Balm and cosmetics making

This craft splits in two, and almost nothing written about it says so clearly. On one side are anhydrous products — balms, salves, body butters, lip balms — which contain no water. Oils and waxes melted together and poured. Nothing microbial can grow in them, so they need no preservative, and the only way they go off is the oils themselves going stale over months.

On the other side are emulsions — creams, lotions, anything that feels light on the skin. These are water and oil forced to stay mixed, and the water is the whole difference: it supports bacteria, yeast and mould, usually invisibly. An emulsion without a preservation system is not a long-life product made naturally, it is a growth medium, and no amount of sterilising the equipment changes that because contamination arrives with the first finger in the jar.

Everything else follows from which side you are on. The first side needs a scale, a jug and a hot pan and is genuinely a beginner’s craft. The second needs an emulsifier, a preservative system, an understanding of what both are doing, and a willingness to accept that you cannot verify the result at home. That is why this page’s getting-started path is anhydrous, and it is not caution for its own sake — it is where the craft is actually enjoyable without needing evidence you do not have.

What the page does not do is give you formulations. That decision is written up separately and the short version is that a percentage published here would function as a safety clearance rather than as a craft note.

The whole distinction

Water, or no water

Start with

Anhydrous balm

What this page gives

Categories and process

What it does not

Formulations, percentages

Regulated at

The moment you supply it

1. 1

   Step 1: Decide that it contains no water

   This is the decision, and making it consciously is the point of the exercise. An anhydrous product has no preservation problem, so everything that follows is about texture and process rather than about microbiology.

2. 2

   Step 2: Buy small, and buy few

   One wax, one butter, one carrier oil. Resist the shelf of interesting oils — it is the standard way £150 turns into a cupboard nobody opens, and three materials teach the craft as well as fifteen.

3. 3

   Step 3: Weigh everything, in grams, to 0.1g

   Never by volume and never by spoon. Cosmetic making is a weight discipline and a scale reading to a tenth of a gram is the one non-negotiable purchase. It is also what makes a batch repeatable, which is the difference between a craft and an accident.

4. 4

   Step 4: Melt gently in a water bath

   A heatproof jug standing in a pan of hot water rather than on direct heat. Direct heat scorches oils, changes how they smell, and is how people burn themselves. Melt fully, and give it a moment at temperature rather than pulling it the instant the last lump goes.

5. 5

   Step 5: Add anything fragrant off the heat, at the end

   Volatile materials go into a cooling mixture rather than a hot one, and they go in last. Gloves for this stage — it is the point of highest concentration and the sensitisation risk is a maker’s risk.

6. 6

   Step 6: Pour, then cool deliberately

   Pour while it is fluid and cool it quickly rather than leaving it out on the side. Slow cooling is what causes the grainy texture people blame on the recipe.

7. 7

   Step 7: Label it with the date and what is in it

   The habit that separates a craft from a cupboard of unmarked tins. Six months later, what it is and when you made it are the two things you will not remember and the two things that decide whether you still use it.

8. 8

   Step 8: Change one thing at a time

   More wax for a firmer stick, more butter for a softer one. Changing two variables gives you a result you cannot attribute, and attributing results is how a maker gets better.

Materials are given here as categories rather than as a shopping list, because understanding what a category does is what lets you read somebody else’s formulation critically — which is the skill this page is actually trying to give you.

• Waxes — Structure. They set a product and decide whether it is a firm stick, a soft salve or a scoopable butter. Beeswax is the traditional one; several plant waxes behave differently and are not interchangeable by weight, which is why a substitution usually changes the texture more than the maker expected.
• Carrier oils — The bulk of most anhydrous products. They differ in how fast they absorb, how heavy they feel and how quickly they go rancid — the last of which decides shelf life in a product with no water in it. Oils high in unsaturated fats go off faster, and that is the practical reason to buy small quantities.
• Butters — Solid fats that sit between oil and wax — shea, cocoa, mango. They provide body without the hardness of wax, and they are the usual source of the graininess complaint, which is a crystallisation behaviour rather than a fault in the material.
• Emulsifiers — What makes water and oil stay mixed, and the entry ticket to creams and lotions. Not one thing: different emulsifiers work at different ratios, temperatures and pH, and this is where home cosmetics stops being intuitive. Using one you do not understand is the usual reason a cream separates a week later.
• Preservatives — Required in anything containing water, and named here as a category with no member identified. A preservative system has to cover bacteria, yeast and mould, has to be used within its working pH, and has to be present at a concentration nobody can verify at home.
• Humectants — Materials that draw and hold water — glycerin most commonly. Only relevant on the water side of the craft, and responsible for a good deal of how a finished lotion feels.
• Fragrance and essential oils — Optional, expensive, and the main sensitisation risk. Usage limits for fragrance materials are set material by material and by product category under the IFRA Standards and are revised by amendment — which is exactly why this page publishes no percentage for any of them. The Standards bind IFRA members rather than the industry at large, and the responsibility for a safe product rests with whoever places it on the market.
• Actives, and why they are not here — Materials included to do something to skin. This is the point where a cosmetic starts making a claim, where evidence and concentration matter most, and where this page stops. Nothing here is a guide to using them.

The craft here is not a set of recipes — it is a set of habits, and they are the part that transfers to any formulation you ever use. They are also, unlike the formulations, entirely publishable: none of what follows is a claim about what is safe on skin.

• Work by weight, in percentages of the batch — Every serious formulation is expressed as percentages summing to 100, which is what makes it scalable from a test batch of 30g to a batch of 500g without arithmetic errors. Volume measurement cannot do this and is why kitchen-style instructions are unrepeatable.
• Make small test batches — Thirty grams tells you almost everything a five hundred gram batch will, at a twentieth of the material cost and with a twentieth of the disappointment. Almost every experienced maker scales up only after a small batch has sat for a fortnight.
• Sanitise, and know what it does not buy you — Clean, dry, sanitised equipment reduces what goes in at the start. It does not preserve anything, because contamination in a water-containing product mostly arrives afterwards with use. Sanitising is necessary and it is not sufficient, and conflating the two is the reasoning error behind most unpreserved creams.
• Temperature matters more than time — Waxes and butters have distinct melting behaviours, emulsions are usually made with both phases at a matched temperature, and volatile materials are lost if added hot. Most texture failures are a temperature story.
• Cool deliberately — How fast a product cools decides its crystal structure and therefore its feel. Quick cooling avoids graininess in butters; some products want a slower set. It is a variable rather than an afterthought.
• Keep a batch record — Date, materials, quantities, temperatures, what you changed and what it was like a month later. This is the single habit that most improves results, it costs nothing, and it is the same discipline the herbal preparations page identifies as the genuinely useful half of that craft.
• Package for the product — A jar invites fingers into a product; a pump or a tube does not. For anything containing water that difference is a preservation question rather than a presentation one, which is why so many commercial lotions are not in jars.
• Watch for the fail signs, and throw it away — Separation, a change in smell, a change in colour, anything visible on the surface. There is no rescuing a contaminated batch and no home test that clears one. Throwing away 30g of materials is the cheap outcome.

• A scale reading to 0.1g — The one purchase that is not optional and the one that most improves results. Around £15–£25 and it will outlast the hobby.
• Heatproof jugs, dedicated — Two or three, kept for this and not returned to cooking. Wax does not fully wash out and the crossover is unpleasant in both directions.
• A water bath — A pan and a trivet is a water bath. Direct heat scorches oils and is the main burn risk in the craft.
• A thermometer — Digital, instant-read. Temperature is the variable behind most texture problems, and guessing at it is the reason a batch is unrepeatable.
• Gloves — For handling concentrated fragrance and essential oils. This is protective equipment for the maker rather than hygiene for the product, and it is the mitigation for the one hazard that is permanent.
• Containers — Tins for balms, and pumps or tubes for anything containing water. The packaging decision is a preservation decision on the water side, which is not obvious until it is pointed out.
• A stick blender, later — For emulsions only. Not needed at all for anhydrous work, and buying it early is a good sign somebody is about to attempt a cream too soon.
• Labels and a notebook — The cheapest equipment here and the most load-bearing. An unlabelled tin six months old is waste, and an unrecorded batch that worked cannot be made again.

This craft has an unusually kind beginning — a first anhydrous balm works on the first afternoon and is genuinely usable — and a steep middle, because the moment water enters a formulation the difficulty changes character entirely. Progression here is mostly about moving from following a recipe to understanding why it is that recipe.

• Anhydrous products first, and stay there a while — Balms, salves, body butters and oil cleansers contain no water, cannot support microbial growth in the same way, and are forgiving of imprecision. Making several and observing how they behave over weeks teaches more about the raw materials than moving on quickly does.
• The step to emulsions, which is the real threshold — A lotion or a cream is a physical system holding oil and water together, and it has to stay together on a shelf, at temperature, for months. This is where the craft becomes applied chemistry rather than cooking, and where most people who give up give up.
• Preservation, treated as a subject rather than an ingredient — The rule itself is under safety, and it does not change. What changes at this stage is that a preservative stops being an ingredient you add and becomes a system you have to reason about — coverage, working pH, and what it does not protect against. Study it before scaling up, not after.
• Working to a formula by percentage rather than to a recipe — The transition that makes everything else possible. Once quantities are recorded as percentages of a batch, a formulation can be scaled, adjusted one variable at a time, and repeated exactly — and a change that improved something can be identified rather than guessed at.
• Keeping records, and testing over time — Batch numbers, dates, and what each batch looked like at one month and at six. Separation, colour change and smell are all information, and without a written record they are anecdotes. This is also the habit that any move towards selling would depend on.
• Building a materials palette deliberately — Buying one new oil, butter or active at a time and using it in several formulations teaches what it contributes. Buying twenty at once produces a shelf and no knowledge, and most of them will pass their shelf life first.
• The point where selling becomes a regulatory question — Supplying cosmetics to other people, including free, brings requirements that making them for yourself does not — the rules section covers where that line sits. It is the largest single step in this craft and it is administrative rather than technical, which surprises people.

• Sensitisation, which does not wear off — The hazard most specific to this craft and the least understood. Sensitisation is not irritation that improves with familiarity — it is an immune response, it is established by repeated exposure, and once you have it you have it. Makers handle concentrated fragrance and essential oil far more often than any user of the finished product does, which is why it is a maker’s problem first. Gloves, ventilation, and not working with concentrated material for long stretches are the ordinary mitigations.
• Preservation, and why water changes everything — Anything containing water needs a preservative system, and the commonest error in the hobby is believing that an antioxidant is one. Contamination is usually invisible, it arrives with use rather than during making, and a home maker has no way of testing for it. This page publishes no preservative, no percentage and no shelf life, because a wrong preservation system is worse than knowing you have none.
• Hot wax — The only thing here that can hurt somebody immediately. Molten wax is well above the temperature of boiling water and it sticks to skin. A heatproof jug in a water bath rather than direct heat, sleeves and no distractions, and never move a full jug across a room you have not looked at first.
• Regulation, which is real and is not detailed here — The line is commercial activity rather than money. Supply “in the course of a commercial activity”, paid or free, makes something a cosmetic product being placed on the market, with a qualified safety assessment, a responsible person, a product information file and a notification behind it. Making for yourself is outside that entirely, and so is a genuine private gift. The rules section sets out the shape; the regulator and a cosmetic safety assessor own the detail.
• What is out of scope — Soap making, which needs sodium hydroxide and is a different craft with a different hazard. Anything intended to treat a skin condition, which is a medicinal claim and a different regulatory regime entirely. And anything for use on broken skin, on babies, or near eyes, none of which this page addresses.

This is the section this page was published without, because the reading had not been done. It has now, and the reading changed the answer rather than confirming it.

The question almost every maker asks is *when can I sell this*, and the question the law actually answers is a slightly different one: when is a product being placed on the market at all. The Regulation defines making a cosmetic product available on the market as any supply “in the course of a commercial activity, whether in return for payment or free of charge”. The load-bearing words are *in the course of a commercial activity* — not the money.

That cuts in both directions, and it is the thing most accounts of this get wrong in one direction or the other. Free samples handed out at a stall to promote what you sell are supply in the course of a commercial activity and are fully caught. A tin given to a friend, outside any commercial activity, is not placing a product on the market. An earlier version of this page said a tin handed to a colleague sat in the same regulated space as one sold; that was wrong and this section is the correction.

What follows is the shape of the obligations at orientation level. Every specific requirement is left to the regulator, because the annexes, the thresholds and the notification service all change, and a summary written here would go stale silently while continuing to read as authoritative.

• Making for yourself is not regulated — There is no notification, no assessment and no registration for a product you make and use yourself. That is the whole of the position for most people reading this page, and it is worth stating plainly because a great deal of what is written about home cosmetics implies otherwise.
• A cosmetic product, in law — Anything intended to be placed in contact with the external parts of the body — skin, hair, nails, lips — or the teeth and the mouth, mainly to clean, perfume, change appearance, protect, keep in good condition or correct body odour. A balm, a lotion, a lip product and a scrub are all cosmetic products. Anything intended to be ingested, inhaled or injected is not, and something intended to treat a condition is a different regime again.
• The Responsible Person — A product may not be placed on the market unless there is a responsible person established in the UK for it. For a maker selling their own work, that is the maker. The regulator is explicit that the address must be a real UK established address and that mail forwarding and PO box addresses do not count.
• The safety assessment, which is the real threshold — Before a product goes on the market it must have undergone a safety assessment and have a safety report drawn up. This is the requirement that surprises people and the one that cannot be worked around: the assessor must hold a university-level qualification in pharmacy, toxicology, medicine or a similar discipline. A maker is not permitted to form this judgement about their own formulation, however carefully they have read. It is a professional service, bought per formulation.
• The Product Information File — A file per product holding the safety assessment, the formulation, manufacturing information and evidence for any effect claimed. The regulator’s guidance states it must be kept for ten years after the last batch, which is a longer commitment than most people expect.
• Notification — Before a product is made available, information about it is submitted to the Office for Product Safety and Standards through the cosmetic product notification service. Free to do; a step, not an approval.
• Labelling — The container has to carry the responsible person’s name and address, the weight or volume, a durability date or period-after-opening, precautions for use, a batch number, what the product does, and the ingredients in the standardised international naming. The ingredient list is the part hobby products most often get wrong, because the names are not the ones on the supplier’s bottle.
• Restricted and prohibited substances — Some substances are banned outright and others restricted by concentration or by product type; colourants, preservatives and UV filters may only be used where they appear on the relevant lists. Substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction are banned. This page reproduces none of those lists, for the same reason it publishes no formulation — they are amended, and a stale list read as current is worse than no list.
• What this section is not — Not legal advice, not a compliance checklist, and not a route to certifying anything. It exists so a reader can tell which side of the line they are on and what is behind the line if they cross it. The regulator’s guidance and a qualified cosmetic safety assessor are the owners of everything past that point.

• Lip balms and sticks — The smallest anhydrous project and the usual first thing anybody makes. Firm, portable, quick to set, and it teaches the wax-to-oil relationship in a single afternoon.
• Salves and ointments — Softer anhydrous products in a tin. Traditionally where infused oils end up, which is the direct overlap with herbal preparations — and the point at which the claims about what a salve is for start appearing everywhere except here.
• Body butters — Whipped anhydrous mixtures, mostly butter with some oil. Texture is the whole craft — this is where graininess and crystallisation are learnt properly.
• Oil-based cleansers and balms — Anhydrous products designed to be used with water at the point of use rather than to contain it. A neat category because they feel like the water side without any of its problems.
• Scrubs — Sugar or salt in oil. Anhydrous and easy, with one non-obvious catch: they live in a wet bathroom and water gets introduced by the user, which quietly makes them a preservation question after all.
• Creams and lotions — The emulsion side, and a genuine step up rather than the next recipe. Emulsifier, preservative system, matched-temperature phases, and a result you cannot verify at home. Worth reaching, and not first.
• Bath products — Bath bombs, melts and salts. Chemistry rather than emulsion — a large and popular branch with its own failure modes, mostly about humidity.
• Soap making, which is elsewhere — Deliberately not part of this subject. Sodium hydroxide at working strength in a domestic kitchen is a different hazard, a different craft and a different regulatory position, and it has its own entry rather than being the hard end of this one.