For all of you DIY gardeners out there,

Here is a quick “how-to” on how to make an essential oil herbal healing salve.  The step-by-step process shows you how to make an herbal salve with herbs that you can forage or are able to grow in your garden.  The best part about it is that you can use any number of herbs, it doesn’t have to be the exact ones that I shown here to best suit your needs.

The first step in the process is to make an herbal oil infusion.  There are a few different ways to do this, but the first thing you need are herbs.  This particular salve used plantain leaves, comfrey leaves, yarrow leaves and flowers, lavender flowers and lemon balm leaves.

Once you have your herbs, you need to dry them.  Hang them upside down for several weeks, use a drying screen.  It’s important to make sure that your  herbs are completely dry before you make your oil infusion or else mold can form and it will go rancid.

Now it’s time to make your infused herbal oil.  There are a couple of ways to do this, the first is to simply put your dried herbs in oil and let it sit for several weeks.  You can use several different types of oil, but olive oil is the most common.  If you need your infused oil sooner, or if you want to use coconut oil which is usually solid at room temperature, you can gently heat the herbs in the oil over a double boiler or in a slow cooker on low heat.
Crush up your dried herbs a bit and put them in your vessel, then cover with oil.  The more oil you make, the more salve you can make.  Heat for several hours, making sure that it doesn’t get too hot and cook the herbs.  I did this in the evening and turned off the heat before bed, letting the herbs continue to steep overnight.

Strain it with a sieve and cheesecloth into a bowl that you will be able to use as a double boiler.

Use the cheesecloth and squeeze every last bit of oil into the bowl.  Now that you have your herbal infusion, it’s time to gather the rest of the necessary ingredients.

Beeswax (or carnauba wax for vegans), essential oils of your choice, and some sort of vessel to put your finished salve in (such as these tins) is all that you’ll need.  Use about 1 ounce of beeswax (one small stick) and lavender and lemon essential oils, to accentuate the lavender flowers and lemon balm in the salve.

Now everything comes together quite quickly.  Put your bowl of herb infused oil onto a pot of boiling water, double boiler style.  Cut your wax into chunks and add it to the warm oil.
Add drops of the essential oils you chose, such as 12 drops of lavender and 6 drops of lemon.  Once the oil heats up the wax should melt fairly quickly.  When it’s completely melted, take the bowl off the heat (it’s probably hot!) and carefully pour it into your tins or vessel of choice.
This batch that I made yielded two 4 ounce and two 2 ounce containers.  I like to make various sizes so that I can stash them in different places such as my purse or the car.  Once the tins are full let them sit undisturbed for a few hours to solidify.

It’s pretty amazing what we can make at home with just a few simple ingredients and a bit of time.

This salve is good for minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, bites, stings, rashes and dry skin.  I use it on my hands and feet all the time.  Not only does it have astounding healing powers with all of the medicinal herbs that it contains, but it smells divine!

For the full article and pictures, go to Eupterra’s page!