Honey Lemon Eucalyptus Lip Balm

After the success of my geranium lavender lip balm, I've been looking forward to more adventures in lip balms. Now that I have my new lip balm tubes, I just need to find some free time for playing around with new recipes!

I did manage to steal some time last weekend before heading down to Salinas for Easter. I wanted to bring soap and lip balm samples down for my hosts but the geranium lavender lip balms are pretty feminine, so I decided to create a more gender neutral lip balm for the occasion.

Ben and Jenny are the biggest consumers of Emergen-C vitamin supplements I know but when you've got a cute little germ incubator (aka, toddler) running around, even vitamins can't hold off the occasional sore throat, cough or sniffles. With that in mind, I decided to create a lip balm that would provide an extra little aromatherapy boost to help with these syptoms.

Because I was in a hurry to get down there, I ended up using the same base I'd used for the geranium lavender lip balm (I already had some made up). I added a bit of honey to the base to sweeten it and went with a combination of lemon and eucalyptus essential oils, a well-known combination for fighting sore throats. (Of course this combination is usually ingested via cough drops or tea, so I'm not sure it'll really help that much as a lip balm and no, I don't recommend eating the lip balms to get the full effect.)

I've been using this lip balm for the past few days and I've decided that it needs some work. I think I'll try a different base next time and I'll definitely add a higher concentration of essential oils because the first batch was a bit weak.

Thoughts on Essential Oils

One of the major elements of soap making is the aroma. Some people buy soap and other body products solely for the fragrance. There are a lot of great fragrance oils out there to choose from if you just want nice smelling products, but you can open up a whole new world of benefits if you use pure essential oils instead. I've been reading up on essential oils and aromatherapy lately and I'm sold. It's a giant world to explore, but if I can make multipurpose body products that not only serve their purposes as soaps and lotions and lip balms, etc., but also help soothe someone's cold with lemon and eucalyptus, promote healing for their damaged skin with lavender, or lift their mood with geranium, I think that's a path worth exploring.