Making a Calendula Salve/Balm

About 18 years ago, when LB was a baby, I did a short workshop on making herbal remedies. The teacher was a local herbalist and she talked to us about how to make decoctions and concoctions and I found it fascinating. I can remember buying one of her herbal salves at the time, a Calendula salve that is both anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. At the time I suffered from Athlete's Foot and I found it to be very effective in treating this and re-bought it from her another time.

In recent years, I've not been troubled so much by Athlete's Foot, but LB has recently been diagnosed with Psoriasis on her hand. When we went to Devon, I bought her a calendula cream in a shop that seemed to work quite well in relieving her symptoms. I felt really relieved at the time, but when I tried to use it, I found that it caused my skin to sting. When I looked at the ingredients, I realised that there were quite a lot of chemicals in it, so I decided to make my own.

When I saw Vivi's (from What Vivi Did Next) YouTube video about making cold macerated calendula oil, that can be use to make salves and for other purposes, I decided to try it. I bought some sweet almond oil and some dried calendula petals on eBay and set to making calendula oil, that could later be made into a calendula salve/balm.

To make the oil Vivi added half a jar of the dried calendula petals to half a jar of sweet almond oil, shook them up together and then left them covered on a warm windowsill for 6-7 weeks, so that the calendula would infuse into the oil. The oil is then sieved through muslin to remove the petals and can then be used as an ingredient in a calendula salve.

Fast forward 6 or 7 weeks and the oil was ready to go. It wasn't as dark in colour as Vivi's, possibly because her calendula was freshly dried and used straight from her allotment, but I'm hoping the therapeutic benefits will be the same

Here's my oil and petals mixed in a jar when I first combined them:

Once the 7 weeks were up, I separated the petals from the oil using a muslin jam strainer and was left with the lovely calendula oil, which I then used to make some salve/balm.

Vivi's recipe for the salve was:

1/4 cup beeswax

1/2 cup Calendula Oil

1/4 cup Coconut oil

You can also add essential oil such as Calendula or Lavender or whatever else you wish and 1/2 teaspoon of Vitamin E oil which acts as a preservative.

The ingredients are then heated over a bain marie until they have all melted and then can be poured it into small pots and allowed to set. This made two good sized pots of salve and there's probably enough oil left to make another two.

This is a super simple recipe, that is so easy to make.

Here's a picture of the finished salve:

I'm hoping this might work even better for LB, as it is completely natural.  It's also a good thing to have in your medicine cabinet for burns, cuts, grazes, etc. I'll let you know how well we get on with it.