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Few feelings are as pure as the feeling of watching a child proudly present something they’ve made with their own hands. The gleam of pride and the sense of accomplishment emanating from them as they show off their latest DIY endeavour is one of life’s great joys, and the boost of self-esteem that comes with it is vital for a child’s development.
This is one of the many reasons to take an interest in making DIY beauty products. Here are some of the others:
Spending Quality Time Together
The way we engage with the people we care about has changed. Often we find ourselves in each other’s presence, but not truly there due to so many distractions that modern life can throw at us. Sharing a journey, a process, an experience together changes that. When we endeavor to create together, we unite in focusing our love, care and attention on that one task, and this serves to bring us together in a genuine and productive way.
Focus On Life Off-Screen
Is it me, or does it feel a lot like the machines are taking over?! We spend so much of our time indoors staring at a laptop screen, a tablet screen, a phone screen, or a television screen (yes, some of us still watch TV!) Technology can teach us so much, but it can’t beat that pure, natural feeling of learning something new with your own hands.
Keep Those Nasty Chemicals Off Your Lips!
At some point in time, we lost the energy to care about all the useless or even dangerous chemicals that corporations put in their products. There are so many companies, so many brands and so many chemicals, it’s almost impossible to be vigilant about what we’re putting on our skin, right?!
Well not always.
The great things about DIY skincare is that because we’re making it, we know what’s in it! We can make sure that we’re only using the ingredients that are green, natural, good for the environment and good for our precious skin.
If you want to know some of the ingredients you need to beware of, look no further than:
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) - A preservative often found in your lip balm. Health concerns linked to these chemicals include endocrine disruption, organ-system toxicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, cancer and respiratory irritation.
Parabens - These are potential endocrine disruptors due to their ability to mimic estrogen.
Petrolatum - It probably won’t be a huge shock to know that petrolatum is made from
petroleum, that’s right, the same kind that goes in your car, the only difference is that petrolatum is refined using often toxic compounds, making them a big no-no for our skin.
Never Stop Learning
Many of us learn better by doing than we do by simply observing or reading. This is why DIY is right for us. You’d be amazed how much information our brain can absorb through a physical project.
You can go into a simple task like creating your own lip balm, and come out knowing all about different oils, waxes, solids, and liquids.
A DIY project like creating lip balm can be used as an educational tool to learn about oils, waxes, solids and liquids. By the end of the process, you’ve got a brand new lip balm, and you're an expert on natural ingredients!
Sharing Our Creations
From the youngest of ages, we teach our kids to share and to create. It’s through this that they learn what they’re good at, and we see them grow in confidence as they take pride in showing off their new creations.
By using kid-friendly DIY skincare, we can let kids create their own beauty products so that they can create and share in a way that is both beneficial and good for their physical and mental wellbeing.
Protecting Our Pockets
Despite what we often hear, finding natural skincare products isn’t impossible, it is, however, ridiculously expensive. Corporations know that we want natural products, but instead of making these ingredients more easily-accessible to those of us on lower-incomes, they hike up the prizes to add an air of exclusivity to it. This leaves us at the mercy of companies who want to give us huge quantities of the cheap stuff.
We can take our power but from the corporations but creating our own lip balm while making it both high quality, and all-natural!
How To Make Your Own Lip Balm
The key to making your own lip balm lies in how you use a few plant-based ingredients.
First, you need a high quality oil such as:
Sweet Almond oil,
Jojoba oil,
Grapeseed oil,
Coconut oil and others.
Next, in order to create a solid balm that you can swipe your finger across, you need a wax. There are lots of natural waxes available, the most common one you might've heard of is beeswax. The problem here is that beeswax isn’t vegan, but don’t worry! Beeswax can easily be replaced by candelilla wax, which comes from the candelilla plant.
Now you’ll need butter. The best butters to put in your natural lip balm are:
Shea butter,
Cacao butter,
Mango butter.
All of these butters serve as emollients which means they retain moisture in your lips, and stop them from getting dry and scaly.
And now for the finishing touch: the smell. Smell is vital in our skincare products, and just because we’re going green, doesn’t mean we can’t smell sexy while doing it!
To make your lip balm smell divine, you will need either some lip balm flavours or essential oils. The vital thing here is to check and make sure that the essential oils are safe to use on your lips; not all of them are. Some of them aren’t suitable to even touch your skin, so be vigilant!
Hug the Earth Lip Balm Kits
After reading all this, you might be wondering “Where the hell am I supposed to get all of this?!” Not to worry! Hug the Earth lip balm kits contain everything you need, including:
Just the right amount of sweet almond oil,
Mango butter,
Shea butter,
Candelilla wax,
Essential oil,
and jojoba oil,
All of these safe, nourishing ingredients come together to make a beautiful lip balm, with easy-to-follow instructions that make the whole process easy!
Making the Experience Fun
Now that we’ve shown you how to make your own lip balm, it’s important that we make sure you have fun while doing it. After all, anyone can sell you a product, but at Hug the Earth we want to give you an experience.
Here are just a few things you can do to so that making lip balm with your kids is even more fun and exciting for them:
Jazz up your lip balm tins with some fun stickers! Skincare isn’t always the most interesting topic for a kid, but by making the packaging bright and bubbly, and even using some characters they might recognise, you can make them a hit with your kids, and maybe even leave their friends wanting some too!
Get creative with your scents! It doesn’t all have to be vanilla; adding some lip-safe essential oils or lip balm flavours to the mix can help you create a balm that enchants your kids!
The goal here is to make it as exciting and enticing as possible so that your children will love the experience even more.
You can create so many new possibilities by simply choosing to make your own lip balm. By choosing vegan ingredients and making your lip balm all-natural, safe, and healthy, you can take the power back from the skincare corporations, and you can have fun while doing it!
If you'd like some advice or help on how to make this happen in your kitchen, feel free to reach out. We have kits available with all the ingredients to make your own lip balm at home with your kids—a great gift idea to create some absolute magic together.