Make lipstick with crayons

Step 2 Ingredients and materials

You will need a small, heat resistant container, such as a stainless steel measuring cup. Use the smallest one you have.

The following quantity will fit easily into most lip balm tins, but you will have a little left over if you are using a tube, which usually holds only 0.15oz. For the triple lipstick mold, double the recipe.

I have tested a variety of different ingredients, and although the end product varies in "feel" you have a lot of flexibility in your choices.

Here is the basic recipe:

1/2 crayon of your favorite color (approx 2.4g)
1/2 tsp jojoba oil (approx 2 g)
1 almond-sized chunk of shea butter (approx 2g)

Ingredients you can add to the above:

1 pea-sized dab of lanolin (improves feel and possibly color distribution)
1 pinch gum arabic (improves color distribution and durability of color)
1 drop vitamin E (helps prevent oil from becoming rancid, improves shelf life)
1 pinch zinc oxide (makes color lighter and more opaque, offers protection against UVA and UVB sun rays -- but make sure your wax mixture is well stirred before you pour)

Alternate ingredients:

You can replace shea butter with cocoa butter (will make lipstick slightly more firm)
You can replace jojoba oil with castor oil (will make a glossier lipstick)

These are the alternate ingredients I've tried, but there's no reason you can't experiment with any other type of edible oils.

Comments

[Mauigerbil]

Oh fine. I used only olive oil and a pink crayon. Only a touch of olive oil, or it will be too watery! You need to let it dry in the freezer for awhile, just so that it will be a little dry but still mostly liquid. Then, get a piece of foam or a soft sponge to apply. It is best to make in a paper cup that is disposable, and then cut most of the cup off so that it is easy to apply. The pink crayon blush gives a very natural look when mixed with a magenta

[neetz]

this is the neetest instructable i ever saw! i already made red and it works better then real lipstick ! and to top that of it only took like five minutes!
very good!

[neetz]

thanks for the quick response! il try it out!

[neetz]

could you use olive oil or canola oil instead of jojoba oil?
thanks

[belsey]

Yes, you can substitute the jojoba with any number of comestible oils, including olive or canola (though I haven't tried either). Depending on the oil it might taste or feel slightly different, but it should work with any.

[12koolgirl]

Can you melt the mixture in the microwave?

[belsey]

Yes, but you need to be careful, because wax can sometimes ignite if it's heated too high and too long -- that's why I much prefer the controlled temperature double boiler heating.

[SpiroExDeus]

I considered making some of this for when I occasionally get gothed up.

Just a note about the Lanolin optional ingredient. It's rare, but some people have an allergy to it. If you've never used any products with lanolin before (more likely if you're a guy like me) test a tiny bit of lanolin (or a product with it in - a lot of barrier creams use it) on your skin.

My hairdresser found out about my lanolin allergy the hard way (for me) when after testing my skin for reaction to the black hair dye (no problem there) she began to apply barrier cream to my neck causing me to yell (it burned like crazy). After she'd apologised and quickly wiped it away and washed the spot where she'd put it I had a red 'fingerprint' on the back of my neck. Took about an hour to go down IIRC.

Like I said. If you want to include Lanolin be aware that there's a slight possibility that you (or whoever you give it to) may have an allergy to it like I did. (assuming it WAS the Lanolin but they couldn't find anything else in the cream that I was likely to react to).

[belsey]

Thanks for pointing that out. The relationship between lanolin and allergies is particularly fraught... in wikipedia, they write that lanolin is both hypoallergenic AND that some people are allergic. Possibly because the term hypoallergenic has no legal meaning whatsoever, it was invented by one of Don Draper's (Mad Men) real-life colleagues in the 1950s. But I digress.  There are several grades of lanolin, the most refined (and allergy-free) is used to coat bandaids to prevent sticking, or to slather on the nipples of breastfeeding mothers, to avoid painful, cracked and bloody breasts... so that type of lanolin is quite safe given that it protects open wounds and is approved for tiny infants, who can't even consume honey, eggs or wheat. Which is not to say that some people might be allergic! Here's an article on the difficulty of ascertaining lanolin allergy, for those who are interested.

[kitty kat]

thank u! im lazy so i put it in the microwave for  22 sec:) ill never buy lipstick again.

[Miss_Chievous666]

 INGENIOUS!!!! :D