One of my favorite things to make is a good nourishing salve with healing herbs like calendula, lavender, plantain, St. John’s wart or chamomile. We use it in our home for almost everything! Cuts, burns, diaper rash, chapped lips, dry hands and the list goes on! I make multiple jars to keep in my purse, bathroom, kitchen and to give to friends who have new babies. They also make great teacher gifts at Christmas so they can use it on dry skin through the winter.
You can use a variety of herbs or just one…it’s totally up to you! I love a combo of calendula, lavender and chamomile personally because it smells like heaven! This is a two step process. First you need to infuse those magical herbs into a base oil like olive oil (my favorite) or sunflower oil and then you’ll combine that infused oil into beeswax and shea butter to make your salve. Don’t be intimidated, I promise it’s easier than it sounds!
Step 1:
Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Use a kitchen scale to weigh your herbs. We are going to use a 1 oz herbs to 10 oz oil ratio. In an oven safe glass bowl combine 1 oz of herbs of your choice and 10 oz of olive oil. Make sure the oil completely covers the herbs. Turn oven off and place bowl in oven for 24 hours. I usually start this at night and then in the morning will remove bowl, preheat oven again, turn it off then put bowl back for the rest of the 24 hours to get a really good infusion.
After the 24 hours are over you are going to remove the herbs from the oil. Grab another bowl big enough to place a colander on top of it. Layer the colander with cheesecloth. Now pour the herbs and oil into the cheesecloth covered colander. Once you have everything out of the bowl grab the cheesecloth around the herbs and give it a good squeeze to get those last drops of oil out. That is where the good stuff is! Discard when done. You should have approximately 8 oz of infused oil in the new bowl. Set aside for step two.
Step 2:
With your kitchen scale weigh 1 oz of beeswax and 1 oz of shea butter. Combine with herb infused olive oil and either microwave for a couple minutes or double boil to melt beeswax and shea butter. Stir well and pour into jars or tins and let cool. Avoid moving after filling jars. This should make approximately 12 oz. 4 oz jelly jars make great containers giving you 3…just enough to share with a friend or two!
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