Monday, 13 July 2009

Smooth lips

I have been experimenting with my own home-made lip balm.The first batch was Lavender/Chamomile lip balm. Can double as hand balm, too.

6 TB almond oil
1 TB beeswax
dried chamomile & lavender flowers (or fresh)

Heat almond oil in little pot, add flowers, let steep on low heat until the oil smells of the flowers.
Strain oil, squeeze flowers. Put oil back into pot and add beeswax. When beeswax is melted pour mixture quickly into little wide-mouthed jars or similar. It will set within a few seconds.

The second and current batch:3 TB olive oil
4 TB almond oil
dried/fresh chamomile & lavender flowers
1 TB beeswax
1 TB coconut oil
1 TB honey*

Heat olive and almond oil in little pot, add flowers, let steep on low heat until the oil is lovely fragrant. Strain oil, squeeze flowers. Put back into pot and add rest of ingredients. When everything is melted, pour into little jars.
*The honey may have been a mistake. Either there was too much of it, or it just does not work with honey. It didn't melt into the rest of the liquid. So that's why you can see the honey at the bottom of the little jars. It does taste nice, though. The mixture has a touch of honey. But as soon as you get close to the bottom of the jar, it gets a bit too sticky.

5 comments:

Olive said...

You could always pour it over your icecream if it's not suitable for lip-balm. Sounds good enough to eat !

Tricia (little eco footprints) said...

Thanks for these recipes. I have a couple of kgs of bees wax from my Dads bee hives and have been planning to make some lip gloss (and candles and handcream).

The little jars look good.

Veggie Gnome said...

Olive, yeah, why not? Everything is organic. ;)

Tricia, go for it! It is great fun and easy. You can play around with these recipes, change ingredients, change quantities, etc. If you add more beeswax, you will get a firmer balm. Might be good for summer. :)

Abbie said...

I always love finding home-made recipes fit to be given away as gifties. I'll have to try these out! Thanks for the recipes. I came over from Julie's blog Towards Sustainability. Abbie.

Veggie Gnome said...

Welcome, Abbie! Glad you are enthusiastic about trying these recipes. You won't regret it. Once you have tried a recipe, you will be playing around with different ingredients and quantities. It is great fun and very rewarding. :)