| I received an e-mail the other day from Carolyn asking about making lip balm. She wanted to know how she could make a nice dome on top of her lip balm. Today I’m going to cover making lip balm and giving your lip balm a nice dome top. I’m going to use one of the Lip Solutions for this demonstration. You can use any lip balm mixture you desire.
First, melt the lip balm mixture. Using a pipette, fill the tube almost to the top. Refill your pipette. To make the dome top requires a steady hand. While the tip of a filled pipette is barely touching the fluid inside the lip balm tube, squeeze gently on the pipette bulb. Continue with firm, even pressure while the lip balm mixture grows up and out of the tube. If you remove the tip of the pipette from the liquid lip balm mixture, all is lost. The surface tension is helping you prevent an over flow. Keep touching the surface and squeezing. If the lip balm mixture is filled too much, the over flow will make cleaning a whole new chore. Once you have a nice dome on the top of the lip balm tube stop squeezing the bulb on the pipette, don’t release the bulb to cause suction of the dome back into the pipette, just stop dispensing more material into the lip balm tube. Now gently remove the tip from the lip balm. Bumping the table, counter, or work surface can make the dome topple and flow down the side of your tube. As the mixture cools, the top will contract slight and you will have a nice dimple in the top surface of your tube. This is from the wax shrinking. Work carefully and you can have these lovely dimples in your tubes too! If you have a deep, hollowed crack, then the lip balm was filled too hot, and/or the wax is prone to significant shrinkage. Send in your photos of lip balm tubes with perfect dome tops! And a few that aren’t so perfect.
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 Empty lip balm tubes.  Filling the tubes.  Topping off a tube. |
 Pipette tip in the dome of lip balm |
 Close up of finished dome. |