How to make an Amazonian Lip Balm

Every other month Formula Botanica runs a formulation challenge for its student and graduate community this month we
launch our challenge to make an organic lip balm in a jar. Our students submit their photos and formulations for products that
theyve made, using our guidance. Weve provided our sample formulation of an Amazonian Lip Balm in this blog post.
In the past weve covered formulation challenges such as:
How to make a naturalshower jelly
How to make a butter scrub
How to make a body melt
How to make an aqueous gel using a natural solubiliser
How to make a body butter
How to make a natural gel scrub
How to make a night-time facial oil for mature skin
This month weretaking it right back to basics and were going to learn how to make an organic lip balm in a jar. Although this
challenge may seem simple, it is often the most simple formulations that are the most difficult to perfect.

Why do we use Lip Balm?

Given that your lip skin is only 3-5 layers deep, there are no sweat glands. This
means that your lip skin doesnt sweat and it doesnt produce sebum, your skins
natural oil. Without sweat and sebum your lips dry out quicker than other parts of
your skin. Dry skin is damaged quicker, which is why chapped lips are such as a
common occurrence.
A lip balm effectively provides that protective layer that you would normally get from
your skins natural oils. In covering your lips with an occlusive layer, it does two
things firstly, it locks moisture in and secondly, it makes it harder for the heat and
cold to dry out your lips.
When making your own lip balms, keep in mind that the blend needs to be fairly thick
so that it sticks to the lips and doesnt just drip off or absorb too fast. A good balm
should have staying power!
Finding the right consistency
We frequently see people come to us to talk about their grainy balms, their problems
with using different butters and oils and their struggles in finding the optimal
concentration of wax in a formulation. Thankfully we teach our students how to
manageallof this in our Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation and Advanced
Diploma in Organic Cosmetic Science.
Our aim for this month is to create a lip balm with a consistency thats suitable for a
jar. This consistency will vary depending on where you are in the world some hot
climates will require a slightly harder balm, whereas those of us in cold climates will
need to minimise the amount of harder ingredients. The overall objective is to create
a balm that is solid yet creamy in the jar, but can be easily applied with fingers and
leaves a pleasant (non-waxy / non-sticky) feel on the lips.
Essential Oils in Organic Lip Balm
All natural or organic lip balms are a blend of waxes and emollients (skin-softening
plant oils and butters) and sometimes essential oils for fragrance and flavour. You
can also make plain lip balms which are a blend of waxes and butters with no overt
flavour or scent to them at all.
Remember that because your lip balm is applied on the lips which have very thin
skin, you should consider the safety of your essential oils and only use a small
amount of essential oil (generally under 0.5%).
Our Sample Formulation:AmazonianLip Balm
We created a beautiful orange Amazonian lip balm, rich in carotenoids. Rather
thanreplicate the same ingredients you see everywhere in lip balms, we decided to
use some beautiful Amazonian ingredients which not only impart a gorgeous colour
to the lip balm but also offer some great functional properties.
Phase A
Organic myrica fruit wax 25.0%
Mango butter 25.0%
Phase B
Vanilla infusion in organic jojoba oil 10.0%
Buriti oil 39.3% (rich in carotenoids, causes the orange colour)
Alpha-tocopherol 0.5%
Phase C
Organic mandarin essential oil 0.2%
Method of Manufacture
1. Melt the myrica wax and mango butter in a water bath at approximately60-65 oC.
2. Blend phase B and heat it in another bath at approximately40 oC.
3. When the wax-butter phase has melted, stop heating this phase, remove it from
the water bath and add the warm oil phase. Ive warmed the oil phase to avoid a cold
shock. If the oil phase is at room temperature, the wax phase immediately solidifies
by adding the oil phase to it.
4. Stir the totalmixture and start cooling. You can either do it in a cold water bath or
in a fridge (dont forget to stir in short intervals).
5. When the mixture comes to a trace (you start to see a solid trace in the overall
blend), add the essential oil and pour the balm in suitable jars. Do not completely
close the jars. Keep the jars in the fridge overnight.
6. Remove the jars from the fridge, close the cap and label them.
7. Judge the consistency of your lip balm after about 24 hours. If the balm feels too
hard and waxy, you may need to adjust the formulation by reducing the wax/butter
content. If the balm appears too soft and runny you shouldincrease the wax or butter
content. Remember that the consistency will vary depending on your climate and
environment so dont be scared to experiment with different ratios.

Now its your turn! Either try making our Amazonian lip balm, or design your own
formulation. And if you are curious as to how Formula Botanica teaches organic lip
balm formulation in our courses, register nowforour sample class.