Kid-Made Lip Gloss

My daughter is obsessed with all things girly and has been begging for her own lip stick for a while now. After making our own perfume a few months ago, it occurred to me that we could probably make our own lip gloss, too! This homemade lip gloss recipe is easy and affordable, making it a great gift or birthday party activity!

While my daughter is usually really well behaved in toy stores, she goes mad in Sephora. She insists on trying on all of the testers and asking all employees for a make-over until she finds someone that is willing. She comes by it honestly and my perspective is that make-up is just like any form or art or self-expression, which I’m all for. I’d rather be a part of her interest, so that we can discuss and set healthy limits together, than risk having her develop her own meanings or feel the need to rebel later.

By making our own homemade lip gloss, we can use food-grade materials and have fun playing with colours and flavours of our own choosing, while keeping costs low.

How to Make Homemade Lip Gloss

While you can make lip gloss by adding dye to Vaseline, I wanted a food-grade option that I would feel confident in allowing my 4 year old to play with. The materials we used were:

• Coconut oil
• Almond oil
• Flavoured drink powders <– we used pink lemonade, grape, cherry, and watermelon)
• Small containers <– we used two different kinds – these stacked ones and these single ones, both are also sold in the beads section of a craft store

While we used drink powders to flavour and colour our lip glosses, you can leave those out for a clear lip gloss. I’d like to eventually try this recipe with boiled-down juice juice or natural food dyes, but we’re going to use up what we have first!

While coconut oil helps our lip gloss keep a semi-solid texture and offers SPF 15 protection, the almond oil is a bit more moisturizing and nourishing. You can leave the almond oil out if you don’t already have it as it can be a bit pricey.

We mixed about 3 Tablespoons of coconut oil to every 1 teaspoon almond oil for our desired texture. We wanted a soft “wet” texture, but if you wanted something more “solid” you could add a bit of beeswax to your gloss.

We tried adding in the drink crystals two different ways, and the easiest was to dissolve them into the almond oil and mix that into the coconut oil. Adding the crystals directly to the coconut oil resulted in a somewhat lumpy texture and it was hard to get a consistent colour.

For our recipe, we used one single serve crystal pack for each batch.

Have the kids stir the dyed almond oil into the coconut oil and adjust the ingredients to their preference. You can even mix different drink crystals together to create your own personalized lip gloss colour.

And that’s it. No tricky tempering or complicated steps that parents need to step in and assist with – making this a perfect activity for a large group (like a slumber party) or a fiercely independent make-up fan.

(I simply had Ella do this activity on a clear plastic tray so I didn’t have to worry about any spills or stains.)

All that’s left is to portion out the lip gloss into the containers and try it out!

You can add some personalized stickers to the tops of the lip gloss containers if you’re giving these as gifts or as a party favour. If you use fruit flavours like we did, cute fruit stickers would be a great way to indicate which flavour of lip gloss is which!

We made 16 small containers of lip gloss, 4 each of 4 different flavours, and the most expensive component was the containers. The stackable ones were from a dollar store, while the individual ones with the black lids were from Michael’s and a little on the pricey side – but we used the 40% off coupon!

The cherry was my daughter’s favourite because it had the brightest hue when applied to lips! Neither of us liked the pink lemonade – it stung a little bit and it seemed to separate within a month. The rest of the lip glosses have lasted for 2 months now and are still going strong!

What do you think? Would your kids love to make their own homemade lip gloss?

Check out these other Valentine’s Ideas from some of my favourite bloggers:

Valentine’s Day Game: Cupid’s Arrow Toss by Playground Parkbench

Stitched Felt Heart Favor Pouch & Keychain by Moms & Crafters

Bubble Wrap Heart Decorations by Crafty Kids at Home

Valentine Pet Project for Kids by Sunny Day Family

Fun and Romantic Easy-to-Make Valentine Card by Our Good Life

My Little Pony Free Printable Valentines by Our Whimsical Days

Hand Knit Hearts by Nemcsok Farms

Edible heart (somethings!) by Eats Amazing

Heart Love Bugs by Rhythms of play