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I mentioned a while back that one of the things I do while not writing is make homemade stuff and that I recently made some chapstick. So this post is about that.
This is only the second time I’ve made this particular item. The first time, I used an eyedropper to fill the chapstick tubes and it took forever. This time, I bought myself a new tool to help that holds all of the tubes and I found the process to be much faster and easier.
The recipe is pretty simple, if you want to give it a try. It’s equal parts beeswax, cocoa or shea butter (I used cocoa), and coconut oil. Other than that, the only ingredient is essential oil of your choice. I prefer peppermint oil.
I wasn’t sure how much I would need and I was feeling too lazy to try to calculate it, so I just made a guess when I was working on this.
I used equal parts beeswax, coconut oil, cocoa butter (1.6 oz each), and I added 10 drops of peppermint oil. You can probably tell from the pictures that it only filled just shy of half of the tubes this time around. So next time I intend to double the recipe. I figure that the amount left on the top would be enough to fill the other half of a tube. The peppermint was a bit less than I’d like, so I’ll be trying it with 40 drops next time.
If you’re interested in trying it out, all you do is measure and melt. I prefer a double boiler because it makes it easier on me if I get distracted for a bit, but it’s not one hundred percent necessary. Once the oils are all melted, you add in the essential oil, then pour it into the tubes. The one I bought came with a scraper that helps push the excess in. It did start cooling on the plastic faster than I anticipated. The first time I made chapstick, it was summer, so cooling was fairly slow, but I was also trying to hold a conversation with my son at the time, so that probably had something to do with it too.
This is a picture of the filled tubes, minus the two my kids took immediately. One of them was only half filled. It only took me a few minutes, and my whole family will be set for a few months.
What do you think? Have you every tried anything like this?
If you want to try this out and need supplies, here are all the links to what I bought.
I don’t have a link for coconut oil since I bought this at the grocery store.
For the essential oil, I source mine from Eden’s Garden, but the only major thing here is to make sure you are getting pure essential oil and not a fragrance oil.