Who doesn’t love kissable lips? Luscious and attractive lips are every woman’s dreams. But commercial lip gloss is laden with harmful chemicals that you are likely to ingest everyday. Do you want a lip gloss that is eco-friendly and natural? Read on!

Here’s a simple and easy lip gloss recipe anyone can do.

Ingredients

Shea Butter – 1 Tbsp
Beeswax – ¼ Tbsp.
Castor Oil – 4 Tbsp.
Coconut Oil – ½ Tbsp.
Therapeutic Essential Oil – 10 Drops
Beetroot Powder – A needed.

Instructions

Melt the oils, butters and wax in a double boiler. Once they’re melted, remove from heat. You can prepare a makeshift double boiler like suggested in our previous posts if you don’t have a double boiler, or melt the butter, wax and oils in microwave or direct heat.

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Add in the essential oil and beetroot powder and mix well.

Store in lip gloss containers.

Tips to Tweak the Recipe

When you add beetroot powder, slowly add and keep checking for the right hue to decide what suits you best. You can make pink, deep pink and maroon color lip gloss using beetroot powder.You can choose berry powders for other colors – strawberry for red, blackberries or blue berries for berry color, etc.

You can add a few drops of Vitamin E Oil for added benefits.

You can use toxin-free food colors for other variants or shades and don’t have to worry ingesting them!

When picking essential oils, choose the therapeutic essential oils as they’re regulated and non-toxic. You should know, few essential oils could be consumed in miniscule quantities for different health benefits, so choosing those variants will ensure you don’t have to worry about ingesting them either!

Why These Ingredients?

As mentioned earlier, commercial lip glosses are laden with harmful ingredients and toxins.

When you buy solid lipsticks, a few harmful ingredients like lanolin oil (a fat extracted from sheep’s wool), polybutene (a type of plastic and an irritant that irritates your skin, eyes and lungs) and microcrystalline wax (a byproduct of petroleum refining) are added to solidify the lipstick. On the other hand, we use beeswax, which is safe and offers loads of benefits – luscious and kissable lips, that’s nourished and moisturized.

The next problem in lip gloss or lipsticks are color pigments, which can include the likes of Mica, Titanium Dioxide, Carmine, Iron Oxides, Red 6 Lake, Red 21, Red 7 Lake, Red 30 Lake, Red 27 Lake, Red 36, Orange 5, Red 33 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Blue 1 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, etc. Depending the shade or type (shimmer or non-shimmer), you will have more than just a couple of these shimmer and color pigments.

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While I am not against mineral makeup, you have no way of knowing what quality of minerals (mica, iron oxides, titanium oxide or even carmine) they’ve used in the products. Unless explicitly declared as safe and approved by FDA, is there a way to check if only permitted color pigments are used? Remember, whatever you put on your skin, is absorbed by the body and can cause detrimental issues in the longer run.

That’s not all – some companies also add ethylhexyl palmitate, ceresin, isopropyl myristate, isopropyl lanolate wheat germ triglycerides, or other additives for their binding properties.

Let’s not forget – fragrance. This is another term that’s very vague and could encompass a range of chemicals that are broadly labeled as fragrance or perfume or parfum! Why would you want to take a risk and apply chemical-laden and questionably harmful products on your lips and ingest it knowingly or unknowingly?

Love cosmetics? Go DIY and prepare your own cosmetics or opt for high quality organic mineral makeup products like the ones from Gaya.