Beeswax, Coconut Oil, & Honey

After my crayon incident, I had 64 lip balm tubes left over.  What to do with them.... Well, my sister is a beekeeper who happens to have LOTS of nice beeswax and honey.  What more is needed to make some nice lip balm?  She came over to hang out with Ally on Friday and when I got home from work we whipped up a batch to see how it worked.  At first we did 4 T wax, 2 T coconut oil, 1 tsp honey.  That was WAY too waxy and pretty much ripped her lip off when she tried it out.  Then we did equal parts wax and oil and added another T honey.  That was better but NOT quite what we wanted.  We added 2 T more oil and it was pretty much perfect.  It's in the testing stage at the moment and if it works out, we'll make more.  It would be really cool if she could sell some along with her honey at the Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore!

 Pure beeswax.  

Smashed with a pick axe head that was laying out on the back porch.  

Too lazy to go find a hammer and screwdriver.

 This stuff smells AMAZING!  I thought there would be a coconut flavor, but alas, there isn't.

 Empty tubes waiting for the waxy goodness.

 What to use to melt stuff in?  Why a washed out hacked up soda can, duh!

 Yes, this is the same pan from my crayon incident.  Why ruin another right?  The lip balm is all poured and setting up nicely.  It's hard to let it sit.  I just wanted to try it out!  I hate waiting!

All cleaned up and ready for caps.

I think it turned out pretty nice.  Going to give it a try for a week or so.  

Maybe a bit more coconut oil.  Maybe some essential oil.  Not sure.  

It is good and I don't worry about Ally getting a hold of it and chomping it down.

Pinterest Crayons

Such a brilliant idea.  Such a horrible craft failure.  I saw a great use for old, broken crayon pieces.... make them into new crayons in twist up containers!  So, I jumped online, ordered 100 lip balm containers (can't call them "chapstick" since it's a name brand, whatever) with lids in anticipation of making this great project.  The days dragged by while I waited for them to come.  I collected up all the old crayons I could from school, the diaper bag, my office drawers.  I peeled the crayons.  I broke them into pieces.  THEN the containers came!  Oh joy!  I was sooo excited to get started.  I put the crayon pieces into dixie cups, thinking I'd melt them in the microwave.  Really, why SHOULDN'T they melt there?  They melt in the car, in bags, in the dryer.  After 3 min on high, the wax wasn't even soft!  So, then I put them into a "water bath" inside another container.  Well, that was a MAJOR fail.  The crayon melted all right, but it came out of the (now soggy) dixie cup all over into the container.  Luckily I used a junk container anyway.  Not to be defeated by stupid crayons, I went back to the drawing board.... I decided to use the oven.  So, the dixie cups went into a muffin tin.  I had 12 colors, muffin tins have 12 places to put stuff.  Coincidence?  I think NOT! 
 

 Before melting the crayons in the oven.

 Into a 225 oven they went.  After 20 minutes my crayons weren't melted!  Seems like it happens MUCH faster than that when they're in the car!  Not to be defeated by the now pissing me off wax, I started thinking again.  Maybe water is what was needed again.  I wrapped the bottoms of the dixie cups with foil (no cup failures due to soggy cups this time!) and added water around the base.  So far, so good.  Into the oven they went. 

 

  Into the chapstick lip balm containers it went.  

I rubber banded 3 together to give them some stability.

After the crayons cooled, I turned one to get it to rise.  Um, nope.  Not moving.  It actually broke the turney thingie.  Yep, no bueno.  I thought about it and put them in the freezer for a few hours.  After I froze them, I tried another and another, all with the same results.  So... I have decided that this is a TOTAL fail.  I took the "crayons" out of the containers and put them back into dixie cups to remelt later in a silicone form.  

I really hate crayons.