Most of the vegan lip balms I’ve tried share the characteristic of being quite glassy and thin—they lack that rich creaminess of beeswax lip balms. With a beeswax lip balm you can really schmear it on and it’ll stay there and lock in moisture for ages (especially this recipe). Vegan lip balms made with candelilla and carnauba wax are pretty much the opposite of that, though; they tend to “slick” on quite thinly, leaving a thin, glassy coating. Now, this isn’t a straight-up bad thing (it can be great in the summer!), but in the midst of a dry winter I find glassy vegan balms are pretty much useless. That’s the problem I wanted to tackle with this Vanilla Spice Vegan Lip Balm recipe.
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When I did my stearic acid experiments and started playing with this lovely hand butter, I couldn’t get over the wonderful creamy feel of stearic acid. It’s got a big of drag to it (meaning it helps with adhesion and longevity of a product on the skin), but not enough to be sticky, which beeswax can definitely be. Basically, the more I worked with it, the more I thought stearic acid could be an excellent solution to too-thin vegan lip balms.
I played with a couple different variations of this recipe to find the right level of creaminess—something comparable to my Naked Lip Balm—and I’m super excited to share the results of those experiments with you today! Before anyone asks; yes, it MUST be stearic acid. There are no substitutions. Even cocoa butter, which is pretty high in stearic acid, is only about 35% stearic acid, so in order to get the same amount of stearic acid as called for in the recipe you’d have to use an additional 24g of cocoa butter to get the required amount of stearic acid, but that would come along with 15.6g of other non-stearic-acid-things, and in a 50g recipe, adding another 24g of anything is obviously going to throw everything else way out of whack. While this swap can work sometimes, when we need as much stearic acid as we need here, and we’re counting on it being in its pure form—use it in its pure form 🙂
Other than the stearic acid incorporation, the rest of the recipe is pretty familiar lip balm territory. There’s less wax than usual to make room for the hardening power of the stearic acid, and some fragrant cocoa butter and coconut oil really compliment the vanilla spice scent blend. I chose candelilla wax instead of carnauba as I tried a batch with carnauba and it felt a bit dusty on the lips, while candelilla was smooth.
You’ll notice the scent blend is pretty conservative, and I definitely did that on purpose. I tried a punchier blend in early experiments and they were hella itchy on the lips—not good! So, please, pretty please, do not increase the amounts of the “hot” oils (the cinnamon and clove), and if you have sensitive skin, drop ’em all together and just use the benzoin.
I’ve included a touch of mica for a bit of vanilla-esque warmth. I used a lovely bronze from TKB Trading (they have so many to choose from 😍), but any colour that makes you think of warm, vanilla-y goodness is a great choice. Make sure it’s lip safe, though (some aren’t), and if you want this lip balm to stay vegan check the colour blend to see if it includes carmine. You can also eliminate the mica, use more, or use less—it’s up to you! If you want to use more I recommend incorporating it with the cool down ingredients and swatching as you add more so you can stop when you’re happy.
The final vanilla spice vegan lip balm is the creamiest vegan lip balm I’ve ever made, and I really like it. It smells great, works a treat, and is a brilliant addition to our vanilla spice holiday line up. Enjoy!
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Vanilla Spice Vegan Lip Balm
8.5g | 0.3oz stearic acid (USA / Canada / UK)
12.5g | 0.44oz virgin coconut oil
7.5g | 0.26oz cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
15g | 0.53oz rice bran oil
6g | 0.21oz candelilla wax
0.22g | 1/16 tsp bronze mica (I use these tiny measuring spoons for tiny measurements like this)0.25g | 0.0088oz Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.44g | 2 “blobs” benzoin resinoid
0.025g | 1 drop clove bud essential oil
0.05g | 1 drop cinnamon bark essential oil2020 update: Given the irritation potential for cinnamon essential oil, I now recommend dropping it from this formulation. The one drop/0.05g called for in this formulation works out to roughly 0.1%, which is higher than the 0.07% maximum usage rate. The clove essential oil is within the allowable usage range, but if you have sensitive skin I would drop it as well. Replace removed essential oils with more rice bran 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 stearic acid, coconut oil, cocoa butter, rice bran oil, candelilla wax, and mica into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
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. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.
Add the vitamin E and essential oils, and stir to incorporate.
Pour the lip balm into tubes or tins (this recipe will fill ten or eleven standard lip balm tubes), and leave it to solidify (20–30 minutes) before capping. Make sure you wipe down the tubes or tins with some paper towel before applying any labels (I love these labels) so they stick—if there’s any oil on your tubes they’ll peel right off. Enjoy your Vanilla Spice Vegan Lip Balm!
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 & Notes
- If you need whole number measurements, simply double the recipe!
- You MUST use stearic acid; there is no substitution or alternative!
- You can use deodorized versions of the cocoa butter and coconut oil if you prefer
- You can use babassu oil instead of coconut oil
- You can use a different mid-weight liquid oil instead of the rice bran oil
- I don’t recommend using carnauba wax instead of candelilla wax (see the pre-amble)
- Make sure the mica you’re using is lip safe
- The mica is optional; you can also use less or more
Can you sub for the rice bran oil, and if so is there a particular oil that’s well suited?
Yup—it’s in the substitutions list at the end of the recipe. That part is always worth a read 🙂 This guide should help.
I looked before I commented and I swore I didn’t see rice bran oil in the substitution notes. Sorry!
No worries, that list can get pretty long!
Hi marie what if i don’t have stearic acid, and i don’t really care for it beaing vegan? can i just use all of the other ingridients and just beeswax? if yes, how much of it?
I’d say this isn’t the formulation for you if you don’t care about the vegan-ness 🙂 I have dozens of non-vegan lip balm formulations up here—I’d choose one of those and then use the essential oil blend from this one 🙂
Good morning Marie!
I agree with you about the vegan/vegetarian lip balms. I’ve made a few over the years but they are too glassy (I originally read that as gassy and laughed, and a great term) and I didn’t find them to work as well as a beeswax based recipe.
I’ll have to give this one a go when the dust settles! Thanks!
You’re welcome! I luuuuurve stearic acid these days with our crazy dry weather—swoon!
Hi Marie, how do you tell if your Mica is cosmetic grade? I just ordered the 1st one. And didn’t even think to check that.
If it’s from a cosmetic/skincare DIY supplier it’ll be cosmetic grade (though not all are lip safe; be sure to check each one—TKB is great for providing info on this). If you’re buying it from a craft store or somewhere more generic online like Amazon you’d want to check with the supplier 🙂
Fantastic! Feels a lot like a creamy lipstick. I made a rose gold one that’s gorgeous!
OOOoh!!
Couldn’t resist, added enough red for some color punch, and it makes a BEAUTIFUL lipstick base.
Oh my goodness! *scrawls more stuff into to-do list*
Hi Marie,
Couldn’t work out where to post this but I’ve been trying to sign up to your free beginner’s course for some time without any luck. It accepts my email (and I’m also a newsletter subscriber) but I’ve not received anything about the course, not even the shopping list.
Natasha
That’s because you were on the list before the course existed; there’s a note on the dedicated sign-up page: “If you’re already signed up for the Humblebee & Me mailing list, you won’t be able to sign up for the course here (when you submit your email nothing will happen and you’ll see it’s still sitting in the text box). Watch for opt-in links in The Humble Hive to join, or just sign up with a different email address.” If you were just signing up elsewhere, though, it’s not terribly well signed since there are a lot more people out there who weren’t on the list than were! There were opt-in links in the emails for Snowflake Face Mask Mix, Chamomile Winter Hand Butter, and Pumpkin Spice Pumpkin Spice Scrub Nuggets over the last 6 weeks, so click the link in one of those emails 🙂
Do you think this would work as a lotion stick if I pour it in a large twist tube(and leave out the mica?) Thanks!
Yeah! Let me know how you like it in that format 🙂
Will make it and will report back. Made your chamomile hand butter today and I looove it, lanolin smells pretty strong but not so much to bother me. Cupuaçu butter is divine (and pronounced correctly coo-poo-ah-soo, emphasis on the last syllable soo… Im Brazilian and that’s how we say it!) Im finally back into making stuff and have a gigantic to do list to tackle thanks to you
I shall make a note of the pronunciation for my next video! It can just be hard to remember to over-write something you’ve been saying in your head for ages… I still want to say “Her-mee-own” for “Hermione” LOL!
I hear you but I think you’ll sound très fancy saying cupuaçu and pouting at the end (basically that’s what u gotta do for the word to come out right!!!!)
Hermione? I said it wrong for ages except I used to say: Her-mee-‘oh-nee. That’s how a Brazilian would read it LOL (totally off topic here! Languages 101!!)
I’m not saying I won’t try, I’m just saying there may be a bit of a disagreement between my brain and my mouth lol!
Hi Marie, what would be a good alternative to cocoa butter in lip balms? For some reason my cocoa butter based products smell a bit… Off. I have made this balm and a few other things with the cocoa I have and they dont smell good at all. I cant quite explain the smell but its no longer chocolaty and fresh… now it smells almost too greasy, but only after I melt it. From my cocoa bag it smells fine but once I incorporate it into a product the whole thing smells yucky. Even the balms I made back last year turned a weird smell. My cocoa butter was bought bedinning of 2016 so I was wondering if maybe it went rancid…!? Either way, I would love to use another butter to test out this lip balm recipe – which I love by the way. It’s oh so creamy and glides so nicely on the lips leaving it nice, soft and moisturized without any heaviness. Just need to sort out my cocoa butter situation coz I’m starting to not like cocoa butter so much. I made a second batch of this with refined cocoa and it smells better but still not to my liking. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.
PS: it was pretty hot here in PA throughout the summer so I was wondering if my cocoa butter could’ve gone “weird” with all that heat.
I’d recommend tucuma butter, though it doesn’t smell like much (which you may like). It could be rancid, but that would be about as fast as possible for such a saturated fat, and would be a bummer 🙁 Heat could definitely speed that along, especially if it was on the verge of spoiling. Good luck with it!
The mica settles down what should I do
Also the lip flavour is not coming
Like the scent is there but no taste if you know what I mean
BEES WAX IS NOT AN OPTION?
THANK YOU
This entire recipe is designed around not using beeswax; if you want to use beeswax choose one of the dozen or more beeswax lip balm recipes on my blog 🙂
Hi ! can i use sunflower wax instead of candellila ?
at the same gr?
I’m not sure, but I think sunflower wax is softer than candelilla, so it wouldn’t produce the same end result in the same amounts.
thank you !
Hey Marie
Absolutely addicted to all of your beautiful recipes.
I’ve been trying for a while to recreate the feeling of beeswax lip balm, but with candelilla wax.
I’m really excited to give this one a go, but all the stearic acid I can find is derived from palm oil (and i’d like to not use palm oil ingredients in my products).
Is there anything else that would create a similar feeling in the lip balm that I could use?
Thanks! xxxx
Nothing that wouldn’t have similar sourcing issues, sorry.
Can soy wax be used as a substitute for any of these waxes please? Furthermore, are there any noteworthy differences regarding texture, emolliency and ability to moisturize please?
Thanks
I’ve never worked with soy wax, but I’ve read it is similar to beeswax. Of course there are substantial differences in texture, emolliency and ability to moisturize; please review these experiments.
Hi Marie
I made this recipe today (minus the colour and fragrance) and WOW, it will be my go to lip balm recipe in future. I cannot believe how lovely it feels and how long it stays put on my lips. It is a great recipe, thank you so much for sharing.
Yay, I am SO glad! Thanks so much for DIYing with me 🙂
Hi Marie,
If I do not have candelilla wax on hand, do you think I would be okay upping the cocoa butter and stearic acid by 3g each?
THANK YOU for all your help and content. 🙂
I don’t recommend removing the wax; without some true wax in a lip balm they tend to melt really quickly and lack the body and adherence we typically want from a lip balm 🙂 You could use carnauba instead.
Hi Marie,
I want you to know that you have a big fan in India and that’s me.
I have tried very few of your recipes but have been through all again and again. Don’t know why obsessed to read them so many times . Tried this lip balm with certain substitutes. I added argon oil in place of rice bran. Used lavender eo, moringa oil and benzoin.
My balm solidfied while pouring. The texture is little hard on lips while applying but feels good. It stays for long too. Anything to make it of lil soft and smooth texture?
Thanks so much, Anu—the argan oil swap sounds stunning! I’ve got an FAQ that’ll answer your question 🙂
Hi Marie
Can I sub ecosoya Q210 wax for the candila wax in vegan lip balm?
Thankyou:)
No, for two reasons. The first is that it’s a candle wax, not a cosmetic wax—I’ve been told by my main supplier that candle waxes should not be used in cosmetics. The second reason is that soy wax is much softer than candelilla wax—it’s a better alternative for beeswax than either of the “c” waxes 🙂
Hi,
I’ve found candelilla wax to bead up in all my preparations — does that happen to you ? I can’t seem to get a nice lipbalm that doesn’t end up beading up after a few weeks. I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this ?
Cheers,
Brigitte
I haven’t experienced that personally, but I know TKB Trading sells a version of candelilla wax designed to solve this problem, so it must not be all that uncommon.
Also, I deleted your other comment since it was basically exactly this 🙂
I can’t believe how fun this is. Thank you!
Thank you so much! Happy making 🙂
Hey Marie!
I tried this recipe with the swaps you suggested to make a vegan sugar plum balm. The result was a delightfully scented, creamy, but relatively thin lip balm. I generally like the consistency and I think it will be great in the summer!
But to be completely honest, I just LOVE grabby and tacky lip balms! I’ve found it really hard to get vegan tacky lip balm that isn’t loaded with paraffins and other crap. So, I took some inspiration from the two ingredient tacky lip balm recipe you have in your book and tried to veganise it!
I’ve recently read on a German blog that a certain combination of plant waxes can mimic the properties of beeswax relatively closely (55% sunflower wax and 45% berry wax!), and I just had to try it out! I then added an additional 10% candelilla wax, just for good measure ^^ and combined it with some lovely shea butter and castor oil. As I haven’t seen you using sunflower wax yet, I thought I’d share my experience! Here is the recipe I’ve come up with:
This will fill 5 tubes:
5.5g sunflower wax
4.5g berry wax
0.5g candelilla wax
5.0g shea butter
5.0g castor oil
For fragrance I added 8 drops of bergamot eo and 4 drops of rose geranium eo. You could of course use different essential oils, or omit them altogether.
This produces a seriously tacky, grabby, firm VEGAN lip balm that stays on for hours. It’s great for over night application, too!
If you find it to be a little too firm for your liking, you could try adding a little bit more castor oil.
I hope this inspires someone to try making vegan lip balm with sunflower wax ^^ It really does seem promising! If I smack my lips together and open them, it even creates a small popping noise!
Thank you for all the work you put into this blog and your book, Marie! I will surely be making a lot of DIY skin care and cosmetics in the future!
All the best and lots of love,
Cora
Hey Cora! I am 100% with you on the sticky lip balm thing! I’ve shared this one, this one, and this one (the one on this page, ha) all with that aim (+ vegan-ness) 🙂 Soy lecithin is a really cool thing to try for added tack, too!
Thank you so much for sharing your recipe, it sounds fab! When you say “berry” wax, is that bayberry wax (Myrica Cerifera fruit wax)? I don’t have any sunflower wax, but I do have some soy wax on the way that I’m really looking forward to playing with as well!
oooh, I’ve never used soy lecithin in any recipe! Do you need a powdered version or a liquid? ^^
My berry wax’ label says the INCI name is: Rhus Verniciflua Cera, so it seems to be different from bayberry wax! 😀 it says it’s also called Japan wax?
Please also let us know how experimenting with soy wax goes!
I have since experimented a little more and I’ve slightly adjusted the recipe and this makes a still relatively firm, but at the same time creamy lipbalm… (this makes more than the last one, but it seems the tubes were larger than I estimated!)
for 5 tubes:
5.5g sunflower wax
4.5g berry wax
0.5g candelilla wax
5g cocoa butter
5g macadamia oil
3.75g castor oil
I have scented this version with about 5 drops coffee bean essential oil and 1-2 drops cardamom essential oil ^^
The cocoa and macadamia notes together with coffee and cardamom make this lipbalm smell like a really fancy café 😀
You definitely want liquid—the solid stuff is a pain in the backside. Check my encyclopedia for more details 🙂 And yes, that wax is different—I’ll keep an eye out for it! So far the soy wax reminds me of pseudo waxes like olive “wax”–it’s creamy and kind of powdery, and nowhere near as strong as beeswax, but it does have a bit of tack/grab to it, so I’m intrigued! Thanks for the updated formula—the scent blend sounds positively mouthwatering 😀 Happy making!
Hi Marie,
first off, I would like to share that I like what you do, and have been loyally, but incognito, reading your blog and watching your videos. To support what you do, and hopefully to learn more, I’m in progress of buying your book, which is not available in my country.
I have searched around the net how to alternate your recipe and to get some answers, without any success, which is why I decided to write you directly if you can help.
I would like to get the benefits that arise from stearic acid and from beeswax :).
I would like to use the beeswax/steric acid combination. Is it usable?
I wanted to lower the % of beeswax by adding stearic acid, but to get the stiffness I get with 27% of beeswax. Can you recommend how to approximately recalculate the wax content? Should I substitute 1:2 wax/acid; 20% wax, 14 % stearic acid (instead of 27% wax)?
Hope the question makes sense.
Thank you in advance
Hey! You definitely can combine the two, but I can’t comment on exactly where you’d want to start—your starting point looks reasonable 🙂 Just be sure to start small, take lots of notes, and have fun! Happy making! And a big thank you for reading and DIYing with me 🙂
I am LOVING your site — just stumbled upon it in the past month, and this post inspired me to purchase stearic acid and try my hand at this vegan lip balm, as I have a friend whose daughter is a vegan and has a birthday coming up. I’ve looked all over and through the comments to see if I can substitute the benzoin resinoid and clove EO with other EOs and/or food-grade flavor oil, but don’t see anything written by you. Because the benzoin resinoid is measured in blobs I wasn’t sure how to sub, and if highly concentrated flavor oil would work as she LOVES watermelon. I have some food-grade watermelon concentrated flavor oil as well as some of the sweetener oil from elementsbathandbody.com and was wondering if these could be incorporated? I am fairly new to balms and such, and you are very specific with ratios/amounts that I wanted to see what you might have to say about those cold phase swaps before I tried anything.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I purchased your book (digital) on Amazon last week and am looking forward to digging into it!
This is great! I made this and it turned out very nice and felt lovely on my lips. Just one thing though: after the balm had set, there was a thin pale yellow layer on the surface. What could this be?
That’s weird, but it’s hard to say without seeing a photo.
Hello again
I think I asked about this on a different lip balm, but I dont remember which one :-o.
Why the vitamin E. For the preservative effect?
All the best wishes and thanks for the inspiration. You really make great content!
Kristin
https://www.humblebeeandme.com/chocolate-macadamia-nut-vegan-lip-balm/ 🙂