Ok, so I may be a touch late to the party on this one, but isn’t rose gold the prettiest?! In the past I’ve shied away from pink. Not for me, I thought—too… pink 😜 This stance has softened over the last few years and I now find that rose gold has nestled into a little pinky spot in my heart and I’m suddenly quite fond of it without even knowing how it happened. For the uninitiated, rose gold is a lovely soft pinkish hue, with a touch of subtle gold that catches the light every now and then. It’s utterly lovely, so it’s not hard to see how I decided I simply had to have a lip gloss in this lovely colour!
This lip gloss base is new, and I’m pretty excited about it—it uses cera bellina to thicken it up. Cera bellina is a super cool modified beeswax that creates oil gels, making it perfect for DIY lip gloss. In a pinch you probably could use beeswax instead, but you won’t get anything gel-like; it’ll just be thickish oils. If you’d prefer to use a different base I have two others: this one with glycerin, and this one with lecithin (and then there’s two more in my book, including a vegan one!). You can definitely use one of those bases and then make it rose gold!
I decided to keep it reasonably simple in the colour department by using entirely micas rather than any pure pigments. Pure pigments require quite a lot more mixing to get a nice, even blend, while micas are pre-dispersed and stir into all your concoctions beautifully without faffing around with mashing and scraping or pre-blending. They are also lovely and shimmery, which I love in a lip gloss ✨
In order to get a rose-gold hue, you’re going to need a mica that contains either carmine or a similar FD&C dye; red iron oxide is simply too muddy to get the pure, soft pink we need. I used TKB Trading’s Cloisonne Red, which is a blend of mica, titanium dioxide (white), and carmine (and is not at all red, ha!). Any sort of soft pink you have or like will work! Otherwise, you could blend together some carmine and titanium dioxide to create your own soft pink—just be sure to use mostly titanium dioxide as even an equal blend will give you a very electric pink!
For gold, choose a gold mica—anything that you immediately identify as gold will do. No need to be too fussy! The blend I used was simply two parts pink to one part gold, added until I had the level of colour I wanted when swatched on my skin. Fairly little mica will give you a coloured gloss, but you’ll find you need to add quite a bit more to get any sort of colour on your lips. It’s all up to you, though! Customize away 😉 I ended up adding a couple drops of liquid carmine dye to get a pink that’d show up on my lips, but that’s 100% optional. I do recommend the liquid dye over the powder in this case for easier incorporation, but powdered will do in a pinch.
Now, I think lip gloss tubes may be the fussiest piece of DIY packaging out there—it’s partly the tube, and partly the consistency of the stuff we’re trying to put it them. I find the best approach is to crowd a bunch into a jar so they stay facing up, and then using a large syringe to fill the tubes. Attempting to do this with a funnel is do-able, but messy and a touch sparkle-unicorn-rage-inducing (the sparkle unicorn part coming from getting covered in shimmery lip gloss while trying to shimmy a thick gloss through a teensy hole).
The process couldn’t be easier, though: weigh, melt, stir, swatch, syringe, and voila! Prepare to pucker up 😘
Rose Gold Lip Gloss
15g | 0.53oz cera bellina (USA | Canada)
20g | 0.71oz castor oil (USA / Canada)
20g | 0.71oz virgin coconut oil
30g | 1.06oz meadowfoam seed oil or jojoba oil (USA / Canada)
14g | 0.49oz kukuinut oil or rice bran oil
0.5g | 9 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)0.5g | 30 drops peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada)
Pink mica, as needed
Gold mica, as needed
Liquid carmine dye, as needed (optional)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 everything except the micas and the essential oil into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
Once you have a thoroughly liquid mixture, remove it from the heat. Stir it occasionally as it cools. Once you start noticing some bits starting to opacify around the edges, be sure to scrape those down and re-incorporate them to get a nice, creamy end product rather than a hard top and a liquidy under-bit.
When you’ve got yourself a translucent oil gel, you’re ready to start adding micas! I ended up adding about 1.5 tsp of pink mica, 3/4 tsp of gold, and 25 drops of carmine dye. I recommend testing between additions to see what level of colour your like; you might surprise yourself!
Once you’ve got yourself a beaker of pretty, shimmery gloss, use a syringe to transfer it into some
I made a much smaller batch of this—100g is a TON of lip gloss, but smaller batches gave very odd numbers. I made a 20g batch. You can easily re-calculate this recipe by turning the “g” in “%” and then scale up or down as required! My 20g batch used 5/16 tsp pink, 5/32 gold, and 5 drops carmine dye.
I was slightly surprised by the peppermint essential oil, I know food grade ones are available. What are your thoughts about non-food grade (essential and base) oils used on lips? I suspect many commercial products are also not made using food grade oils…
Cosmetics are made with cosmetic grade ingredients, even if they are for the lips, and part of being cosmetic grade takes this into consideration. There are certainly things that aren’t lip safe (usually because they are outright poisonous, like tea tree oil), but the amount of ingredients you have the potential to consume at any given time is minuscule, so I wouldn’t be too worried about it 🙂
Lovely! Need to make this for the holidays as I had a big bought make-up clear out. Some of the stuff could have gone to a museum ! I don’t have a big syringe so I might try a small freezer bag and cut the corner off when filled. It certainly works for icing…
Ahahahaha, I know that feeling! I swear some of the stuff I have is just for sentimental value at this point I may still have the lip gloss my mom wore when she was in the choir for the 1988 Olympics kicking around somewhere…
Let me know how the icing bag concept goes!
beautiful I love rose gold!!
How can you not?! Swooooon. 🙂
I know rose gold everything!!!
Could you explain a bit more about how you got them into the tubes and where you GOT the tubes? THANKS
You’ll find all this in the Pumpkin Shimmer lip gloss recipe 🙂
This looks beautiful Marie. I made your pumpkin shimmer lip gloss a while back and it turned out perfect. I bought these cute lip gloss containers from ebay, my grand daughter says they look like lollipops. They have a round clear base and a wand with a reducer which makes it easier to fill and not sloppy to take the wand out. I have a ton of beeswax so probably won’t buy the cera bellina. However I will probably try your pumpkin spice recipe and use the new rose gold colors. I love lecithin in lip glosses, never heard of it before I discovered your blog.
Could you post of picture of the tube? Thanks!
Thanks, Lynne! I’ve never heard of lecithin in lip glosses elsewhere, so I think I may’ve invented it I do wish it didn’t make everything orange, but that’s my only complaint as it is otherwise very lovely! Happy lip-glossing 🙂
You probably did invent it Marie. In my opinion, there is nothing like it for sticking, except maybe lanolin. My grand daughter was here last Friday and she put the pumpkin spice gloss I had made for her a while back and I swear it lasted the 5 hours she tortured me. I think the lecithin will compliment the rose gold colors beautifully. Got that on my to do list tomorrow.
Ha! Maybe I should try some lanolin lippie next… I’ll just have to find some that’s been very thoroughly deodorized so it doesn’t smell like sheep gloss Happy making!
Is FD&C dye safe?
Love this recipie.
Thanks for all you do for us.
Yes! I wouldn’t recommend them if they weren’t. They are a very carefully monitored pigment—the FDA is very picky about pigments!
Where(in Canada) can one purchase carmine, liquid or powder? Saffire Blue has been out of it so long, I’m wondering if they will ever be in stock. I ordered from TKB several months back and got dinged with a $40 duty fee, on top of the $40 in shipping.
Saffire Blue has a tiny bottle of predispersed carmine in oil. They call it a Natural Lip Tint, so it doesn’t sound especially vibrant, but it might be just right for this.
Thanks Esther
Windy Point just got it in! It’s not on their website yet, but Michele let me know it arrived a couple days ago, so stay tuned 🙂
Fantastic! Love Windy Point
Hi, I was wondering if using candelilla,soy or emulsifying wax would work? I know emulsifying wax is used in lotions. I have about a pound of it in my crafting closet.
Definitely not e-wax (it’s not really a wax), but with some tweaks you’ll be able to make soy or candelilla work. There’s a vegan lip balm base that uses candelilla wax in my book 🙂
Oh, Marie! This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to make for some time now. I just can’t find the carmine!! Ugh! I wish I lived in a Canada sometimes… you always have the perfect ingredients! Thanks for posting! Beautiful!!
I don’t often hear from people that they want to live in Canada for the ingredients! We’ve got lots going for us, but the USA has us beat pretty mightily in the ingredient realm 😛 If you can’t find carmine the FD&C dyes are usually easier to find and work just as well!
No way! Remember that rose hand stuff you made with cera bellina about five or six months ago? Rose wax, cera bellina and a few others? I made it and I liked it but I loved the colour and wanted it to sparkle a wee bit more. So went back into the kitchen and got to work mixing and playing with colours and somewhere along the line my light bulb of thought appeared. Why not make this into a lip gloss? So out came some castor oil and some jojoba oil and some titanium dioxide till I got the pink I liked from the carmine already added. Then in went some silver as it was still chilly and wanted sparkles.
I really like how the cera bellina based lip gloss feels almost creamier in my opinion. Thanks for another wonderous post!
Yeah! Ha! Great minds, eh? Or should I say addicts… 😛
Enablers?
I mean if the shoe fits may as wield a spatula!
Oh, how I wish I could draw for moments like this!
I cannot WAIT to try this gloss with cera bellina! Just got my order in today with it and several other new goodies to try some of your newer recipes as well. I have your book and have been having so much fun making alllll the makeup! I go to work with custom eye shadow and lipsticks that I have been blending all together and my foundation and bronzer and blush and people are always complimenting me on it and it is so fun to get to say “Thank you, I MADE this!!”
Anyway, I see you have that neat little support for your filling syringe in one of the pictures on this post. Where the heck did you get that thing? Lol I have been searching for something like that and no luck. Not sure I am wording my search right either. I keep getting either hazardous waste containers or carrying cases for syringes coming up in my searches. haha Help Please!!!
Yay! I’m so glad you are having fun making stuff from my book—thank you for buying a copy! The holder thing I’m using is just the holder from this thing turned upside down—nothing fancy or specific 🙂
Try oral dosing syringes for loading the tubes. Bigger hole to squeeze it through!
Thanks! I usually just cut the tip off of the larger syringes I’ve got 🙂
can you make lip cream matte? thank you
There’s one in my book 🙂
Hello Marie;
I made this lip gloss a couple of weeks ago and am so enamoured,it turned out so well and is easy to put on the lips in the squeeze container. Thank you as always for the recipe, my lips are happy!
I’m so thrilled, yay! Thanks so much for sharing your experience and for DIYing with me 😀
Hmmm…may give this one a try as a roll on!
Ooh! Please report back if you do 🙂 Happy making!
Hello Marie! I love your content and couldn’t wait to try this recipe. It went very well! The only issue is that when my Gloss was at room temperature, there were tiny particles of Cera Bellina still present. I could feel them on my lips and it wasn’t very pleasant. How do I keep that from happening? Thank you!
Make sure you’re stirring the gloss constantly as it cools, and make sure everything is fully melted before removing the mixture from the heat 🙂
Thank you!
i made this today and while I love the color, the application and the consistency, I must say it didn’t stay on past 10 minutes. I wonder what ingredients would help with that? I did melt a bit of magnesium stearate in with the cera bellina for adhesion but that didn’t make a bit of difference. I’m wondering maybe some other type of wax, some lanolin, some lecithin? Maybe you can make one like this in the future with some tighter adhesion? Thanks Marie!!!!