Welcome to Formula Botanica

Welcome to our Sample Class!

In this short class, we’re going to teach you how to make a simple lip balm. This class
follows the same structure of all of our courses, where you log in to our eLearning
platform and have access to your course materials.

Formula Botanica’s course materials are designed in such a way to help you progress
through your courses at your own pace in your own time. Our study materials contain:
• Professionally filmed videos
• Course notes (such as this document)
• Self-study activities
• Interactive quizzes
• Advanced study projects
• Fun online games
• A cosmetic science glossary
• ‘Ask the tutor’ forums
• Live chats
• A student library filled with bonuses
• Global supplier guide filled with our students’ recommendations
• Access to our online classroom

Your sample class contains one of our professionally designed videos where the
Formula Botanica team will show you how to make a simple natural lip balm. Once you
have watched the video and read through this document, try to make your own lip balm
using our formulation sheet on the final page.

Made your Organic Lip Balm?

Please share photos with us as we’d love to see your creations! We always encourage
our students to share their product photos with us and our wider community, so that we
can all admire their formulations together. We’d love to see your organic lip balms.

Tweet us your formulation images @FormulaBotanica

Share your formulation images on our Facebook page @FormulaBotanica

Tag us in your Instagram images @FormulaBotanica

Use the #FormulaBotanica hashtag

and we’ll share your photo.

2 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Lip Balm: Basic Formulation Information
What is a Lip Balm?
Lips are used in so many different activities – we use them in facial
expressions, when we talk, when we eat, when we drink and when we
kiss. Given how much we use them, it’s important to keep your lips soft
and supple and to keep the skin on your lips healthy.

The skin on your lips is comprised of only 3-5 cellular layers, which is
why your lips can so easily start to bleed if they are chapped or dry, or if
you pick the skin off them. In comparison, the skin on your face
contains up to 16 cellular layers.

Given that your lip skin is only 3-5 layers deep, there are no sweat
glands. This means that your lip skin doesn’t sweat and it doesn’t
produce sebum, your skin’s natural oil. Without sweat and sebum your
lips dry out quicker than other parts of your skin. Dry skin is damaged
quicker, which is why chapped lips are such as a common occurrence.

A lip balm effectively provides that protective layer that you would
normally get from your skin’s natural oils. In covering your lips with an
occlusive layer, it does two things – firstly, it locks moisture in and
secondly, it makes it harder for the heat and cold to dry out your lips.

How do you use it?

Lip balms are applied to prevent the lips from drying out. Your customer
will either want to apply it from a small pot or from a tube.

WARNING! Because we are using essential oils on the skin of the lips
which is incredibly thin, we will only use a 0.1 - 0.5% dilution of
essential oils. Also note that some essential oils can be photosensitising
so should be used sparingly in a product that’s applied so frequently.

Does it need a preservative?

No, this is an anhydrous product that doesn’t come into contact with
water. It won’t need a preservative, although it could benefit from an
antioxidant to prevent the oils and butters from going rancid too quickly.

Antioxidants you could consider are Vitamin E oil or rosemary

oleoresin / extract. We recommend that you are cautious about
Grapefruit Seed Extract as this is often adulterated with synthetic
preservatives.

3 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

 Lip Balm
Formulation Breakdown

• 20-30% Wax
• 20-30% Butter
• 30-40% Carrier Oil
• 0-10% Botanical Extracts (oil-soluble)
• 0.5-1% Antioxidant
• 0-0.5% Essential Oils

4 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Lip Balm Inspiration + Design Ideas

• Lip balms are great everyday products for keeping the lips in top condition.
Most women, and even some men, carry a lip balm with them everywhere.
Flavoured lip balms are very popular but synthetic flavourings can taste very
artificial and your customers may want to avoid them. When you have a
skincare product that is applied close to your mouth, it is even more important
to ensure that it is 100% safe.

• Lip balms needs to be hard enough to stay on the outer layer of the skin. This
is an example of a product where we don’t want it to penetrate quickly
into the skin. We need it to stay on the skin surface like a barrier, to help protect
the lips from bad weather and moisture loss. To make such a hard balm will
require some form of wax. Beeswax is best but it isn’t vegan, so if you plan to
make vegan skincare you can substitute Candelilla wax for the beeswax.

• You will need to adjust the percentage of wax/butter depending on the climate
you live in. In a cold climate, a high percentage of wax/butter will make your
balms too hard. In a hot climate, you will need a higher percentage of wax/
butter.

• Consider that your lip balm will often be carried around by your customer. They
may carry the lip balm around in their pocket. If you pour your lip balms into
little tubes, you may find that they easily melt when they’re kept warm
constantly. You may need to perform stability tests on your lip balm.

• Allow your lip balms to set hard over a 24 hour period before you determine
whether you’ve got the texture right. Leave it in a hot or warm car for instance
and see how your lip balm feels after a few hours.

• You can design your lip balms to contain natural flavourings such as almond
essence, or vanilla beans macerated in jojoba oil. Make sure that whatever
flavouring you add to your lip balm is oil-soluble otherwise it will not blend with
your other ingredients (which are oil-soluble or lipophilic).

• You can tint your lip balms with natural colourings and oils. There are many
fantastic carrier oils that have a colour which they can impart to your lip balm -
examples include macerated St. John’s Wort oil, macerated carrot oil or
passionfruit oil. You can also incorporate CO2 extracts such as sea buckthorn
CO2 extract to impart a bright yellow colour to your lip balm.

Note that beetroot powder is not oil-soluble so if you want to colour your lip
balms with beetroot, then you will need to emulsify a beetroot glycerite into the
lip balm (a beetroot glycerite is a glycerin-influsion of beetroot powder).

5 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Troubleshooting
1. My balm is too hard:
Try adjusting the wax-butter-oil ratio in the formula. The higher the percentage of oils
you include, the runnier the balm will become. You should also experiment with various
butters as cocoa butter is a hard butter whereas mango is much softer. The ingredients
you choose will affect the hardness of the product.

2. My balm is too soft:

The percentage of wax/fats/oils included in the formula will need to be changed if your
balm is too soft. Remember, adding infused oils / macerates will count as oil in the
overall formulation. You can increase the amount of butter or wax in the formula to make
it slightly harder. Softer balm can also be a problem if you live in a hotter climate as
butters melts easily so please consider this when designing the formula. Remember to
test out your formulations to see how they hold up in different temperatures.

3. My balm is grainy:
Certain soft butters have a tendency to become grainy when they’re heated and cooled
too quickly. Graininess can be an issue even if it isn’t immediately obvious. If this
happens to you, try re-melting the butter and keep on stirring slowly it as it cools.
Graininess most frequently happens in Shea butter or when formulators attempt to
‘shock cool’ their formulations once they’ve been created.

4. My lip balm has a dent in the top of it in the tube:

As your balm cools, it may show a small dent in the top of the tube or even in the jar.
This small dent (as you can see in the image on the front page of this document)
happens because the wax shrinks as it cools. You can either use a hairdryer or heat gun
on the balm to gently re-melt the lip balm in order to create a smooth surface, or you
can add a small amount of extra lip balm on top and then gently melt that.

6 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Sample Lip Balm Formulation

Formula Name: Vitamin E Lip Balm Batch size:

Stage Ingredient Category % gram

1 A Beeswax Foundation 30

2 A Shea Butter Foundation 30

3 A Avocado oil Foundation 28.9

4 A Almond oil Foundation 10

5 B Vitamin E oil Functional - Antioxidant/ Emollient 1

6 B Lavender essential oil Aromaceutical 0.1

10

Total 100

Formulation procedure:
1. Gently melt wax and all ‘Stage A’ ingredients in a bain-marie.
2. When cooler add all ‘Stage B’ ingredients and blend well.
3. Add to a jar or use lip balm tubes and label the finished product.

Notes:
As it contains wax, the mixture will cool quickly. You can modify
this formulation to contain other butters, oils and waxes you might
have. Be careful with the essential oils you choose as some of
them can sensitise your lips to the sun and some of them have
dermal limits, which are regulatory requirements in some parts of
the world. We recommend starting with lavender essential oil.

7 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Study Activity
Create your own version of a lip balm using this formulation worksheet. Get
creative! Study available ingredients to get ideas for new formulation blends.
Research suppliers near to you to see what’s available. Research the botanical
extracts available in your country.

Formula Name: Batch size:

Stage Ingredient Category % gr/ml

10

Formulation procedure:

Notes:

8 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

How to Enrol
We hope you enjoyed this sample class. Formula Botanica teaches many different
courses for organic cosmetic formulators. Our courses include:

• Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation

• Advanced Diploma in Organic Cosmetic Science
• Certificate in Organic Anti-Ageing Skincare
• Certificate in Natural Cosmetic Preservation
• Certificate in Cosmetic Stability Testing
• Certificate in Facial Masque Therapy
• Certificate in Chocolate Spa Products
• Tutor Training Program

We also open enrolment for our flagship International Organic Skincare Entrepreneur
Program twice a year in April and October - enrol for all courses at 30% discount.

Enrolling for a course is easy

Follow these 3 simple steps to enrol today:

1. Visit http://www.formulabotanica.com and choose the course best suited to your

interests and experience. If you are new to formulating, then we recommend
starting with our Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation.

2. Add the course or program you want to enrol for to your shopping cart and go
through checkout / enrolment.

3. You will then immediately receive all of your enrolment information, your student
welcome pack and your login details. Make sure you check your junkmail folder or
Promotions Tab in Gmail.

9 of 9 Copyright Herb & Hedgerow Ltd. 2016. All Rights Reserved.