Tot Toppers

Protection from the Neck Up

I am ridiculously excited about participating in Indie Craft Experience (ICE) in just under 2 weeks. Not only is the show itself going to be great, its located in Atlanta, which I love since I lived there for a couple of years. If you are one of the first 250 people to get into the show on either day (ahem, that’s Saturday & Sunday, November 20 & 21) you get a SWAG bag. Think Oscar gift bag only better. Well, probably not, but still really cool. So when I got word that I was accepted as a vendor in the show, I started brainstorming on what Tot Toppers would provide for these bags.

Knitters will understand that there was no way I could knit 500 of anything. I considered giving some freebie pattern codes, but then I figured many of them would go to waste if the recipient was a non-knitter. But then I pulled out my Etsy Lip Balm (which was swag provided by Etsy at Indie Craft Parade) and thought, hmmmmm? Logic went something like this…Hats keep you warm from the cold, sometimes when its cold you get chapped lips, DUH, LIP BALM TOTALLY COMPLEMENTS TOT TOPPERS (and even if it doesn’t, its still useful and less likely to get tossed than my business card would be)…I doubt it will become my new slogan, but it totally works for the lip balm, “Tot Toppers…protection from the neck up.”

So here goes my adventurous foray into handmade vegan lip balm, a story (mostly) in pictures. I’ll share the recipes I settled on at the end. I purchased my supplies at Majestic Mountain Sage.

Humongous bucket of Soy Wax.

It was solid and more brittle than Crisco.

And then there was the mixing.

And weighing.

Followed by the melting. It smelled so good at this point! Each batch made about 70 tubes.

And then verrrry quickly, the dispersing into tubes. Say hi to Grandglo Tot Toppers, who was so supportive that she lent her big kitchen for the process, and even wore her TT tee on our workday :)

Cooling.

We got better at flattening the tops as we went along. If you open your balm and its not perfect, forgive us, and know that we didn’t take a bite out of it!

Capped once they were cooled.

600 tubes of handmade vegan lip balm. (notice how much darker the very well lit kitchen was towards completion!)

And then, several weeks later each tube got a label.

Aren’t they purty!

600 lip balm tubes with purty labels.

My recipe for the base (after a bit of fiddling!)
4 parts avocado oil
3 parts soy wax
2 parts candelia wax
1 part jojoba oil
1 part almond oil

*my “part” was 1 oz, and I used a scale to measure

I mixed all the ingredients, then melted/stirred in the microwave in 30 second increments. Once fully melted, I added my essential oils to make the fragrance what I wanted it to be. If you use my flavor-guides, make sure to adjust for your “part” size!

For the lime-peppermint batches I used 30 drops of lime essential oil, and 8 drops of peppermint essential oil.

For the pumpkin-cinnamon batches I used 16 drops of pumpkin extract, and 12 drops of cinnamon essential oil.

After stirring in the fragrance, I used droppers to fill up each tube. We didn’t fill them quite to the top, but let them cool first and then topped them off. This was to help make the tubes lay flat, and not concave.

I purchased my labels from Online Labels. I really liked the colors and they seem to be sticking really well. However, one thing I thought was odd was that in order to make the perforation line up with the cap, a few mm of the bottom of the tube shows through. So they don’t fit perfectly. Not sure what the point of this is but still preferable to shrink-wrapping each tube.

I have been using my balm (and of course, I got the reject tubes prior to the perfect recipe!) ever since and I truly love it. I am sure if you see me you will just want to kiss me immediately because of my luscious lips. But please resist the temptation because that would be awkward for us both :)Just in case you don’t get to be one of those first 250 in the door, or, you get hooked after your freebie tube, you can purchase the lip balm directly from me at BOOTH #23 at ICE, right next to my pal Three Bad Seeds (whooppeee!). Or of course, online. Hope to see you soon!