Cocoa And Shea Lip Balm - cooking recipe

Ingredients

42 g cocoa butter (42.6)
38 g beeswax (38.5)
14 g shea butter (14.2)
113 g almond oil (113.6)
Additives
1 g peppermint oil (1.5)
1 g vitamin E (1.5)

Preparation

Before starting, make sure your work station is as clean as possible. Have clean utensils and pots -- the tubes you are putting your product in have been cleaned. You want to keep your finished product to stay as sterile as possible.
Combine all the ingredients and heat until just melted, roughly 3 - 4 minutes. Do not let the mixture come to a boil. Essential oils are heat sensitive, so let the lip balm mixture cool down until warm to the touch. Work quickly to pour the balm into either pots or tubes.
Let stand, undisturbed until the mixture solidify. When the balm has solidified, there will be a \"well\" in the middle of the tube/pot. Take a knife and smooth the edges down for a nicer look.
This recipe could be cut into half or into fourths. You don't need exact measurements, like you do with cooking. Use the ingredients as a rough estimate but make sure that your beeswax/oil ratio is roughly the same. If you used this whole recipe, you could get roughly 24 - 28 lip tubes.
Vitamin E has it's own healing properties, but it is used here as a preservative. With any home products, there is a shelf life of roughly 2 years. I date my finished product -- but I have usually used it up by then!
Shea Butter has some wonderful healing properties, but this product is not as smooth as some of the other butters, so the final product will have a slight gritty feeling to it. Once applied though, it will melt into the skin, leaving the lips soft and smooth.
Because these lip balms do not have the heavy beeswax as does the commercial counterparts, they could possibly \"melt\" if left in cars during the heat of the summer.
Caution: These lip balms do not have the heavy preservatives that the commercial products have. With any home product that is \"applied\" to the skin, keep in mind about how clean your skin is and who is going to use it. The mouth is a huge breeding ground for germs. Beware that if you pass your balm around you could possible contaminate your stick. If you are using pots, try to flick some balm out on your fingernail, then apply that way. The cleaner the enviroment it is going to be used in the longer the shelf life it is going to have. Just some \"food for thought\"!