Lip Balm Picture Tutorial

Since we have our flavor oils on sale this week, I thought I'd share some tips I've learned about pouring lip balms over the years. I've poured probably a couple hundred thousand lip balms over the last couple of years. I've learned a few tricks and tips over the years to make it go quickly and smoothly.

First, here are the tools of the trade.

1. Scale - Unless you're using one of our Lip Balm Kits, this is essential. I use the larger scale to measure my base. The smaller scale is to measure my flavor oil. You can measure in milliliters if you don't have a microscale. They're wonderful tools though! I definitely recommend all formulators get one. I got mine, a JS-50X, from Jenn at LotionCrafter.
2. Lip Balm Base - use ours or make your own.
3. Flavor Oil - again, use ours, or someone else. Just make sure you use the amount recommended by your supplier.
4. Lip Balm Tubes - Lots of options out there, from the standard white 0.15oz tubes, to naturals, to slim lines. Have fun, and go with what you love!
5. Candle Warmer - It's not completely essential, but it will definitely help. I'll explain more a little later.
6. Canning Jar - I prefer the pint size, but you can use the quart size. I just don't like fishing my pipettes out of the larger jar.
7. Disposable Pipettes
8. Labels - I print mine on clear 1.8"x1.8" laser labels from Online Labels. I LOVE THEM! But for years I printed them on full sized sheets and cut them out with my paper cutter.

Recommended Tools

9. Pouring Tray - I got mine from MMS and LOVE it! When I'm pouring lots of the same lip balm, you'll never find me without one of these! Pour 50 tubes in half the time! It's a great tool, and they have a link to their own picture tutorial for using these trays. Okay, so you have all the tools that you need. Now what?

STEP ONE: Melt Your Base
It's best to do this over a double boiler to ensure that you don't get your oils too hot. This melts it slowly and at a more controlled heat than you'd get if you put it over direct heat. Once your base is fully melted, you're ready to move onto step two.

STEP TWO: Measure out your Base
Place the clean canning jar on the scale, and tare it out to zero. Then pour your lip balm base into the jar. Unless your jar is already warm, your base will begin to solidify against the edges. By placing your empty canning jar on the candle warmer BEFORE you pour your base in it, you'll help prevent this solidifying. Also, here's why I strongly suggest you pull out your candle warmers for making lip balms. If you keep your jar of melted base on the warm while you're pouring, it will stay liquid until you're done.

STEP THREE: Add Flavor Oil
So you now have your base measured out. Now you need to add your flavor oil. Since ours are used at a max of 1%, I'm going to use that for our math. (I know, M-A-T-H... it's a four letter word. Unfortunately, it's a necessary evil. If you really don't want to worry about calculating it, go check out our Lip Balm Kits. Everything is pre-measured, even the flavor oils!) I'm going to go with a smaller amount, just because if you're just starting out with lip balms, you're probably not making 100 lip balms. So we'll start with 2 oz of base. At 1%, you're going to want to use 0.02 oz of flavor oil. (math - 2 x 0.01 = 0.02) I know, I know. It's a very tiny amount. That's why I recommend one of those MicroScales. It makes measuring tiny amounts like this an absolute breeze! But we're going to assume you don't have one of these, and we need to do it by volume. Most disposable pipettes have milliliter markings on them. USE THEM. But we've got our measurement in ounces, not milliliters. Again, I am in love with Google. Open up a Google search page, and type in "0.02 oz to ml", and hit Search. And voila....

0.02 US fluid ounces = 0.591470594 ml

This shows up. I love it when someone else does the math for me. As you can see, it's a PORTION of a milliliter. That's barely even the tip of the pipette. Just try to be as accurate as you can. Larger batches will give you better accuracy.

STEP FOUR: Pouring
This is the time consuming part. And there are a million different methods out there. Some recommend syringes and other dispensers that are larger. I've always preferred the pipettes. They're cheap, disposable, I don't have to worry about it gunking up on me, or cleaning it out afterwards. I just grab a new one. For me, it's just part of my overhead costs. Because of the candle warmer though, I usually only use one or two pipettes for any size batch I want to make. 10, 100, or more. (although if I'm making that many, I now use my trays!)

Now here is the biggest tip I can give you when it comes to pouring lip balms. It's like a candle. You're going to have a sink hole form as it cools. So you're going to have two pours. The initial fill, and then an over pour. On your first pour, fill it to just below the top edge.

Here's what the sink hole looks like after it's cooled somewhat.









Now we're going back to elementary science class. (I am SO mean! First MATH and now SCIENCE!) We're going to use surface tension to create the tops of your lip balms. Remember filling a glass with water all the way to the brim, then slowly adding drop by drop more. It formed a dome above the rim of the glass. In the water experiment, you added more and more until that surface tension broke. We're going to add warm lip balm solution until we get that dome, but we don't want to break that surface. I'm sure some of you will want to know why we can't just overfill it like this the first time, and prevent the sink hole. I wish we could, but it just doesn't work. Even tubes poured with the trays, which have a larger overfill than these tubes will have, still require a 2nd pour due to the sink holes. Hopefully from this picture you can see what the over pour looks like though.

STEP FIVE: Cooling
Now it's just waiting for it to be cool enough to cap. Keep kids, pets, and husbands out of the way until they're done. Don't stick them in the freezer, it can cause them to fractionate. The fridge is okay, but they really don't take that long on their own. Once it's opaque and not too warm to the touch, go ahead and cap them.

STEP SIX: Labeling
I can't help with creating the labels, but this part is simply applying them. If you want to shrink wrap them, I recommend the wraps from Kangaroo Blue. They have the perforation around the cap so the rest stays on and protects your label. If you're planning on selling these in stores or any place where you don't have complete control over who's touching them (or opening them, trying them, contaminating them), then I highly recommend shrink wrapping them.

STEP SEVEN: Sell Sell Sell!!!
Now get out there and sell these like hot cakes! They're a year round best seller for us! If you have any tips or tricks of your own, I'd love to hear them! Just add them to our comments section so you can share with everyone!

Lindsay Goodwin
http://www.soapersworkshop.com/