DIY Chocolate Lip Balm

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If you enjoy making your own homemade beauty products, you will love this DIY Chocolate Lip Balm!

This natural lip balm recipe combines a few simple ingredients for the base, which feels wonderful on dry lips. Then we add cocoa powder for a rich chocolate flavor.

Using high quality natural ingredients and no mineral oil means this recipe is safe for the whole family, even younger girls. It is also really fun activity for them to help you make it.

Three open tubes of chocolate lip balm on a red tray with more closed tubes.

DIY Chocolate Lip Balm

Learn how to make the best hot chocolate lip balm in this easy DIY beauty tutorial. Great gift for the chocolate lover in your life.
4.58 from 14 votes
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Prep Time: 5 minutes
Active Time: 15 minutes
Cooling Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
Makes: 1 Pot

Supplies

Tools

  • Measuring cups and spoons
  • Double Boiler
  • Water
  • Lip balm tubes
  • Small funnel

Instructions

  • Add the beeswax pastilles, coconut oil and vitamin E oil to the top half of your double boiler pan on medium-high heat. Once the water starts to boil, turn the temperature down to low so the water comes down to a simmer. Stir the mixture frequently to make sure the beeswax and oils combine well.
    Oils and beeswax melting in a double boiler.
  • In a small bowl, add the cocoa powder and olive oil and whisk well to combine. Make sure to break up all the lumps in the cocoa and keep mixing until everything is smooth. Once the beeswax and oil have completely melted, pour in the cocoa powder / olive oil mixture and whisk carefully to combine.
    Cocoa powder being mixed with extra virgin olive oil.
  • Next, pour the chocolate lip balm mixture into the tubes, using a small funnel if you have one. Carefully fill one tube at a time until it is just below the top. Keep filling the plastic tubes until they are all filled.
    Note: I like to leave the heat on the double boiler pan on the lowest setting so I can use it to melt the mixture again, if needed. This balm sets up fast as it cools, so I normally need to place it back on the heat 1-2 times during this process to keep it smooth and and liquefied. Once you’re done filling your lip balm tubes, be sure to turn the heat off on the stove.
    Lip balm tubes being filled with melted chocolate lip balm mixture.
  • Now it’s time to allow the lip balm to fully cool off. You will see the color of the chocolate lip balm darken as it cools. This usually takes about 30- 45 minutes. Feel the center of the tubes to see if they feel cooled and if they are, you can put on your lids. Don’t put the caps on before they’re completely cooled or you’ll end up with condensation in the tubes.
    Several tubes of homemade chocolate lip balm tubes set on a red tray.

Tips for Making Chocolate Lip Balm

1. How many tubes does this DIY recipe make?

This recipe makes a batch of around 30-32 sticks, and you can always cut that in half if you don’t want to make so many.

The best part of making so many tubes at once is that they make great gifts! And Mountain Rose Herbs lets you buy 1, 25, 50 or 100 lip balm tubes so you can just get as many as you need.

2. Tip: Check the tubes before filling.

Sometimes lip balm tubes will be rolled up high and not all the way down. Be sure to check each one to be sure it is all the way down before filling so you don’t end up with half full tubes of chocolate lip balm.

3. What’s a double boiler? What if I don’t have one?

A double boiler is a set of two pans (see what a double boiler looks like). Water goes in the bottom one and your ingredients go in to top pan so they don’t risk being scorched by the burner. I often prefer to use this type of double boiler because the pieces fit together perfectly.

However, I also have a universal double boiler, which is just a single piece, so you can put it on top of whatever sauce pan you want. I don’t like this one as much, but it’s more affordable than buying a standard double boiler (Mountain Rose Herbs has an affordable double boiler insert).

To use a double boiler, you fill the bottom half of the double boiler pan to about ½ full… enough so the hot water is touching the top pan, but not so much that that top pan won’t sit properly in the sauce pan.

If you don’t have a double boiler, another option is to use a glass bowl that fits well into your saucepan. The water goes in the pan, your ingredients go in the bowl and the bowl goes in the pan over the water.

Some people also use a microwave. We don’t have one, but that’s always an option. Don’t heat ingredients for longer than 30 second bursts without stirring in between.

4. Is there a vegan alternative to beeswax?

I make most of my beauty products with beeswax, but I have a lot of vegan readers who I’ve helped with substitutions. If you want to make vegan lip balm, you can substitute candelilla wax or carnauba wax in most beauty products with these adjustments.

  1. Carnauba wax is 20% firmer than beeswax, so you’ll need to use about 20% less carnauba wax than beeswax.
  2. Candelilla wax has twice the firmness of beeswax, so cut the amount of beeswax in half if you’re using candelilla wax.

Mountain Rose Herbs is a great source for buying a lot of ingredients for DIY beauty products, including carnauba wax.

5. Can other oils be substituted for coconut oil?

One frequent question I get about making beauty products is what to substitute for coconut oil (cocos nucifera). I have an entire post about choosing the best carrier oils.

However, the basics are that you can substitute any oil you like, such as more olive oil, sweet almond oil, jojoba oil, avocado oil or another nut oil or seed oil of your choice. Some people like using castor oil as it’s a humectant (it attracts moisture), but I haven’t tried it.

A lesser known fact is that you can substitute butters for coconut oil in many recipes like this one. You can use cocoa butter, shea butter, cacao butter or your favorite butter in place of coconut oil! I love how cocoa butter accents the flavor of cocoa powder in this recipe!

6. How to make chocolate mint lip balm?

You can also make a variation of the recipe by adding peppermint essential oil to make it a chocolate mint recipe. These are fun to make for gifts and stocking stuffers and people love them.

For the peppermint cocoa version, use 24 drops of peppermint essential oil for a milder mint, or 28 for a stronger mint.

To make the peppermint version, once the cocoa mixture is fully melted, carefully add the peppermint oil drops and stir as you go. Peppermint oil is a thin essential oil and it can run away from you easily, so be cautious. Once it is mixed in, you are ready to pour your homemade lip balm into the containers.

7. More flavor add-in ideas

Instead of peppermint, you can add one of the following ingredients to get a more complex flavored lip balm:

If you want to learn more about choosing essential oils for your beauty products, get a free copy of my guide to using essential oils in DIY beauty products. It talks about which oils work best for which skin types, including normal skin, acne-prone skin and aging skin.

8. Best place to get essential oils?

I typically use pure essential oils to scent my homemade beauty products. I have been getting mine from Rocky Mountain Oils lately. They are super high quality and the scent lasts a really long time. Check out their peppermint essential oil – it smells amazing!

9. What’s the shelf life?

You’ll find the shelf life of this lip balm to be about the same as most lip balms – about 2-3 months. Of course, exposure to heat and water can shorten the shelf life of any DIY beauty product.

10. Can I use lip balm pots instead?

Absolutely, you can use pretty much any lip balm containers for this recipe. If you prefer to apply your lip balm with your finger or a brush, you can use pots instead of plastic tubes. I’ve even used those cute bead containers you can get at craft stores.

Chocolate lip balm in a small plastic lip balm pot.
Homemade chocolate lip balm.

11. Other fun DIY Lip recipes:

If you want to make more homemade beauty products for your lips, check out these tutorials:

  1. Honey Cinnamon Lip Gloss
  2. DIY Peppermint Lip Balm
  3. Whipped Sugar Lip Scrub
  4. Mica Tinted Lip Balm
  5. Roll-On Lip Gloss

Pin this post to your DIY Beauty board

Several tubes of DIY Chocolate Lip Balm on a red tray.

Free DIY Beauty Products Guide

How to choose the right essential oils for your homemade beauty products.

Open mason jar of pink peppermint body butter on pink and white background.

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