Homemade Lip Balm - Shortening verses Petroleum Jelly

With chapped lip weather upon us, the girls, and I decided to experiment with making lip balm today. After searching around the Internet, and checking a few library books, we discovered that there are three basic recipes for lip balm, that use either petroleum jelly, shortening, or bees wax as their base.

We didn't have bees wax on hand, so that narrowed our choices down to shortening, or petroleum jelly.

I washed out some old lip gloss containers, and film canisters, that we had bumping about in a drawer. (Tip: containers can be further sanitized by cleaning them out with rubbing alcohol).

Then I set out a number of bowls, spoons, and flavoring ingredients to go with the shortening, and Vaseline.

The girls started by mixing 1 tablespoon of shortening, with about a teaspoon of peppermint extract.

After testing it, to make sure they liked it, they divided it, and added a few drops of red food coloring to half, so they could fill the little container, half and half, for a pretty peppermint look.

Then they melted 1 tablespoon of petroleum jelly, in the microwave, at 30 second intervals.

To that, they added about 1 tablespoon of powdered hot chocolate mix. Then, we poured it into another container, and let it harden back up, for a few minutes.

I found the chocolate balm a bit grainy, and so mixed some of the hot chocolate powder into 1 tablespoon of shortening. It was still quite chocolaty, and less grainy. However, the girls preferred the darker color of the Vaseline mixture.

I thought we might also mix up some cherry, and hot cider balm, but the girls were so pleased with the first two mixtures, that we decided to call it a day. Though, we might revisit the process, when it comes time for making up Christmas presents for our friends. I wonder how those little candy mint containers would work to hold lip balm?

It's great to be a homeschooler.