Soap Queen

Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more

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The Spoon Trick

Filed Under: Tips & Tricks

Coloring lip balm can be tricky. Often times, getting the perfect oil and wax blend is difficult to master, and the color in melted balm is different than the color on your lips. To eliminate the guesswork, the spoon trick is an excellent way to quickly identify the color and texture of your dried lip balm without waiting for the whole batch to harden.

To formulate your lipstick and lip balms more quickly, stick a metal spoon in the freezer for 1 – 2 hours so it’s nice and cold. Make your perfect lip balm or lipstick formula and then dip the frozen spoon into the liquid balm. The balm will immediately harden on the spoon, revealing its true color. Check out the examples below:

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Sunday Night Spotlight: Flavoring Oils

Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

With so many folks throughout the country right now in such extreme cold weather conditions, it is important protect your skin and your lips. In any weather, balm protection is key to keeping your lips hydrated and protected to avoid chapping and cracking. So why not have some fun in creating your own balms in your own style and flavors? When making lip products, adding a little (lip safe) scent and flavor can take your balm to the next level. Flavor oils are lip-safe fragrances and ironically, they don’t actually taste. Instead, flavor oils provide your lip products with scent. When using lip products from a store, the flavor you taste is actually a sweetener (commonly a sugar substitute like aspartame) that when combined with the flavor oil, tricks your brain into “tasting” the product.

Bramble Berry carries both sweetened and unsweetened flavor oils. For the unsweetened flavoring oils, Bramble Berry carries bleached stevia and lip smacking sweet flavor oil, which you can use to sweeten balms yourself.

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Givember 2013: Holiday Crimson Lip Stain

Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials

Perfect for holiday dinner party or sophisticated evening out to see The Nut Cracker, this Holiday Crimson Lip Stain is as pretty as it is lip loving. It’s made with our Nourish Lip Balm Base, which contains a luscious blend of coconut, sweet almond and avocado oils. Make it to enjoy yourself or give away as a fun stocking stuffer! This lip stain is part of our Givember 2013 ensemble of gifts.

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Winter Lip Balm Recipe

Filed Under: Lip Products

Did you make the Winter Body Balm and have left over ingredients? Just alter the ingredients a little bit to make a lip balm. It’s great for the skier in your life and comes with the same darling, winter themed labels. The giant push tube allows for easy application on the mountain and you don’t even have to take off your gloves! That’s the beauty of using the big push tubes. And if you don’t have any skiers in your life, it’s a great lip balm for your purse (because it’s virtually impossible to lose).

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Labeling Your Products : Lip Balm

Filed Under: Lip Products

Labeling your handmade products can seem so confusing. In this 3 part series, I am going to give some basic examples of how to label lip balm, cold process soap, and lotion so that you can confidently sell or give these products as gifts.

I am just going to be touching the tip of the iceberg though. There is more to know than I can explain in a few blog posts.  If you’d like to become a labeling ninja, I highly recommend the book Soap & Cosmetic Labeling by Marie Gale. It is a concise and easy-to-read book, full of examples about labeling cosmetics with a special emphasis on soap.

The FDA’s website has many interesting articles and you can read the law as it is actually written. They also have a free Cosmetic Labeling Manual that addresses all of the basics of labeling.

The Basics for Labeling Lip Balm: [Read more…]