Lip Balm Questions…

[MashEcon]

Hey everyone! I’ve driven myself crazy trying to figure this out and I think I’ve made it more complicated than it needs to be. It’s my first time making lip balm…I have the Lip Solutions and some flavor oils from MMS to try. The % rate for most of the flavor oils is 2-4%….I’m so comfortable working with weight (oz) in recipes from making soap all these years…but the MMS website discusses everything in grams. Am I able to do the flavor oils at 2-4% of the total weight of Lip Solutions I’m using? So measure it out in oz and not grams? Why am I so confused? . SOS please send help!! Lol

 

[cmzaha]

You can certainly measure ounces of your lip balm base and use your flavoring by oz weight if you have the capability of weighing such tiny increments of ounces. I always found it much easier to use grams when dealing with lip balm unless you are making several ounces of lip balm. If you have trouble with conversions this is a great little free program, I know it has a windows version not sure about mac. Convert for Windows

I always used ounces for making soap but did use grams when making lip balms myself, unless I was making large batches of my lip butter in .25 oz jars.

 

[JillGat]

I just saw this recipe and was confused by the use of mL instead of grams for apricot oil/sweet almond oil. Aren't ml and grams the same thing?

Makes around 60 x Lip balm tubes or 30 x 10ml tins or 20 x 15ml tins

50g Organic Yellow Beeswax
80g of Organic, unrefined Shea Butter

30g of Organic, unrefined Cocoa Butter​

150ml of Organic Apricot Kernel Oil / Sweet Almond Oil

 

[Relle]

I just saw this recipe and was confused by the use of mL instead of grams for apricot oil/sweet almond oil. Aren't ml and grams the same thing?

Makes around 60 x Lip balm tubes or 30 x 10ml tins or 20 x 15ml tins

50g Organic Yellow Beeswax
80g of Organic, unrefined Shea Butter

30g of Organic, unrefined Cocoa Butter​

150ml of Organic Apricot Kernel Oil / Sweet Almond Oil

No, they are not the same thing, mls measure volume and grams measure weight.

 

[JillGat]

No, they are not the same thing, mls measure volume and grams measure weight.

Thanks. Now I need to figure out how to convert that to teaspoons/tablespoons or Cups...

 

[AliOop]

Thanks. Now I need to figure out how to convert that to teaspoons/tablespoons or Cups...

Oh no, don't do that! Convert it all to weight.

 

[nadsnads]

Your formula is confusing because they're listing the recipe in grams, but then they tell you how many lip balm tubes it will fill up by volume. So like if you make 250g of lip balm, it's not guaranteed to fill up a cup (250ml) because different oils have different densities. One day i ordered 8oz of calendula petals. To my surprise it came in a giant 1lb bag! That's volume vs weight for you.

Anyways Google sheets has a really handy function called "convert". You can convert g to oz to cups very easily with it, just remember that the oz for weight is "ozm" so your formula would be like
=CONVERT(A1, "g", "ozm")

https://infoinspired.com/google-docs/spreadsheet/create-unit-converter-in-google-sheets/
But also I just noticed that the first 3 measures of the recipe are in grams, and the last one is in ml. I wouldn't trust recipes like that because nobody mixes grams and ml in their recipes.

 

[Zing]

There are some great recipes on this forum! Do a search for lip balm and @IrishLass or @DeeAnna

 

[DeeAnna]

...Aren't ml and grams the same thing?

If .... and only if ... you're talking about water or fluids with the same density as water, then 1 milliliter (a measurement of volume) weighs 1 gram (a measurement of mass or weight). That's what I gather you might be thinking.

But if you're talking about anything other than water, it is NOT necessarily true that 1 milliliter will weigh 1 gram.

Using this lip balm recipe as an example, 150 mL of sweet apricot oil will weigh decidedly less than 150 grams. The reason why is that liquid fat is less dense than water.

I know the metric folks like to scoff at the imperial folks for mistakenly thinking 1 fluid ounce is equivalent to 1 ounce by weight. But this misunderstanding that 1 mL weighs 1 gram is the equivalent situation in the metric world.

 

[nadsnads]

I know the metric folks like to scoff at the imperial folks for mistakenly thinking 1 fluid ounce is equivalent to 1 ounce by weight. But this misunderstanding that 1 mL weighs 1 gram is the equivalent situation in the metric world.

But at least they're named differently

 

[JillGat]

Oh no, don't do that! Convert it all to weight.

But the recipe uses mL, which is volume. I always use weight... that's why this confused me.

 

[VikingChick]

But the recipe uses mL, which is volume. I always use weight... that's why this confused me.

I would convert those mL into percentages, then convert those percentages to grams. Another advantage to that approach is that now you can scale it to make whatever volume you want.