Formulating from your Cupboard - Day 5

Today’s featured lip balm is another vegan formulation. The goal was to have a vegan lip balm that was firm and had minimal shine. Let’s see how close we were to our goals!

Finished Lip Balm

One of my goals was to have this formulation to have minimal shine. So you can imagine my surprise to find that after apply this to my lips there was no shine to speak of. It almost looked matte. I was astonished. I have never had a lip balm that was matte in appearance without the addition of colorants.

I am also delighted to learn that while this lip balm has a matte appearance on the lips, I didn’t need to sacrifice a creamy sensation on the lips to get it.

Weighing Soy Wax

This lip balm had great texture and no shine to speak of. The one area it disappointed me was that it was softer than I wanted. While it has what I would consider a medium firmness, I must also remember that it is summer and the ambient temperature is higher than what it will be in the winter. I think this formulation would be perfect under winter conditions. For summer, I might consider making a small change to make the lip balm a little more firm.

Original Recipe:

Proposed Changes:

Weighing Carnauba Wax

Weigh everything except the Vitamin E Acetate and Black Cherry Flavor Oil into a microwave safe container. Heat gently until everything is liquid. If you still have a few stubborn beads of wax, remove the container from the microwave and stir. The heat in the solution should melt the wax.

Add the Vitamin E Acetate and Black Cherry Flavor Oil to the liquid lip balm mixture. Stir well. For here you can either use a pipette to fill your lip balm tubes or use a filling tray. Use whichever is most convenient for you.

Weighing Oils

I like using a filling tray when making 50 or more tubes of lip balm because they are simple to use and fast. If you are using a filling tray, insert your tubes into your tray. Flood the tray with your melted lip balm. Allow the mixture to cool. Scrape off the excess. I like to use a plastic putty knife. Remove the tubes from the tray and cap.

If you are going to pipette the lip balm into the tubes, fill the tube until you get a dome of liquid material at the top. Wax shrinks when it cools and doing this helps insure that you get a very pretty top. Fill all of your tubes making sure they are domed on the top before they cool. (You may need to reheat your lip balm during this process. This is normal and to be expected.) Allow the tubes to cool then cap.

Adding Flavor Oil

Now you can label your lip balm. Having labels on your lip balm helps in many ways. You know what it is and it looks so great when you give it to friends and family! Enjoy!