18 Nourishing Homemade DIY Lip Balm Recipes for Beautiful Sweet Lips (2024)

I always like to have a lip balm within reach, I have one on my desk at work, one on my bedside table, one in my handbag and a few rogue ones in various coat pockets. They all, of course, come with their own delicious scent.

My lip balm making days go way back when my friends and I used to sneakily take petroleum jelly from my mum’s bathroom cabinet, thinking she wouldn’t notice, and add colorings and edible glitter from the baking cupboard. The results were always sticky and melted, but we were nevertheless proud of our efforts.

Nowadays I would like to think I have become somewhat more sophisticated, and with that my DIYs have too. Homemade lip balm recipes are great in so many ways, you know exactly what you’re putting on your skin, there is a whole range of scents and ingredients you can experiment with, and it can also make a great gift.

Nourishing Homemade Lipbalm Recipes

1. Lime Lip Balm

I love citrus scents, and whether you’re using a citrus perfume or shower gel it can always give you a little spritz of energy and freshness.

The consistency of this lime lip balm looks just perfect, not so hard that you have to be digging your finger into it in order for it to spread, but also not so soft that it would be melting everywhere. I think it would give a nice glossy look without being sticky like a lot of actual lip glosses are, and of course, the scent sounds great but still simple.

2. Coconut Rose Lip Balm Recipes

I can’t get over how beautiful this coconut rose lip balm looks, and if I were to see it in a shop I probably would think it was some kind of luxury candle as opposed to a lip balm. I would feel like I had my life together while pulling this out of my handbag to use.

The method looks really simple, and there are lots of suggestions of variations you can make, like swapping coconut for vanilla or using different flower petals instead of roses. I can imagine this being the perfect little gift, and because the recipe makes a batch of about six little pots then you’ll have more than enough to share while still being able to keep some for yourself.

3. Swirled Lip Balm Recipes

I know that a lot of the younger girls in my family would absolutely love this swirled lip balm. One of the amazing things about making homemade lip balms is that you can give them to kids and not be worried about what you’re putting on their skin or potentially in their mouths. If making this as a gift for a kid I would probably go as far as to add in some edible glitter too, for some added magic.

This recipe is a lot of fun, and although it uses a pre-made lip balm base you could easily use the swirled effect with other lip balm recipes. They have mixed both colors and scents which makes it great for someone as indecisive as me.

4. Natural Lip Scrub

This is technically a lip scrub as opposed to a lip balm, but it looked too good to leave it out.

I have had a love-hate relationship with lip scrubs in the past as some you buy in stores can literally be pots of sugar, which both feels harsh on chapped lips and falls everywhere. This natural lip scrub recipe looks far smoother and much more comfortable to use. As the name suggests, all the ingredients are natural, they are also edible, and can be found in your kitchen.

5. Honey, Orange, and Vanilla Lip Balm

This scent combination of honey, orange and vanilla sounds divine to me, and if there were a spread of different scents in a store then I would definitely be drawn towards this one. Vanilla is one of my favorite scents in the world, so that mixed with the sweet raw honey and a little fresh burst of citrus is just perfect.

The ingredients are very straight forward which I like, as there is nothing worse than having to faff around with complicated things you have never heard of before. I don’t think I have ever had a lip balm in a little sliding tin like this but I think they are really cute and would love to give them a go.

6. Imitation Burt’s Bees Lip Balm

I am a big fan of Burt’s Bees as a brand in general, but their lip balms really are something special.

Although I believe that skincare is something worth splurging on, as it’s so important to protect your skin, there’s no harm in giving this recipe a bash and seeing how the results compare. This Burt’s Bees lip balm imitation recipe avoids some of the commercial oils which are included in the original and aren’t necessarily the best for your lips, while still maintaining that light and well-loved peppermint scent. It is simple to recreate and will save you a pretty penny in the process.

7. Natural Tinted Lip Balm

This recipe for tinted lip balm is really interesting in my opinion because of the fact that it uses natural colorings like organic beet root powder or hibiscus powder in order to tint the product. I like using tinted lip balms sometimes when you want a little bit of something different to your natural lip color but also don’t want to fully commit to a strong block color lipstick.

Even if you didn’t want to tint this lip balm, as that step is totally optional, the lip balm itself only includes three ingredients and is full of nourishing oils for the softest lips.

8. Raspberry Lip Balm

This recipe contains actual real raspberries, albeit freeze-dried. The amazing thing is that this raspberry lip balm would give your lips a lovely deep pink tint, and that is purely because of the color of the raspberries, you don’t have to add in any extra colorings.

This must smell pretty yummy and looks really simple to make, with very few ingredients. The creator of the recipe also suggest trying the recipe with other dried fruits like cherries, or even using combinations of a couple.

9. Chocolate Truffle Lip Balm

My only issue with this lip balm recipe, and it is a rather disastrous one, is that I worry I might want to eat it. Honestly, how difficult would it be to resist the temptation of a chocolate truffle scented lip balm.

I am so intrigued by the fact that there is no actual chocolate in this recipe, apparently it’s the combination of the cocoa butter and vanilla oil that give you that authentic scent. For that reason this would make a really cool gift, as no one would be able to guess the scent by just looking at the tube. All the ingredients are natural, and sound like they would come together to create the most nourishing consistency.

10. Lip Balm for Sun Kissed Lips

There are few things worse than the feeling of your lips after you didn’t quite prep them appropriately before spending some time out in the sun. They sting, they peel, it’s just not a pleasant experience.

I always have lip balm specifically aimed towards fighting the effects of sunburnt lips in the summer months or for holidays, but I never thought that I could make my own. You can imagine my thrill when I found this sun-kissed lips lip balm recipe. It includes SPF which is of course the all important component in protecting your lips, along with the best essential oils for healing and protecting.

11. Pink Grapefruit Lip Balm

I really like grapefruit as a scent, and come to think of it, a lot of the lotions and potions I have on the go in my shower at the moment include it in one way or another.

This pink grapefruit lip balm has a lovely but subtle pink color, coming from natural beet root powder, which you could obviously adjust or entirely remove based on your preferences. The scent can be changed just as easily too, by swapping the grapefruit essential oil for another. This would be a really lovely lip balm for everyday use, as neither the scent nor color is overpowering.

12. EOS Inspired Lip Balm

When I was at school EOS lip balms were like the ‘it’ thing. All the girls had them, and they would be as prominent on classroom desks as our pencils. I still actually use mine daily, a new one that is, and I really do love the unique shape of it.

Because of how big a fan I am of the original, I would really love to try out this EOS inspired lip balm for myself. I am not sure if you can buy empty EOS style containers, but you probably can because there seem to be few things you can’t buy online nowadays. In this recipe, the color is added by adding in a little bit of lipstick, which I think is a genius idea because you could pick your favorite and know exactly what color you will end up with.

13. Lip Balm Tinted with Makeup

I have a whole load of cheek blush colors that would be very pretty as lip balms, and now I know how to make that happen with this makeup tinted lip balm.

Although I do use lip balms in tubs, I much prefer it when they are in a tube-like chapstick form. I just find that application is much less fiddly, and especially when you get down to the end of the pot you don’t have to be digging around to get those last few uses. The color range in this example is really cool, and I would love to have a few different shades to be able to pick between each day.

14. Honey Lip Balm Recipes

I really like the scent of honey. I already use some skin and hair products which contain honey that give me great results, so I would love to try out this honey lip balm. It looks like a really nice smooth consistency too.

There are loads of ways to use honey in a beneficial way for your skin, and this lip balm is a really easy one to get started with. All the ingredients are totally natural and are bound to leave you with the softest lips. Honey also contains anti-inflammatory elements, so you will be doing your skin a favor by using it.

15. Vanilla Lavender Scrub

Okay, there might be more than one lip scrub recipe in here, but this vanilla lavender lip scrub just sounded too good not to share.

Winter is the season of chapped lips and using lip balms religiously and scrubs occasionally is something I honestly believe helps. It is important not to use harsh scrubs too often, but they’re perfect for a quick sort out whenever you’re needing them. The scent combination of vanilla and lavender sounds just dreamy, and this looks really sugary without being too dry, which is a downfall of a lot of sugar scrubs in my opinion.

16. Kool-Aid Lip Balm

I had actually heard about this idea years ago from a friend, but have never gotten around to trying it. I am a big fan of sweet scents, so these kool-aid lip balms would be right up my street I am sure.

There are so many different kool-aid flavors out there, and with each, there is a new fun color for you to transform into a lip balm. As mentioned in this recipe you can also get ‘invisible’ ones, which is incredibly handy if you want a soothing lip balm but no color. The sugar is simply to sweeten the kool-aid and dissolves during the process so don’t be worried about being left with a gritty texture.

17. Peppermint Mocha Lip Balm

This recipe is really cool because it contains instructions for making a lip balm and a lip scrub which can be used separately but also work incredibly well together. A peppermint mocha sounds good to my tummy on just about any chilly winter’s day, so why not slather the scent onto your lips too.

Both the scrub and lip balm recipes are made from totally natural ingredients. The actual scrub part of the lip scrub is coffee grounds, which I think is really interesting as I have only ever really come across sugar lip scrubs before. I am definitely up for trying this out and then covering my newly softened lips in a nice layer of the peppermint lip balm.

18. Maple Syrup Lip Balm Recipes

Who wouldn’t want to constantly smell like maple syrup? I certainly know that I would.

I can imagine the scent of this maple syrup lip balm being just delicious, especially with the cocoa butter, almond oil and coconut oil adding their own scents in there too. This looks a little more creamy than gel-like, which I actually think looks really cool and I am curious to try it out. I also love the golden color, and it’s yet another one which I am going to have to consciously stop myself from tasting.

Concluding Nourishing Lip Balm Recipes

After researching them a lot recently, I really am starting to warm to the world of natural skin products, whether that be something as simple as a lip balm or a bit more of a drastic change like natural shampoo or deodorant.

There really are so many amazing scents out there, and all these recipes look so incredibly nourishing and luxurious for your lips. I am totally sold on the coconut rose lip balm, simply because of how gorgeous it looks, but on the other hand, even though the chocolate truffle one looks plain color wise, it sounds so yummy. I am also going to have to give the kool-aid ones a try because I have heard great things about them from friends.