How to make a Herbal Salve

It isn’t difficult and it is so enjoyable to make salves, oils and tinctures.

At the most basic level to make a salve you will need only two ingredients you will need wax such as beeswax and you’ll need an herbal infused oil.

This can be an herbal oil that you have made yourself or you can actually purchase herbal oils that are already made for you.

But I do highly recommend making your own oil it will be far superior to anything that you can purchase.

You can find your beeswax from beekeeper’s or you can also purchase it from candle supply stores or maybe even craft supply shops. I get mine from a local bee-keeper straight from the hive.

You can certainly find it in herb and health food stores. Just make sure that it’s pure and untreated and you want to make sure that it really smells like honey you’ll know you’re getting a really good quality that way.

So what we’re going to do is melt the beeswax in a pan.

Some people use a double boiler but I just put it directly into a pan on really low heat. (I recommend the double boiler method for beginners.

I do like to use a pan with a bit of a lip on it so it really makes pouring that salve out a lot more simple.

I’ve seen several different proportions of wax to oil and you can change up this proportion depending on how soft or hard you would like your salve. Softer salve have more absorbency.

So they really get into the skin a lot more easily whereas the harder sags are a bit more protective, you might want to use those for your lip balm and they’re also better in warm weather. They won’t melt quite as easily as some of those more softer salves.

What I’m using here for the dandelions salve that I’m making is three tablespoons of wax that I will be melting and I will be adding to that one cup of oil.

Some other recipes that I’ve seen would be a thousand milligrams of oil to 170 grams of wax. And again you can increase or decrease those proportions as you see fit.

What you’re going to want to do is once you melt that wax very gently on very low heat is to add the oil and stir till everything is mixed well and take off the heat.

You don’t want it to stay on the heat for very long. A good idea is to test your consistency before pouring into your final containers. You can do that by just taking a tablespoon of the wax oil mixture and just put it in the refrigerator for a minute or two it won’t take very long.

And once that solidifies see if you like that consistency if you would like it a little harder or little softer. Add a little more oil or wax as appropriate.

Once that consistency is just how you like it. Go ahead and pour that into some storage containers.

I really like these shallow tins.

It’s very easy to access the salve and works really beautifully and they fit nicely into travel kits or first aid kits.

Feel free to play with some of these recipes. There are many other additions you can add to the salve and we will be given you more recipes on the website.

You don’t need to but you can really have fun with it and really make some quality amazing medicinal products.

You could add essential oils for example right at the very end before pouring into your containers.

You could add some honey vitamin E, you may even want to substitute some coconut oil or cocoa butter for some of the wax. I also use Shea butter for some of my creams and salves

Coconut oil tends to be a little more liquid whereas cocoa butter is almost the same consistency as the wax. And they can really add some additional medicinal properties to your salve.

So take a look at some of those.

Once you have poured the salve into your containers you’re going to want to make sure that you label that with what you have made. State what the ingredients are that you used and also date it. These salves should be good if stored properly for about three years and proper storage would be in a cool dark dry place.

Instead of using something similar to the tins that I’ve used here you could also purchase lip balm containers and they are wonderful.They roll up just like the professional containers that you buy at the store and it makes just a lovelybeautiful product. It’s also really great gifts.

A real simple recipe for a lip balm would be a cup of apricot oil with a quarter cup of wax.

So for parts of oil to one part of wax and just add a tiny touch of honey and a few drops of essential oil.

I really like wintergreen but you could use any type of flavor that you like and that just makes a beautiful lip balm.

So enjoy your salve have fun with it experiment and be creative.