Lush Natural Lip Balm

These homemade lip balms are absolutely divine and 100% good for you!!! They make for great birthday or wedding favours, personalised gifts or just a fantastic natural lip balm option to use for yourself. This recipe is super simple and can be relatively affordable in the long term as you don't need to regularly restock all the ingredients such as your Essential Oils. You will find that the internet is full of sooooo many lip balm recipes it can be overwhelming. And most of these bloggers are international so that wasn't helpful when it came to sourcing ingredients. Though I have researched, tried, tested and experimented with my own recipes to come up with the best one. So I hope this helps all of you here in Australia!!!

You can alternate what liquid oils you use, starting at the lowest price point with olive oil for just $3 or mid range with a sweet almond oil for around $13 and work your way up with jojoba oil around $25 and so on. I decided on using almond oil for its extra softness it provides. This was easily obtained from The Chemist Warehouse from the Oil Garden Aromatherapy Range. Again with the solid oils you can choice what suits you as long as its form is solid when at room temperature such as shea, cocoa or coconut oils. Coconut oil is by far the easiest to buy as a raw unrefined product. This is easily obtained from the supermarket in the health food isle. I purchased the Melrose Organic Refined Coconut Oil on special at Coles.

You can add extras like essential oils and honey to your taste. Make sure you choose something that is palatable as scents like lavender probably don't taste all that great. If you use honey just to note that when your final product sets at room tempurature the honey won't. This does add a bit of texture and tastes great so if you don't mind finding small pockets of honey in your lip balm then add it!

Lastly the key ingredient to combine them altogether is beeswax. This I found difficult to find and the only stockist retailer was Bunnings. It comes in a 100g block for $10. If you have the time you can usually find Honey Farmers at your local markets who hold stalls and sell all natural beeswx. Finding lip balm tins is relatively easy. Any dollar store usually has some range of small decorative tins. Or the supermarket stocks beauty containers used for travel which can be found in the health and beauty isle.

What you will need:

- 1 Part Beeswax

- 1 Part Solid Oil i.e. shea, cocoa or coconut

- 2 Parts Liquid Oil i.e. grapeseed, olive, sunflower, almond, jojoba

- Essential Oils to taste

1/ Prepare your tins ready on a tray as once you melt all your ingredients you need to work quickly as it hardens rapidly. With the portions I am working with I used 1 tablespoon and made two batches of flavours. One batch filled 3 lip balm tins.

2/ If you are working with a bar of beeswax grate it into a microwave safe bowl.

3/ Next add in your solid oil. I used coconut oil and as you scoop it out the jar it cracks into workable pieces.

4/ Finally mix in the exact portion of your liquid oil, I used almond oil and rather than use two parts I divided it and used one part honey. Then just drop in your essential oils. I made two flavours in two separate bowls. One lemongrass and the other orange.

5/ Place them either over a double bowl on the stove top or like me, if you don't have enough bowls then place it in the microwave and be ultra careful not to burn your mixture. You don't want to overheat it and lose all the goodness of the oils. So depending on your microwave heat and mix in 20-30second increments. I didn't need any longer than 2minutes for each batch.

6/ Once it is a clear liquid funnel the mixture into your tins then carefully place them in the fridge to set if it's a hot day like it was when I made them. Or just leave them aside and you will find they will eventually set, just a little slower that's all.

7/ And voila you have your own 100% natural and good for you lip balm!!