First, I made lip balm. I saw the recipe for it in this book, and as I had the ingredients, I thought I'd give it a try. It was surprisingly simple. I made one tube without any color for Steven, then I added some lipstick to the melted concoction to give it some color. (It was an unused Clinique freebie I had on hand.)
I failed to account for the shrinkage that occurs when the stuff cools. The colorless tube of lip balm is all sunken in, as a result. I'd already added color to the rest of the batch, so I couldn't go and fill in the well that was made, like I did with the others.
This lip balm is actually pretty good. It feels like Chapstick. In the future if I make it again, I'll add more vitamin E oil than it called for. But the original recipe is pretty good. Steven actually used his, which was a nice compliment.
Since I had a double boiler going already, I decided to try making a candle, just to see how it turned out. I melted the white wax and added a little bit of broken green crayon to color it:
Then I poured it into a juice container with a wick centered in it:
This project didn't turn out as well. I didn't melt enough wax the first time, so after I poured it, I melted more. But it took a while to melt, which meant the first bit of wax started to harden. When I finally poured more on, it wound up creating a definite line. And, the juice container stuck to it a bit, so there's some white paper on it. It just doesn't look very nice (I forgot to take a picture of the finished project). I doubt I'll do this one again, but it was still interesting to try.
We're talking about doing a small gift exchange at our youth group's Christmas party next month. The youth minister's suggestion for this was to have all the gifts be homemade. I think that's a fun idea, and I'll probably use one of my tubes of lip balm for that. (We're talking about small gifts, nothing big.)
3 comments:
That is so cool - I'd never heard of making your own chapstick before! Any idea of a cost-estimate of a batch? I go through chapstick like it is going out of style.
Hmmm... the product amounts used were negligible. A tablespoon here, a few drops of stuff there. The main cost was for the containers. Those were $4.99 at Joann's, but I had a coupon, which made them $3 for 8 containers. I didn't even spend $1 in ingredients, so I'd say this cost me less than $4 for 6 containers, and I probably had enough to have filled 7 containers, but I topped stuff off instead.
I don't know how that stacks up against Chapstick brand, but I know it's a lot cheaper than other brands. Granted, it doesn't feel as richly moist as other brands, but it does the job intended.
Thanks for the info! Chapstick usually runs about $1.25 each, so I think making it would save a little money. Plus, it's a cute project and then you know what all the ingredients are! Nifty.
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