Can I use Vaseline in a solid lip balm?

[hellomimi]

I wanted to follow this simple standard formula for making a lip balm:


20% Beeswax
25% Butters/Oils that are solid at room temperature. These butters are on the soft side.
15% Butters that are hard at room temperature. These butters are on the brittle side.
40% Oils that are liquid at room temperature
These percentages should equal 100%.

I intend to put it into a chapstick type container. Ive heard shea butter is a pain to use because of how grainy it can get, and it’s the only soft traditional butter I have. Can I use Vaseline or petroleum jelly as the 25% of “soft butter” in my lip balm? I don’t wanna do anything too outlandish since I’m just a beginner, however, I can’t find any solid lip balm formulas using this ingredient? Is there a reason for this?

 

[amd]

Why do you want to use it?

Personally, the only butter I use is cocoa butter in my lip balms. I don't know my recipe % off the top of my head, but if I followed the guidelines above this is what my recipe would look like:
20% beeswax
25% coconut oil
15% cocoa butter
40% sweet almond oil

I do not find my lip balm to be grainy. I'm not sure if it's because I masterbatch it into quart jars and then scoop out what I need to remelt for the batch I'm making, so it goes through two melt cycles before it goes into the tube.

 

[hellomimi]

Why do you want to use it?

Personally, the only butter I use is cocoa butter in my lip balms. I don't know my recipe % off the top of my head, but if I followed the guidelines above this is what my recipe would look like:
20% beeswax
25% coconut oil
15% cocoa butter
40% sweet almond oil

I do not find my lip balm to be grainy. I'm not sure if it's because I masterbatch it into quart jars and then scoop out what I need to remelt for the batch I'm making, so it goes through two melt cycles before it goes into the tube.

Vaseline is solid at room temperature even if it isn’t a traditional butter, plus it’s what I have on hand

 

[amd]

Coconut oil is easy to get at most grocery stores. I would use that before vaseline. It [vaseline] isn't what I would consider "solid at room temp". It's extremely scoopable soft with fingers, more gel than solid. Coconut oil at room temperature is soft, but needs some help with a spoon to get out of the container. That's [coconut oil] more representative of "solid at room temperature".

 

[Carly B]

Vaseline is a petroleum derivative. I don't know about others here, but I make it a point to avoid anything with mineral oil, Vaseline, etc. One of the great things about making your own products is you can actually make them the way you want them. If you want Vaseline, fine, but you owe it to yourself to try some things made with real butters and oils to see what the difference is.

Why do you want to use it?

Personally, the only butter I use is cocoa butter in my lip balms. I don't know my recipe % off the top of my head, but if I followed the guidelines above this is what my recipe would look like:
20% beeswax
25% coconut oil
15% cocoa butter
40% sweet almond oil

I do not find my lip balm to be grainy. I'm not sure if it's because I masterbatch it into quart jars and then scoop out what I need to remelt for the batch I'm making, so it goes through two melt cycles before it goes into the tube.

The only butter I've found to be grainy is shea. But I read years ago that you have to heat it up to a certain temp (past melting point) to get rid of the graininess. I discovered this years ago when as a financially struggling college student, I decided to "treat myself" to a "good" lip balm. I got one from L'Occitane, and it was so grainy and rough it was unusable. I had heard later that they had made and released a bad batch -- they hadn't melted their shea butter correctly.

But I haven't found that problem with any other butter.

 

[TheGecko]

Ive heard shea butter is a pain to use because of how grainy it can get,

Only if you let it get too hot too fast. Try this:

Melt your beeswax on the stove at a medium-low temp. When it's about half-way melted, add your cocoa butter, when it is three-quarters melted, add your coconut oil. Take the pan OFF the burner, cut your Shea Butter into small chunks and add to your melted oils and allow the residual heat to melt the Shea.

I would NOT use any petroleum based product in my lip balm, totally defeats the purpose of making it.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Some qualities of cocoa butter are actually so easy to get grainy that's a big deal in chocolate manufacture to be pedantic about temperature profiles (the cooling rate is even more important than the heating rate). I also had mango butter that felt like freshly prepared concrete. Not to mention palm oil at all.
And just to complicate things, shea was actually the only one I had that did not become grainy regardless of what I did with it (besides cupuaçu that is rather semi-solid at room temperature). But YMMV as always: geographical/botanical origin, refinement, desodoration, fractionation, and storage temperature do make quite some difference.

My main technical point against vaseline would be that it is not a well-defined product, but the composition, consistency, and melting behaviour will differ vastly from batch to batch, between manufacturers etc. Unless you can fully rely on the specification of the petroleum processing plant, you'll have a hard time to reproduce a satisfactory consistency, or even troubleshoot if things go wrong.
Note that this issue does apply to shea butter to some degree too, because its properties (notably the amount of unsaponifiables) can vary wildly between harvest region/season and processing.

 

[earlene]

Vaseline is a petroleum derivative. I don't know about others here, but I make it a point to avoid anything with mineral oil, Vaseline, etc. One of the great things about making your own products is you can actually make them the way you want them. If you want Vaseline, fine, but you owe it to yourself to try some things made with real butters and oils to see what the difference is.

Strangely enough, my Dermatoligist (a young woman and not some old guy who went to med school 60 years ago), prescribes Vaseline at all times until the scab drops off after burning warts off. I was really surprised, but she says it is the best thing and healing is much faster and the surface scars better than with any other product. In fact, it seems to be very true, as I've had a few removed over the course of the last couple of years, and the only visible change is the white spot from the absence of melanin in that area. The skin is smooth as can be in all but one spot, and that was one that I did not keep up with covering with Vaseline as often as the rest (partly because it is between my toes where my zorries fit and partly laziness.)

I know this is not an answer to the lip balm issue, but it does address Vaseline as something that people may or may not want to put on their skin.

 

[amd]

I know this is not an answer to the lip balm issue, but it does address Vaseline as something that people may or may not want to put on their skin.

I agree - Vaseline or Aquaphor type products are very beneficial to skin. They speed up tattoo healing phenomenally. My artist is always amazed at how quickly my skin heals. I think it's in huge part to my diligence with washing and reapplying vaseline/aquaphor every two hours for the first week. I have very little scabbing and haven't had any issues with scarring, which can happen if after-care is not done properly.

For this lip balm formulation though, I don't think it would make a good lip balm. There are perhaps other formulations out there for specifically using vaseline. IMO, if you're going to use vaseline, why not just put it in a pot and use straight then.