It’s still two days until it’s “technically” autumn, but Calgary clearly missed that memo—our trees have been turning since late August. Along with coarsely knit knee socks, my scarf collection, and this awesome jacket that I bought on sale in May and haven’t had a chance to wear yet, I figure I might as well break out ALL THE PUMPKIN SPICE. I’m no fan of the PSL, but pumpkin pie and I have had a long-standing love affair (and for me it’s really all about the pie, not the whipping cream), and of course that means I’ve turned it into all kinds of pumpkiny things already. Soap, lotion, face masks, and now—Pumpkin Shimmer Lip Gloss. I wanted something with a warm pinkish hue and a hint of shimmer for these cooler days, and here we have it. Aww yeah.
Want to see this lip gloss in action?
Watch Now
(It’s right at the end.)
The base of this lip gloss is a blend of glossy castor oil (USA / Canada), slippery coconut oil, hydrating lecithin, and vitamin rich (and bright orange!) pumpkin seed oil. I’ve thickened that up with some beeswax to get a soft, glossy consistency.
To the base I’ve added a beautiful pigment blend to get a warm, perfect-for-autumn pink pumpkin hue. A blend of carmine and ruddy red iron oxide provide the vast majority of the colour punch, with gold and bronze micas rounding out the blend. I know somebody is going to ask, so before you do, seriously, DO NOT USE RED IRON OXIDE OR BOTANICAL EXTRACTS INSTEAD OF THE CARMINE. Yes, it is made from insects. No, it isn’t vegan. It is also completely irreplaceable as a natural pigment in terms of colour and strength. I’ve included an FD&C alternative if you want to use that, and that’ll give you more or less the same end result. If you use red iron oxide instead the final product will be a reddish brown. If you use botanical extracts they won’t dissolve and will be gritty (they are really impotent as well). Watch this video to see a comparison of those four options.
I used a largeish syringe to get the finished pumpkin shimmer lip gloss into some squeezy tubes, and I can’t recommend that approach enough. The squeezy tubes make this lip gloss so much more usable than an open pot, and the syringe makes the filling part fast and easy rather than a slippery, glitter-smeared rage-fest.
If you’ve never made lip gloss before, don’t be intimidated—it’s really easy! The hardest part is filling your tubes. It’s weight, melt, whisk, and voila! Happy glossing 😉
Pumpkin Shimmer Lip Gloss
6g | 0.21oz beeswax (USA / Canada)
6g | 0.21oz virgin coconut oil
10g | 0.35oz castor oil (USA / Canada)
16g | 0.56oz pumpkin seed oil
4g | 0.14oz soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin1/64 tsp red iron oxide (I use these tiny measuring spoons for tiny measurements like this)
1/16 tsp ground carmine or FD&C Red #7 (watch this video to see why you CANNOT use red iron oxide and expect the same result!)
1/32 tsp bronze mica (optional—can substitute more gold mica instead)
3/32 tsp gold mica4 drops cinnamon bark essential oil
2 drops CO2 extracted ginger essential oil (this is important—the steam distilled stuff smells like socks. Leave out the ginger EO if you can’t find CO2 extracted.)
1 drop clove bud essential oil
2 “blobs” benzoin essential oil2020 update: Given the irritation potential for this essential oil blend, I’d recommend using a pumpkin spice flavour oil (NOT fragrance oil) rather than the essential oil blend. Please refer to supplier documentation for maximum usage rates for the particular flavour oil you’re using when used in leave-on products; 0.1–0.2% should be more than enough to adequately scent the product.
Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer in a small saucepan.
Weigh the beeswax, coconut oil, castor oil (USA / Canada), pumpkin seed oil, and lecithin into a small heat resistant glass measuring cup. Place that measuring cup into the prepared water bath to melt everything through—this’ll take about 20 minutes.
Once all the oils and waxes have melted together, remove them from the heat. I decanted them into a smaller glass bowl/custard cup at this point to speed up the cooling process and to have easier access to the lip gloss. The measuring cup is so much bigger than the amount of lip gloss we’re working with that I find it easier to work with a smaller bowl, but this step is 100% optional.
Stir the lip gloss with a flexible silicone spatula as it cools, breaking up any solid clumps so you end up with a viscous, creamy, uniform mixture—it’ll look a lot like pumpkin puree when it’s cooled.
Once the outside of the container is barely warm to the touch, it’s time to start adding our pigments! You might want to start slow and work up to the amounts I have listed, but I find the final colour blend to be perfect; noticeable, but not overwhelming. Be sure to test on your lips rather than your hands or arms—it makes a big difference! I blended in my pigments with a tiny wire whisk (I ordered this 12 pack from Amazon ’cause I use them all the time for cosmetic making).
When you’ve got a uniform lip gloss in a beautiful hue you’re happy with, whisk in the essential oils. If you have sensitive skin I’d recommend dropping everything except the benzoin down to a single drop, which will give you a lightly spiced, mostly vanilla scent.
Now it’s time to transfer your gloss to your container—for this step I can’t recommend a syringe (without the needle part, of course!) enough if you plan on using anything other than an open jar to store your lip gloss. I used a couple squeezy tubes and a hard tube, and while I’ve filled both with a funnel before, a syringe is SO MUCH NICER. Oh my heavens. Mucho cleaner and easier.
Once you’ve got your containers filled, you’re reading to gloss it up! Because this lip gloss is 100% oil based it should easily last a year or two without any preservatives.
Want to see this lip gloss in action?
Watch Now
(It’s right at the end.)
Looks AMAZING and yummy! Thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks, Tirzah!
That’s exactly how I fill my squeeze lotion bottles! I have looked and looked but cannot find lip tubes like you used in this recipe so going to use the lip gloss wand tubes.
Carmine is made from beetles? I thought it was made from toast! And speaking of toast, lightly buttered toast with pumpkin spice seasonings? Delicious!
I think I might make this in the morning! I looked at my calendar and saw I have less than 100 days to perfect some cosmetic recipes for presents and get over a hundred bars of soap ready to mail all over the world for gifts. Thank goodness for the cosmetics and lip stuff! They are small and lightweight and are wickedly cheap/easy to make!
This question may be totally left wing here, but I’ve a bag of serate, how would that work in a recipe like this? I know it provides slip and staying power in lip sticks, but would there be any benefits in this type of recipe? Am I answering my own question thinking that as this is a gloss, there would already be enough slip due to it being a lot of liquid oils?
I love syringes, I just wish they were easier to clean! All those little crevices *grr*. And now I want toast!
Magnesium stearate? It’s good for slip and adhesion, though I find in something as slippy as lip gloss we don’t need it for slip, and it doesn’t seem to help much with adhesion with something this soft. You could definitely melt some into the oil part and see what happens, though!
I mentioned in another reply to you, try using beakers to fill up your lippy stuff. I find its much easier than the syringe especially since the beaker has a narrower spout over Pyrex. AND bonus? Much easier to clean the beeswax out of! I take a tissue and swipe before tossing into the sink and clean up is wicked easy!
The syringes I’ve found are for squeezy bottle lotions+potions and such
Hmm. I still don’t have any beakers… just lots of those pyrex measuring cups. Perhaps it’s time to hit up Amazon!
Hit up Amazon! You’ll wonder how you ever filled lip chap tubes any other way! And lip gloss tubes! I like Pyrex as it gives you lots of space to play in. But, that spout is massive! With the beakers, mixing colours for lipsticks or gloss takes a few extra minutes to get everything mixed, then a quick reheat (a couple more times than Pyrex as the glass is very thin), pour…. Much easier. I rarely have pouring messes any more!
I did it! Three Pyrex brand beakers are on their way 😀 And a new set of teensy measuring spoons so I can check their measurements and see if they are in line with the set I currently I have. Yay Amazon!
I love this recipe and the way it feels but I want to make a clear one with just the glitters. The soy lecithin makes it too fark to do that…. Is there something I could replace the lecithin with but still get the same feel and benefits?
Hi Marie!
I am anxious to try this amazing recipe! I’ve noted that your “pumpkin seed” oil is a lovely orange color, mine is dark green. Can that still be used, or should I swap it out for another oil? The only oil I have on hand that is remotely “orangey” would be seabuckthorn berry oil & then I have an assortment of dark golden yellow oils. What are your thots on all this?
Hello Abygale! I just made this this morning and my pumpkin seed oil is greenish too. I used 10g pumpkin and 6g sea buckthorn. I found that with that combo, I got a really nice mildly orangish colour. Testing it on my skin, it rubbed in with a slight orange hue. I used almost double the colours Marie listed though. I wanted more of a red than orange. Since it was the first time I made gloss, I needed to follow the oil portion as closely as possible to learn how it works.
I can’t wait for Christmas! This will be lovely for presents!
Hi Penny!
Thanx so much for sharing what you did regarding your “greenish” pumpkin seed oil! I will try that. When you said you were looking for more of a “reddish” hue, it reminded me of a lovely recipe Marie has & I’ve made it already & it turns out very nice. It’s her “Snow White Lip Gloss”. You’ll find it under “Makeup” – Lips on her page. It looks terribly red, but it’s a soft red & very pretty & I thot it was so easy to make. Give it a try! 🙂
Lol! I was looking at making that my next day off (or when my kitchen is clean who knows which will come first!) and just ordered more tubes!
I was actually just coming to make an additional comment to you. Great minds, right?
I don’t know what caused it, but I found that the lip gloss kind of smells powerful to the point where my boyfriend kind of turned up his nose. The colour is fantastic, very autumnish, but the smell. I added in about five drops of peppermint essential oil to each tube (I love extreme mint lip stuff, so will probably add a wee bit more as five is not strong enough for me) to deal with the smell.
You can definitely still use the greenish one; the colour from the gloss that actually shows up on your lips is all from the pigments 🙂 If you do want an orange oil, though, you could definitely use sea buckthorn… you just might want to cut it with something paler (grapeseed/safflower/sunflower sort of thing) if yours is so orange it dyes your skin! Pumpkin seed oil definitely isn’t THAT orange haha.
I used your recipe but didn’t have enough pumpkin seed oil and since the oil I buy is on the green side decided to spice it up with some sea buckthorn (love the smell of it!!) so 10g pumpkin and 6g sea buckthorn, also using the lip gloss sticks. I decided to give the syringe a try for filling up the tubes (I love using a syringe to fill up lotion squeeze bottles), but since everything was cold the gloss hardened up too fast resulting in me cussing up a storm while talking to my mother about what was going on and realising that if I use a syringe again, warm up all the containers first.
I also found that the powdered carmine really didn’t add to much colour change, so added in extra red oxide. It turned out quite nicely! I plan on buying some more beakers so the next time I make gloss, decant some into each beaker and play with the colours! I want to make a soft pink for my niece for Christmas!
Those sound like some good swaps! I do wonder why yours seized up so fast, though—I was hardly speedy with mine and didn’t have any issues with it being unworkable in the syringes. Perhaps my syringes are larger than yours? Your “not much colour change” makes me wonder about the potency of your carmine—that stuff is STRONG and should pack a serious colour punch! It’s about 3x more potent than the oxides by weight.
I use the 50mL syringes. The city won’t turn in the heat till probably November sometime, so if I’m in the kitchen where the sun never shines in this time of year, it’s about 10-17C in there. And then add to that, the chilled plastic of the syringe, the chilled temp of the tubes, it kind of makes sense.
But only figured it out after an entire morning of making lip glosses.
I’d like to make several of your project. Are all micás the same
Other then color
More or less, yes—other than sericite mica. If it’s a coloured mica, generally the only thing that varies is the colour (and with that, the pigment used to create that colour). Some are lip safe and some aren’t, so watch that if you are making lip gloss, but other than that they are all interchangeable 🙂
Hi Marie, first of all I would like to say I LOOOVE your site and can’t wait for your book to come out! I really want to make a lip gloss like this, but not super glossy, more of a satin or even matte finish, I was thinking either lowering the amount of castor oil or maybe adding some clay? what do you think? 🙂
I haven’t tried either, but it’s worth a go! I’d also recommend making it as-is so you can see how glossy it is—it isn’t terribly glossy (your mouth doesn’t look wet).
I’m hoping liquid carmine lip tint will work in place of powdered.
It will! You may want to slightly reduce the castor oil in the recipe to account for the extra you’ll add with the liquid version 🙂
Hi…thanks for another great recipe. I also live in Canada and can only find one online soap making place in Ontario that sells Carmine powder. They have been out of stock for ages and I can’t find another source. Can any fell Canadians point me in the right direction ? Can’t wait to try this one !
I’ve been buying mine from TKB over the border as of late for both the price and the fact that it’s actually in stock. Sigh.
Hi Marie and all…I did find some carmine powder in Canada but haven’t received it yet so I won’t say where until the colour etc is seen in person. Also, I went on a search for pumpkin seed oil. I found some at a local health store (Sequoia) which I think is a national chain store and it said on the label that it was “orange”. It seemed like a lot of money so I had a look at Superstore and found some there that said it was “greenish”.
I’m looking forward to that carmine arriving! I hope it’s awesome, it’s the best price I’ve ever seen for it. I got my orange PSO from Saffire Blue, it seems like the stuff from NDA is green. It seems silly to have a green version, the orange stuff is much prettier!
I went back to buy the “orange” pumpkin seed oil at Sequoia and read the label again. Both myself and the lady working there were wrong the first visit. She looked up the wrong pumpkin seed oil (internet) and I read the label wrong. I read “rich” colour and assumed it was orange as I think of it as a richer colour than green. Anyway, I thought would pass that on in case other fellow Canadians are going to Sequoia looking for it as it is indeed green. Anxious to know what you think of the Carmine. Thanks
I am soooooo sorry! I should have told you about Aliexpress.com singles day sale on November 11. You could have gotten everything there for a fraction of the price especially funky soap molds to make embeds. Have you done any piping on your soaps yet?
A couple friends of mine in the States scored huge on Aliexpress’ sale day ordering tons of supplies including containers and tubes. I found a seller selling these squeeze tubes and was afraid I’d never find them again so ordered 100.
But yay on the beakers! I made a 300g jar of lip chap base and decanted a bunch to a warm beaker to pour. So easy to work with! But if you get new spoons, and find there is a difference… what will you do? Or is it just one of those, hummm….. let’s see how accurate they all are and compare things that more DIY’ers do?
I actually did find out about it, and ordered a few things! I also got lost in the browse function… the number of phallic soap moulds available for purchase is truly astounding haha. I didn’t get any packaging, but I am kind of regretting it… I was just worried that if whatever I got was bad (readers have told me about ordering packaging from Aliexpress and having it leak) then I’d have 100 leaky jars :/
I know you’ve seen my spoon findings now—interesting and weird!
Marie, in this recipe, should I mix the lip gloss until it’s gel like and then pour/use a syringe or is it ok to pour the lip gloss in completely liquid? Thanks
You’ll want to stir until it’s mostly gel-like; this ensures the final consistency and also keeps the pigments and micas suspended 🙂
Hello, this is an amazing recipe. If I want to add Preservative Eco in this recipe – or other recipes you have with anhydrous lip products ,will I have any problems with the result?
You’d have to try it and see, but there really is no reason to add a preservative to this formulation. Happy making!