Making a salve can be fun and rewarding. Its really so simple to make! This is my favorite recipe for creating a simple skin healing and scar reducing salve.
Choose what herbs you would like to infuse. Do your research because you may find some that are better suited to you. Here are a few of my favorites for skin healing: Calendula, Comfrey Leaf, St. Johns, Rosemary & Yarrow.
Choose a base oil. Olive Oil is a very easy and affordable oil for infusing herbs as a base for your salve recipe. You may also consider: Grapeseed oil, almond oil, coconut oil or cocoa butter.
Choose your finishing oils. Essential oils, vitamin E Oil, rosehip seed oil, other infused oils such as Arnica or Poplar.
Pick out your containers and have them ready.
To Infuse the herbs with your oil base:
Place herb blend into oven safe glass container.
Put base oil blend on top of bulk herbs. Make sure that you cover everything with about an inch of oil on top of herbs.
Let sit in oven on lowest setting (around 200 or 225 degrees), uncover and let infusion happen for about 2 hours. Keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn. If your oven seems to hot then crack the door.
After 2 hours, remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature. Take cheesecloth and strain all the herbs from the oil. Don’t leave any herbs in the oil or it will spoil your batch.
Blending your infused oil to make salve:
Take your oil infusion and put in top pan of a double boiler.
Melt all together. One of my favorite tricks for getting the appropriate consistency is the spoon trick. Take your melted blend and put a small amount on a spoon. Place in the fridge for about 5 min. Pull it out and see how the salve feels. If its to hard then add a little more oil, if its to soft add a little more wax.
In a separate container blend together all your essential oils and finishing oils.
Line up all your containers for the completed salves.
Divide up your finishing oil into the empty containers.
Take base oil and wax blend and pour into your containers. Let sit over night. Don’t move them for 24 hours if possible to let them completely harden.
