Very easy three ingredient hand balm

My garden is having a second wave, roses are blooming once more in this beautiful weather and sunny calendula’s are reflowering all around the garden which is lucky as it gives me another opportunity to make some more of these very easy hand balms.

Inspired and encouraged by a conversation I had with the wonderful Louise from Salix Moon. I had wanted to incorporate my garden treasures into a beauty balm for a while, I know how the garden can positively affect my mind and soul and have been curious to look into other ways of using the garden to benefit my well being. I have seen balms made many times but often with too many different ingredients for a beginner.  It took me a while to find a recipe but I think this one is a great start. I use my balm every night before bed to restore my hard working hands and get them ready for another day.

Calendulas are great to grow, they come in a variety of colours, self seed like crazy and generally flower when nothing else does. You can plant them throughout the year, I’ll do a spring, summer and autumn sowing and pop them around the garden in any gap I have. Another cutting patch essential would be roses –  I have two favourite roses that I’d recommend for this project both pink and both with a gorgeous fragrance – Eustacia Vye and Zephirine Douhine. It’s my personal opinion that every cutting bed should have at least one rose in it and these have been flowering so well for me this year.

Let’s get back to the hand balm, here’s how to make…

You’ll need – A clean jar with lid (a pesto size jar is perfect),  a smaller jar with lid for the finished balm (I used an old face mask jar). A base oil such as almond, a mix of fresh flowers – I used calendula, rose petals and lavender,  beeswax and shea butter.

Step 1 – Take your clean pesto size jar and fill with petals – pour your oil over the top so it fills the jar. Leave to infuse in a cool dark place for a few weeks. Make sure you don’t forget, I think this was the fourth time I actually remembered to check my oil before it went off.

Step 2 – Taking a clean bowl, strain the oil through a sieve. I lined mine with muslin to stop any tiny bits of debris making their way into the oil.

Step 3 – Heat up some water in a pan and set a heat proof dish on top. Using the ratio 2:2:1, add two tablespoons of shea butter, two tablespoons of beeswax and one tablespoon of your infused oil.

Step 4 – Keeping the heat gentle, let the ingredients melt and stir occasionally. Once melted you could add some essential oils but I left mine natural.

Step 5 – Pour into your container and leave to cool, once cool place the lid back on the jar and you are ready to use.

There is so much more to discover on this subject and I am an absolute beginner but I did really enjoy researching a recipe and hope to have a chance to experiment again soon. You can see my pinterest board here.