Make your own lip balm

I treated myself to a day off last Friday and filled it with relaxing things to soothe my frazzled brain. One of the things I did was to try out this lip balm making kit, which was one of my birthday presents from my parents. It comes from Sweet Cecily’s, a natural cosmetics company based on the North Yorkshire moors. I’ve never made anything like this before, so it was an enjoyable (and pleasantly easy) challenge!

The kit contains everything you need to make your own lip balm, handily measured out into exactly the right quantities to make five little tins of lip balm – ideal for beginners like me. The ingredients are all completely natural, including beeswax, shea butter and cocoa butter.

The first step is to put all the ingredients except the strawberry essential oil into a bowl.

Then you heat the bowl over a pan of boiling water to melt the ingredients together. It smells a little odd at this stage!

Once they’re all melted, you stir them together and add the strawberry essential oil. I had to stir quite rigorously to get it to mix in.

I used a teaspoon to divide the mixture equally between the five tins. You then leave them to cool, and while they’re cooling you can design the lid labels (also included in the kit).

Here’s how they look when they’re all cooled down. The yellow colour comes from the beeswax.

I’m afraid my labels weren’t very imaginative, but they do at least look authentically handmade!

They make good little presents and I shall keep one for myself too. It’s so satisfying making your own things! If you’d like to have a go, the kit above came from Notonthehighstreet.com, priced at £15.