All my life, even as a child, I have had very dry lips. So I never go anywhere without several different tubes and pots of lip balm, and for many years now I’ve been making my own.

And today, as I whipped up another batch, I thought I’d share it with you!

I have many recipes for natural skincare, and in fact worked for a while teaching classes in aromatherapy. A lot of my recipes come from this amazing book by Carolyn Stubbin, which is sadly out of print now.

My lip balm recipe is loosely based on her “healing lip balm”, although I’ve made a couple of changes to suit me.

Ingredients:

15gm Beeswax

5gm Cocoa Butter

5gm Honey

65ml Jojoba Oil

5ml Carrot Infused Oil

5ml Camellia Oil

10 drops Essential Oil (the choice is yours, but make sure you choose oils that are safe for sensitive skin and are not photo toxic.)

Today I made a batch of Mint (Spearmint & Peppermint combined), a batch of Tangerine and a batch of Lavender and Lime (use distilled lime oil for skincare, as cold-pressed can be photo toxic, meaning in the sun your skin could burn more easily or crack and blister.)

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and then melt them in a pan of water. You can use an electric frypan for this, or just a frypan filled with water, on the cook top.

Once melted, stir thoroughly to combine, and por into lip balm tubes, jars or tins. (Hint: I buy mine on ebay).

I use a small glass beaker for this job, but if you’re using jars/tins, a normal jug will do.

Once the tubes are filled and cooled, they can be capped and labelled.

I chose to use some pretty watercolours on my labels to make them more interesting, but if I’m in a hurry I sometimes don’t bother to label them at all.

These look great just sitting on my kitchen table, and they also make great gifts. Now I’m stocked up for the next few months!!