use pastilles for easy measuring. (4g)
- 3 drops lavender essential oil
- 3 drops lime essential oil or another cold pressed citrus peel oil like lemon or orange
- 2 drops vitamin E
- 2 drops d-panthenol optional- see notes above
Instructions
- Measure out the almond oil, jojoba oil, mango butter, and beeswax pastilles over a double boiler, heating gently while stirring until the beeswax and mango butter have melted and are fully mixed with the oils.
- Remove the mixture from the heat source, and add in several drops of soothing essential oils and vitamin E. I used lime and lavender because both citrus peel oils and lavender are said to be soothing, healing oils for chapped, irritated skin. I also wanted to use oils that didn't have a strong scent or flavor that would bother my son. (He hates peppermint, for example, but some people like the cooling, tingling sensation that peppermint essential oil gives in lip balms and glosses.) The tocopherol vitamin E that I use is very thick, so it's difficult to measure out a drop or two. I just try for a drop, which is usually the equivalent of 2-3 drops, and use whatever comes out. (At this point you can also add in a couple of drops of d-panthenol if you plan on using it.)
- Whisk together all of the ingredients, and then pour the mixture into empty chapstick containers. I completely filled 3 containers with this recipe, with the tiniest little bit left over. If you prefer, you can use aluminum tins for the lip balm instead of the chapstick containers.
- Allow to cool completely and fully set before using. You can place them in the fridge or freezer if you're in a hurry! Enjoy!
This is the second time I’ve read mango butter as a lip balm ingredient. I’m so intrigued by the benefits of it instead of shea butter!
Hi Jennifer,
Yes, I bought it just to try it out, and I have to say that I like the texture better. I like and use shea butter for a lot of things too, but it can be a bit finicky and can get grainy when melted and cooled. That’s especially bothersome in a lip balm recipe. Mango butter can do the same, but not as much. I find the texture much smoother and loves how it glides right on. Give it a try! 🙂
Can I replace mango butter with Shea butter?
Hello. Made this and love it. My question is… after a couple of minutes it turns my lips white. I’m i doing something wrong? Could it be the bee’s wax? Thanks
Hi Janice,
That’s interesting. Ours doesn’t do that.
Are you using a white beeswax? (My beeswax beads are naturally golden colored, but I know they do sell white beeswax- which I’ve never tried.)
Did you add any coloring agents?
Hi! Sorry to bring up an old post, but I just tried this and when I poured it in my Chapstick container it all just poured right out the bottom 🙁 I tried 4 different brands and they all did it. What am I missing????
Thank you!
Hi Jaime,
I’m sorry you’re having that problem.
I’m not sure. I’ve used several different containers and never had that problem. Are you re-using commercial Chapstick containers? They may be made differently.
I buy containers made for DIY lip balms. I can pour water into them without it leaking; they’re normally made for filling with liquids.
The only thing I can think to try is to let it start to cool and get a bit thicker before pouring the mixture to help prevent the leaking.
I just saw your comment regarding the chapstick tubes. The tubes need to be locked in place first. Wind it all the way down until it locks or stops. That should tighten the bottem so it doesn’t spill out. I did this with some very cheap tubes and it did the trick. I hope this helps.
~ D’Anna
Hi D’Anna,
Thanks so much for the tip. That’s very helpful!
I think I’ve always instinctively done that, which may be why I’ve never had a problem, even with the cheap tubes. 🙂
Tried the recipe. I added a bit of castor oil for shine and swapped out the lavender & lime for a couple of drops of benzoin for the slightest vanilla scent.
It goes on very smooth, a little on the soft side but still works with the tube mechanisms.
My grandson is tolerating it well and at first blush, my husband (an avid chapstick user) likes it also. For me however, around 5 minutes or so after application, my lips are a bit dried out.
Any suggestions?
I yielded around 10 chapstick tubes with your measurements.
Theresa
Hi Theresa,
Castor oil is known to be a drying oil (Oh my! Autocorrect changed that to frying oil at first! hahahaha), so that could be part of the reason for the dryness. They often suggest that people with very oily skin wash with castor oil to help dry the skin a bit. Adding more liquid oil will also make the balm softer. If anything, you should substitute one liquid oil for another, but, of course, different oils and amounts will give different textures/properties. If you find it drying and soft, I’d add more mango butter, and maybe a few more wax pastilles. I did make it slightly soft on purpose because my son’s skin is so irritated right now that he was’t having a hard chapstick. That said, it still definitely holds its shape.
Another issue could be the measurement of the beeswax. Different pastilles of different sizes will yield different amounts when measured by volume. I made this recipe using teaspoons because it’s not a recipe that I thought would need to be super precise and so many people complain about not having a scale, but I’m thinking I’m going to have to update the recipe with weight amounts too for those who do have a scale.
I’ve been wanting to make another batch anyway because I keep misplacing the tubes, but I’m still waiting for my order of new empty tubes to arrive. It’s really been helping my son on the days I remember to put it on him. The days I realize I left it at home and don’t put it on him before he heads off to school, he comes back with really red skin all around his lips.
The weird thing is your yield. I ended up filling the 3 chapstick tubes I had, with a little leftover.
Oh no! I just noticed the problem with the yield! I must have used a capital T when typing which got converted into Tablespoons. I was using teaspoons! I truly apologize for the mixup in how many chapstick tubes the recipe yields, and have adjusted the recipe to fix it so that people don’t end up making 10 tubes each time! That said, because all of the main ingredients were using the same measurement, the overall mixture will be the same, you’d just end up with more of it.
I’ve emptied out tubes before to add more ingredients to change things I don’t like, so you can definitely rebatch it to make it suit your tastes if you don’t like the texture. I’d empty a couple of tubes and heat up the ingredients again, this time adding in more mango butter and maybe a touch of wax if you really want to harden it a bit more. I usually run the empty tubes through the dishwasher or clean them in a pan of very hot water. The mango butter is very moisturizing and the wax helps hold in moisture, so those ingredients should also help with the dryness you’re experiencing somewhat.
I hope that helps, and once again, I truly apologize for the yield amount mistake!
Well, my chapstick containers arrived today, and I just whipped up another batch.
I noticed something… I tend to not fill the oils exactly to the top of the container, and don’t worry about making sure I completely clean out the spoon each time, so I could be using a bit less oil than you, perhaps.
I weighed things as I made it this time and ended up using 8.5g almond oil, 2.5g jojoba oil, 5.5g mango butter, and 4g beeswax. I’m not quite sure why it was only 2.5g of jojoba oil as I also ran the numbers through online converters and found that a tsp. of jojoba oil usually weighs almost twice that?!?!, but I was weighing as I went along.
Now I want to make yet another batch. hahaha
This time I added the panthenol, and by scraping everything out of the bowl was able to get to 4 tubes. (The last one was only just over half full from pouring, but by using a spatula, I was able to fill it to the top!) 🙂
Anyway, I’m going to make the notes on the recipe so that people have an idea that if they want a harder balm to use a bit more wax. For my son, it’s really best like this, and I actually quite like the texture myself.
I wonder if you are having issues with one of the oils? Maybe you could switch out the jojoba for argan oil or another very hydrating oil?
Hi Tracy,
I will omit the castor oil next time around…I ended up ordering 150 empty tubes so ending up with 10 tubes of chapstick wasn’t too bad 😉.
I should have made the connection with the T & tsp, or compared it to my recipe/yield but truth be told I get a little starry-eyed when going over your post. Have I mentioned that I think you’re the bee’s knees!
My husband had no issues with the slightly softer texture and it did not melt or leak; big plus since he keeps the tube in his pants pocket all day! 😉
I will make another batch soon and and will play around with adding some color and such. Thanks for the weight measurements…my nerdy, type-A personality thanks you!
All the best,
Theresa
Thanks Theresa!
If you are planning on making the colored version, I would suggest adding more wax to it (I did!). That will help hold the color in place when you put it on.
I’m actually working on making natural lipsticks (and mascara, etc.) lately. I have made a few batches already, and am happy with what I have so far, but am still playing around to get things exactly as I like.
As for the mixup, I found the problem. I always make a point to double and triple check the recipes before posting, but the problem was in my notes. I jot things down quickly as I experiment the first time around. Sometimes I’m good about cleaning up my notes before moving onto another project, but other times I take a look and decide it’s all completely clear enough. In my notes for this recipe, I had only quickly jotted down 1 T, etc. So, a few weeks later when I went to write up the recipe (I always wait to use whatever it is for several weeks first, to make sure we all like it), I must have just assumed that I used a Tablespoon. Because it is such a small amount anyway, I didn’t question it at the time. Watching the video, though, I can totally confirm it was a teaspoon. I’m just happy that you caught it early on, and that you aren’t mad at me. I’m a perfectionist, at least when it comes to posting recipes, and I tend to beat myself up a lot over these things.
Another great post!
Simple, clean recipe with great pictures and detailed instructions!
Loved the video!
All the best from San Diego, California
Theresa
Thanks, Theresa!
It’s good to hear from you. I’m glad you liked it.
Have you seen the new lotion recipe? I’m really loving making my own lotions, creams, and conditioners lately!
I had a hard time finding good tutorials for beginners, so I had to buy a ton of materials and play with everything to figure it all out. I’ve made so many different things over the last weeks now. 🙂
Have you seen I just opened up a new Facebook group for chatting about how to make soaps, lotions, and other recipes? I’d love to see you there if you’re interested!
No matter what, have a great week.
I’ve been busy with sick kids and dreary weather. Hoping to get back into the swing of things soon since we enjoyed a few consecutive days of warmer weather and sunshine but alas, it is raining again as I’m writing this with high winds and and quite a chill in the air! Not to mention my grandson is coming down with another cold!
I definitely will head over to the fb page…you don’t even have to ask! I’m in!
I will look for your lotion post and looking forward to all the upcoming posts!
Also goes without saying that your son is quite the handsome little guy!
My little guy is still in his Wall E faze but have just discovered ‘Rusty Rivets’ (Robots & Dinosaurs…what’s not to love for a 3 year old?)
Have a great week yourself!
Theresa
Sorry to hear about the weather. It’s been a harsh winter here too!
Yesterday was the first warm day all year and I was so happy to see the sun shine again. Hopefully that’s a good sign that spring is finally coming!
Hope everybody feels better soon!
Oh, I just noticed your url. Is that your website? If it is, I’ll go head over and give your FB page a like. 😉
Awww… Thank you. Yes, that is the website along with the fb page.
Both are still works in progress but I think I corrected all the trailing, incomplete sentences…😉
Trying my best to get it to look nice (no where near your level of expertise but at least I now have something to strive for!)
My son’s calling me over, but I’ll definitely stop by after dropping him off at school! Good luck with it, it looks really nice. 🙂