Making your own DIY tinted lip balm using food colouring can be a hit or a miss

Lately, beauty TikTokers have been getting into concocting many products. Their latest craze is to play chemist by using food colouring to create their ideal lip stain shades. Photo: AFP

TikTokers are always looking to innovate and find tricks and hacks to reduce their makeup budget. One of their latest finds is known as "food colouring lip stain", which is basically lip balm tinted with food colouring.

DIY makeup and skincare is a good way of knowing what goes onto your skin, allowing you to favour natural and healthy products.

Lately, beauty TikTokers have been getting into concocting many products. Their latest craze is to play chemist by using food colouring to create their ideal lip stain shades.

Read more: Weird 'peanut butter nail' beauty gimmick draws flak on TikTok

A beauty TikToker (@sarah_wolak), with 468 000 followers, launched the trend in July.

The young woman uses yellow, blue and red liquid colourants to create her own shades, from raspberry to a deeper red, which she then applies to her lips with a cotton swab. Her many followers then tried it out, leading to #foodcoloringlipstain generating over 54 million views on TikTok.

Now, beauty influencers are having a field day making their own lip balm shades, kind of like kids mixing up colours in a watercolour activity. And they are impressed by the coverage and the transfer-free effect of this technique.

Finally, here's a product that lasts all day, they say.

All in all, this seems like a great alternative to buying lipsticks of all colours. However, the shades are often surprising on the lips, and do not necessarily resemble those of the initial mixture.

And while the food colouring used may not be natural at all, they are safe to use, but not necessarily safe for the skin.

Read more: Can you use fruit as 'natural' makeup? Social media users think so

The dyes are quite drying for the lips and can cause some problems for the most sensitive skins. It's also a very staining product, and some people have learned that the hard way.

So if you want to try this trend, be careful with your clothes and avoid wearing the product every day.

And, to push the food-based makeup trend even further, why not follow up by using fruit as makeup and peanut butter as nail colour? – AFP Relaxnews