Ham Made Lip Balms

I guess I didn't realize it was so long ago, but my amazing best friend taught me how to make lip balms back in March. Our first lip balm batch "together" was our LIP CRAP. At that time, we decided on a mint chocolate lip balm, which both of us have listed in our Etsy shops.

Since then, I've sort of ventured out on my own and started making my own lip balms. Honestly, they're extremely easy to make and you really don't need a LOT of "STUFF" to make your own lip balms. A small batch of about 1.5 ounces can make about 12-14 lip balms, depending on the types of tubes you're using and the ingredients at hand.


I've currently got the following lip balms for sale in my shop:

Sweet Orange Vanilla Bean
Cool Mint Vanilla Bean
French Vanilla Coffee Bean 
Lip Crap

A basic lip balm consists of the following:

Bees Wax (other waxes, like Soy wax, are also acceptable).
Shea Butter (semi solid)
Cocoa Butter (soft solid)
and Olive Oil
Essential Oil or Flavoring Agent- to "taste"

Other items needed:
Sauce Pan
Glass Bowl
Pipette
Lip Balm Tubes
Spoon

As a general rule of thumb, it's two parts wax, to one part shea butter, one part cocoa butter, one part oil.  -Seriously, you can mix and match these ingredients to get the best mixture of your liking.  I typically go with 1 ounce wax, .5 oz of each of the other ingredients.  This will get you about 24 tubes of lip balm.  Awesome, right?

Instead of Cocoa butter, you can use Coconut Oil.  Instead of Olive oil you can use Apricot Kernel Oil, Jojoba Oil, Argan, Grapeseed, Sunflower, the possibilities are seriously ENDLESS.

But we will just go ahead and walk you through the process with the ingredients above.

To start, place your Beeswax into a glass bowl, and put the bowl inside of a pan.  Place a few inches of water into the pan, but just enough to go about halfway up the side of the glass bowl.  Place the pan on the stove and heat it to about a low/medium setting.  DO NOT LET THE WATER BOIL. Let your beeswax melt all the way; stir occasionally to ensure it's melting evenly and all the way through.

Once the beeswax melts, add the Shea butter and allow it to melt.  Then add the cocoa butter and let it melt.  Once these have melted, add the oil.  Mix thoroughly.  Mix in about 1 ml of essential oil, or 10 drops, to achieve a flavor/scent of your liking.  Give it a final stir. Use Pipettes or a dropped to fill the lip balm tubes.  VIOLA!  You're done.  Let the lip balms cool.  If you have extra lip balm in the bowl, you can always store it in a glass mason jar with a lid and melt it down later to pour into tubes, once you get more tubes.  I generally fill about 20 tubes of lip balm to start and let them fully cool off before I fill the remaining few tubes.  The lip balms sort of melt down and tend to cave in a bit, leaving holes that need filled.  It isn't always pretty, so I keep a bit of the mixture in the glass bowl to melt down later and top off the tubes.

If you want to get super crafty, you can make infused oil blends for your lip balms.  Calendulla flowers or lavender or rosemary work great for infused oils.  You'd use these instead of the essential oil and the Olive oil. You can actually use the olive oil as the oil that you're infusing.  The finished lip balm will give a subtle hint of the items you infused.  -Infusing generally takes a few weeks, but you can cheat and use a crockpot to speed up the time.

I'm currently running a promotional give-away on my Facebook page.  Scroll through the Etsy page and comment on Facebook about which item is your favorite.  A winner will randomly be selected soon.

There Was Probably Booze Involved

I can't decide if I want to post this here, or over on my "Busy Mom" Blog.  Perhaps I'll just post this in both places and call it a day.

I've always been one for making crafts and finding ways to keep myself busy.  I've never really been big into television and movies. I've always heard that left handed people are more crafty and I am DEFINITELY a left handed person.  As it turns out, my best friend is ALSO a leftie and she's rather crafty herself.  I've learned a lot from her and could never repay for her the knowledge she's given me.  Seriously, I love that woman and she can be the man around my house whenever she wants to be.

So as you know by now, I did Amazon product reviews for a while.  I guess I still sort of do, just NOT on the Amazon platform.  I had a tub of Shea butter and asked her "What can we do with this?  I know it goes into a lot of health and beauty products, but I really don't know what to do with it, and I have to review it like NOW."

With that, she suggested I bring my Shea Butter over and we could work on some lip balms. -Cool.  I'd love to know how to make my own lip balms.  So off to her house I went.

Of course we broke open a bottle or two... or maybe even three?.... of wine.  We had a few glasses and THEN decided that we were going to make lip balms.... and beard oils, for both Men and Women.  There's no way this could end up tragic, right?  Wine and beauty products sounds like a perfect mix to me.

So start with the lip balms.  She looks at me and is like... "Well, I thought I had bees wax, but all  really have is this clump of bees wax that still has bee parts in it.  I guess we can melt it down and strain it out."  So that's what we did.  Next up, we add the Shea butter.  Well, the Shea butter was about as solid as the bees wax.. but whatever.  So next up we add our carrier oils and decide that PEPPERMINT is the flavor of choice... at that moment, one of use decided "Can't we just make it Mint Chocolate?".  So we throw in some cocoa powder.

At this point, we are both giggly drunk. Everything needs a name, so we start throwing out ideas.  I know that "CHAPSTICK" is a name brand and that "LIP BALM" is the generic term for well... Lip Balms, but I was drunk.  So I kept calling it "LIP CRAP".  It's just "LIP CRAP.  It's brown.  It goes on your lips.  It's crap in a tin. It's lip crap." So our homemade lip balm became "LIP CRAP".  From there, we go to the label maker and create a cute little label with a guy sitting on the toilet. It was only appropriate.  We come up with our ingredient lists and VIOLA!  We are officially done with Lip Crap.  However, we totally spelled a word wrong on the label, but we didn't realize it until a few days later.

So next up is the beard oil.

Let's cash in on the Hipster world, because all "MEN" who aren't men at all, feel like they need a Hipster beard.  See, back in the day, beards were a sexy thing.  Back when men were men.  But today's men... Don't even get me started.  It's like they just want those beards so they can give off the persona of being a real man.  -Almost like Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy.- So the grow the beards.  Ugh.  Disgusting.

So we get to work on the beard oils.  We throw together a blend that's outdoorsy but a little out there.  And we call it "Hitchhiker".  I'm honestly not sure where we came up with that idea, but it works.  And out of nowhere, Kirm says "I feel like we need a female version... you know, for the Lady Beards.  We can call it Beave Oil".  So of course... we HAVE to make a version of beard oils for the... lady beards.

 I tell her that Peppermint, Lemon, and Lavender is a nice scent and it's also good as a decongestant.  We can blend up some of that and call it "SNOT TWAT".  You know, because while your partner is down there, they can breathe clearly.  Yeah, it's so wrong on a million levels.

The whole time, we are seriously giggling like little girls.  The bad part about the whole thing is that while we are making these Lady & Gentleman beard oils, she had a pair of Hipster roommates that were right upstairs.  The guy had a full man beard and the female didn't shave her legs or armpits, so you KNOW she had a full lady beard going on as well.  I kept going "just go upstairs and ask the roommates to try the beard oils".  And with that, the female roommate comes into the craft room and is like "What's so funny? What are you girls up to?"  So we showed her that we had come up with some beard oils and we were just trying to find the appropriate images for our labels.  It seemed harmless to her, but we were drunk.  So we let her think we just giggly from the wine.

After a few hours of flipping through label images, we chose a Rooster (COCK) as the symbol for the Hitchhiker and a Cat for the Lady Beard Oil.  And Like that, our beard oil brands were born. We found a recipient for our male beard oil, who eventually gave the feedback that our scents were too strong and we needed to tone it down a notch.  We shipped the lady beard oil to my Battle Buddy in Texas and she said her and her "friends" all loved it.  I'm honestly not sure I want to know, but whatever floats their boats.

Since then, I've basically taken over the branding for beard oils.  I've only come up with a second scent of "Lumberjack", which is basically sandalwood, Vetiver and Juniper berry.  I haven't had too much time to put extra through and effort into making additional scents, until I can get the original two scents selling off of my shelves.

You can check out the Lip Crap, with typo, and Lumberjack Gentleman's Beard Oil on my Etsy Page.

The Uncured Ham

I craft on the Floor

Whew.  It really seems like I am not one for sitting still.

I've never been big into just sitting down and watch television. I'm always doing something.  For a while, I had a full time job (Heritage) and two part time jobs (Naptown Oreo Radio & Century 21 Scheetz).  I quit one part time job and pick up Amazon reviews in almost full swing.  There was a point where it got to be extremely overwhelming, so I started to step back.  Apparently, I stepped back at the right time, because a few weeks later, Amazon put a screeching halt to our reviews and said "We will have no more of this, Bitches!".  So we all had to come up with alternate routes for reviewing what products we had remaining.

The truth is, I am technically EXTREMELY behind and should have reviewed all of my products by now... but I haven't.  I have an entire box of stuff that I've barely touched and I honestly feel GUILTY!!  It's like Amazon said we were done and I was just legitimately DONE.  But I'm not.  I will pick up these products and get back to reviewing so I can be done.

In the mean time, I've quit all the legitimate "PART TIME" jobs and have gone back to concentrating on my crafts.  I've already taken part in one Craft Fair: The Mooresvill Arts in the Park.  I split booth space and with my forever partner in crime and together we managed to BS our way through it.  We seriously had no idea what we were doing, but we did it.

Now, here is it, October 19th and we have four more craft fair type events coming up... kind of.  We think?  We've filled out applications and sent in money for one of the events... the other two haven't really asked for money, but one of those has definitely asked us to participate.  It's honestly confusing as hell.  So here's the upcoming schedule:

Saturday, October 22nd from 1 pm to 4 pm: Arts & Ale in Speedway on Main Street, being hosted by the Speedway Centre for the Arts.  Here's the Facebook even link.  For this event, we got a last minute call back, and we both turned in applications, but they never said anything about the $30 booth rental... um.... I'm gonna bring $30 with me in case they realize we never paid, but I'm not necessarily going to bring it up and ask "DO YOU WANT MY MONEY???".

I've made some cute little glycerin soaps that look like beers for this event.  They smell like Maple Bacon & A Woolen Blanket.  There's a pale ale and an Amber ale.  Seriously, they're stinking cute as shit.  They're listed on my Etsy here.


Next up is the Decatur Central High School Arts & Craft Fair.  It's scheduled for November 5th, from 9 am to 3 pm.  Again, I've submitted the application and turned in the money.. but they haven't cashed the check or called us back.  I'm wondering if that's because Kirsten's shop name is "HOMEWRECKER Hand Made".  Ugh.  The Struggle is real here, folks.

The Third Event is the Avon Arts & Craft Fair, Scheduled for November 19th, from 9 am to 3 pm.  It's at the Washington Township Park.  We've turned in the application, but the lady running this seems quite aloof.  She never called back about the money... so I'm not even sure this is actually going on for the bestie and I.  I guess I'll call her back here soon and see what's up with that?  Or not.  Hell if I know.


Last up is the St. Chris Arts & Craft Fair hosted by our awesome friend Melissa Hedge.  I asked her if she knew of anything coming up and she hooked us up with the booth space here.  This is a definitely a go.  Melissa pulled some strings and crammed us into her already packed arts & crafts fair.  It pays to know people.


Then on top of all this, I regularly get coffee at this little coffee shop in town, Darrin's Coffee.  The owner is super bubbly and always smiling.  He's a bit out there, but hey, it suits him.  Of course when I get my coffee we have small talk and talk about my Chickens and whatever else.  He's going to start buying the eggs that my girls produce and he wants me to make a lip balm that we can sell at his shops.  -He has two coffee shops and the original is in Zionsville.  So this is a totally neat new adventure.  So Kirsten and I are going to come up with some coffee themed crafts (soaps, lip balms, candles, bath bombs and more) to sell at his shops.  Isn't this awesome?

So here I am, spending all of my new found "FREE TIME" crafting all over the place.  I craft on the floor, on the couch, and in the kitchen.  It's definitely keeping me busy, but I'm a mess and need help with organization.  It is what it is, I suppose.

So if you're interested in my crafts, visit my shop: The Uncured Ham-Ham Made Stuff.  I have everything from bath bombs, beard oils, beer soaps, lip balms and more.