DIY Lipstick Tutorial

Lipstick is very important to me. Wearing lots of it is one of my core mission values. Whether it’s a cheap Wet n Wild shade or an outrageously expensive Anna Sui lipstick ring, whether it comes from Walgreens or Sephora, I’ve never met a lip color I didn’t love, and I will admit to a serious lipstick-buying habit. But sometimes, no matter how much lipstick I’ve already squirreled away, no matter how many shades I have…something’s missing. Usually this feeling happens when I decide that the shade I need for a particular look is not to be found in my makeup bag. Maybe it doesn’t even exist! All my reds are too pink, my burgundies not evil enough. And often in these moments, I have neither the time to pop by Sephora nor $24 to drop on a new lipstick.

With Halloween coming, I was cruising the drugstore aisles in search of a new color. I needed a blue lipstick—not just any blue, but a very specific shade of blue: Laura-Palmer-on-a-gurney blue. But I couldn’t find anything even close to that color. On the way out of the store, I stopped in the school supply section for some pens, and that’s when I saw it: a 64-pack of Crayola crayons.

Hmmmmmm. Weren’t crayons made out of highly pigmented, nontoxic wax? Weren’t crayons so safe that babies eat them and grow up to be productive members of society? What if…I melted down a crayon with an oil, poured it into a mold, and made…DIY CRAYON LIPSTICK IN EVERY SHADE OF THE RAINBOW??? WHAT THEN?

I went home immediately and googled it. Ahh, people had already beat me to this idea; there were several recipes for crayon lipstick already on the web. I made my own recipe, though, and tinkered around with it until it was just right, Here we go!