Lip balm making in time for winter

The kids and I get chappy lips a lot during the colder months of the year. So I normally buy a lot of lip balm aka chapsticks etc. This year I thought I'd have a go at making our own. It was actually pretty successful - we ended up with 4 little pots and 10 sticks and I had leftover balm mixture left to half fill an old small lip balm tin.



I used the following:
15gms of cocoa butter
25gms of shea butter
20gms of bees wax pellets
roughly 10gms of mango butter
40mls of sweet almond oil
a few drops of peppermint flavouring oil

If you search for lip balm making supplies on Google, you'll find lots of shops online which sell these. Normally these online shops also specialise in soap-making supplies too (next year's craft perhaps??)

I melted it all in a heatproof container in our microwave in short 20 - 30 second bursts. When it had all melted together, I poured the liquid balm into my containers and put them into the fridge for an hour or so to set. I was a bit slow in my pouring and the balm mixture actually started to set in my heatproof container. I had to return it to the microwave a couple of times to reheat. I had read somewhere on the internet that shea butter can go grainy when it gets too hot and I think the reheating of the balm mixture made this happen in my lip balm. In hindsight I might omit the shea butter altogether in future recipes and perhaps use more mango butter or more cocoa butter. Ours was a smidgen grainy but the grainy feeling dissipates really quickly when the wax melts on the lips.

I was very cautious with my flavour oil and the resulting lip balm is not very minty. It can stand a bit more next time.

Have you ever tried making lip balm? Do you use shea butter and if not, which other type of butter do you use?