Today we’re making a lovely Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm that’s brilliant for spring. With a light-but-creamy consistency and a bright, sweet essential oil blend it’s just the thing to shake up your lip balm routine as we move towards warmer days.

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

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The key ingredient in this lip balm is the stearic acid, which not only functions as a thickener along with the carnauba wax, but also works to counter the super-firm-glassy thickening style of carnauba wax. Stearic acid thickens products in a wonderfully rich, creamy way—something I find is often missing in vegan lip balms. As soon as I started experimenting with stearic acid I knew I’d have to play with it in vegan lip balms, and this is another foray into that territory.

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

After our thickeners/hardeners I’ve included some slippy coconut oil, some brittle tucuma butter, some glossy castor oil, and some beautifully emollient sweet almond oil. These not-wax things soften the wax/stearic acid blend to a useable consistency so our lip balm isn’t just a rock-hard skiddy brick—definitely a good thing! They also bring a bit of gloss and shine to the balm, which I like.

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

Our essential oil blend stars calming lavender, rich vanilla-like benzoin (yes, it really does smell like vanilla!), and bright cardamom. I tried a variation on the essential oil blend using litsea cubeba essential oil instead of cardamom, and that worked really nicely as well. Both cardamom are bright, light notes that work beautifully. I prefer the cardamom, but if you are more of a citrus person I think you’ll love the litsea cubeba variation.

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

The making is nice and simple—melt the heated stuff, stir in the cool down stuff, pour into tubes, et voila. Lip balm! I think this is a great one for spring 🙂

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Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

Heated phase
7.5g | 25% stearic acid (USA / Canada / UK)
6.6g | 22% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
4.5g | 15% tucuma butter
5.7g | 19% sweet almond oil (USA / Canada)
3g | 10% castor oil (USA / Canada)
2.4g | 8% carnauba wax

Cool down phase
0.15g | 0.5% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.06g | 0.2% lavender essential oil
0.06g | 0.2% benzoin resinoid
0.03g | 0.1% cardamom essential oil

Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a small saucepan.

Weigh the heated phase ingredients into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.

While the heated phase is melting, weigh out the cool down phase into a separate small dish.

After about 20–30 minutes everything should be completely melted through. Remove the water bath from the heat, remove the measuring cup from the water bath, and dry it off with a dish towel. Add the cool down phase and stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.

Pour the liquid lip balm into tubes or tins and leave to set up before capping & labelling. That’s it!

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this lip balm is 100% oil based, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Kept reasonably cool and dry, it should last at least a year before any of the oils go rancid. If you notice it starts to smell like old nuts or crayons, that’s a sign that the oils have begun to oxidize; chuck it out and make a fresh batch if that happens.

Substitutions

As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.

  • As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 30g (approximately six standard tubes).
  • To learn more about the ingredients used in this recipe, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
  • Do not substitute the stearic acid.
  • You can use virgin or refined coconut oil, or use babassu oil instead.
  • You could replace the tucuma butter with cocoa butter; remember that scented cocoa butter will impact the scent of the end product.
  • You can substitute another lightweight oil like grapeseed or sunflower seed for the sweet almond oil
  • I don’t recommend swapping out the castor oil, but if you have to just use more of whatever other liquid oil you’re already using
  • You can use candelilla wax instead of carnauba wax
  • You can use a different blend of essential oils

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm

How to Make DIY Lavender Vanilla Vegan Lip Balm