Guilty Pleasures

by Kate Jones at Omshanti

I’ve been wanting to add a new lip balm flavour for a while. (Truth:
I’ve been itching to add a new lip balm flavour. Or two. Or five. In
fact, I could probably add a new one every week for the rest of the
year…but I know better than that.)

In any case, I had a lot of ideas, and took a good long while settling
down to just one. I’d found an all-natural vanilla flavour oil at a
reasonable price a while ago (and, if you’ve ever tried to price
vanilla, you know how hard that is) and I was determined to use it in
something. So that narrowed it down — vanilla and what? — but there
was still the rest to figure out.

I thought about doing a fairly complex blend — something like my
Wintry Mix or Chai lip balms — but the pure clean scent of the vanilla
lured me elsewhere. So it would be a two-ingredient balm, vanilla and
something else, but what?

I contemplated lavender, I thought about orange; they’re combinations I’ve seen elsewhere, and they’re successful enough. But I don’t want to only do what others have done, so I looked through the rest of my essential oils, tested several with the vanilla…and struck upon tangerine.

I sniffed the two small bottles of oils together and pronounced it good. I began heating the oils, added the beeswax, waited for it to cool enough to test, and wandered off to design the new labels. When I came back I was in for a surprise — not only are the two delightful
together, but I was wafted back into my childhood on the scent! I’d reinvented the Orange Julius. Only in lip balm form.

…how do I manage these things?