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Can you make your own lipstick with wax, oil and food dye? | Beauty hacks
Beauty bloggers reckon it’s as easy as pie – and these contain no chemical nasties.
The hackClean beauty fans claim you can avoid synthetic ingredients by making lipstick from coconut oil, beeswax, shea butter and food colouring.
The promiseThis DIY recipe aims to match the incredible pigments of today’s hi-tech formulations. Though perhaps the more pertinent question is not whether you can make this yourself, but whether it’s worth the bother.The testThe method isn’t as complicated as you might expect. In a bain-marie, gently heat a teaspoon each of coconut oil, beeswax pellets and shea butter until they’ve melted. This is your base. The first time I tried this, I couldn’t get the mixture out of the glass bowl in the bain-marie, so I’d recommend getting a proper metal melting pot with a spout – the kind used in candle making. Then add a drop of essential oil (I used rose, for scent), plus a drop of red food colouring, and mix with a spoon. It should cool quickly but you can pop it in the fridge. The resulting “lipstick” was a bright-red balm. I prefer something darker, so I added a quarter of a teaspoon of cocoa powder, hoping the shade would deepen. Alas, it just looked like dried blood.
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