Archive | August 2011

cleopatra’s face cream

Aug11

I’ve never considered myself skilled at making face creams until I experimented with omitting shea butter and cocoa butter – two staple ingredients listed in every face cream recipe I’ve ever come across. It took me a while to realize the reason my creams came out so grainy in texture and seemed to separate quickly could be due to these ingredients.

Then I discovered the wonders of coconut oil.

I use it in cooking, and generally think it’s fabulous for one’s health. And now, I use it in my face cream! It’s an oil that is solid at room temperature, therefore it adds some of the firmness needed to create lovely creams, without being tempermental.

I’m excited  to share my precious face cream recipe with you;  I think it is divine, and I’ve named it Cleopatra’s Face Cream after the legendary lover of roses. I am a serious rose lover too, and in this recipe I used rose water, rose infused oil, and a lot of rose absolute essential oil for the scent. It’s amazing.
Feel free to adopt the name and this recipe as your own — please enjoy, I’m happy to share it!

INGREDIENTS:

* All amounts are approximate, I’m never very strict with amounts*

20g beeswax

1/3 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup herbal infused oil (or pure olive, sesame, apricot, almond oil)

1 tsp of rose essential oil (or your own favourite essential oil e.g lavender, rose geranium, vanilla, ylang ylang, jasmine, neroli, chamomile, sandlewood the options and combinations are endless) and of course you can make this unscented too!
The above ingredients account for your oil group.
The remaining two ingredients below account for your water group.

100 aloe vera gel

150ml rose water

Basically, a cream is 50/50 oil and water. The alchemy is in getting these two substances which normally repel one another to infuse and become one. The result is a very beautiful, nourishing substance that is simply glorious.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Place your beeswax and coconut oil  into a glass measuring cup, that measures 2 cups. Then place that into a large pot with simmering water that rises to approximately the 1/2 cup mark. This hot water bath is hot enough to melt the wax and oil (coconut oil is solid unless heated) so you do not burn the wax or oil.

coconut oil and beeswax melting

2. Meanwhile, mix your water group ingredients in a separate measuring cup. Set aside.

3. The wax and oil will eventually become completely liquified. This takes approximately 10 – 15mins. Once no solid particles are visible, lift the measuring cup out of the hot water bath, and leave standing until it is warm to the touch, but not hot. Approximately body temperature. This only takes a few minutes. Don’t walk to far away, you do not want these otherwise solid waxes / oils to harden!

These next few steps need to happen pretty quickly, because as the oils are warm, but neither cold or hot, the molecules are receptive and we need to get them to bond with water.

4. Now, pour your herbal infused oil into the now-warm but not hot wax and coconut oil mixture. See this post for how to make herbal infused oils.

Here I am pouring a St. John's wort infused oil, rose infused oil, and balm of Gilead infused oil (all separate oils I pre-mixed together) into my beeswax and coconut oil that was just melted. Look at how these herbal infused oils sparkle!

Now, having just poured cool / room temperature oils into warm-body temperature oil/wax it may try to harden and look like this:

Don’t worry! Everything is still ok. However, quickly scoop this concoction into an excellent and very powerful blender if you have one– or my preferred method– a 1 litre mason jar and mix with a stick blender. Use a spatula to get all of the oil/wax into your blender / jar.

5. Then, start blending, while gently pouring your water group into the oil group- this is the amazing part! We are encouraging the water molecules to bind with the oil molecules, to homogenize, and become one.

This is what it looks like when water and oil bind together

Very quickly, you have cream! Blend until the water and oil have clearly homogenized.

Because the blender motor is warm, the cream may seem a bit runny. Once you transfer into jars, it will settle into a lovely texture.

Done!

Now you can scoop into little 50ML salve jars which health food stores carry, and give away as beautiful gifts. This makes a lot of cream – approximately ten 50ML jars. Or, simply put in any glass container, and affix with a label (and a date–I always date my concoctions).

Notes:

- My suggestion for clean up is to wipe everything down with newspaper, that way eliminating much of the oil so when you wash up everything isn’t a greasy disaster
- You can also rub excess cream all over your body
- I have never had any cream go moldy. However they can turn moldy or “off” if you use tap water. I always use a distilled water like rose water, and aloe vera gel (which is mostly water).
- This cream has a very long shelf life. However I’d recommend use it up within a year.

Enjoy and have fun!

Herbal Oils

Aug9

As the strength of the hot sun coaxs flowers to open, it signals me ’tis the season to get busy making herbal oils.

For those new to making herbal medicines, making an herbal oil may seem an intimidating task, but rest assured, once you’ve done it, it soon becomes one of the easiest aspects of medicine making. The rewards of this skill are plenty – herbal oils can be fashioned into so many wonderful healing delights: massage oils, healing salves, chest rubs for colds and coughs, moisturizing lotions, and beautiful face creams to name just a few.

While you can make an herbal oil with dried herbs, I prefer making mine with fresh. I recently made some fresh St. John’s wort oil (Hypericum perforatum). Here’s how I did it– go ahead and apply these instructions to any other herb suitable to make into an oil. Just a few examples of herbal oils that you can make this time of year are: mullein flowers, calendula flowers, lavender flowers, rose petals, plaintain leaf.

1. First, select your location. I found a nice clump of St.John’s Wort with new buds and new flowers coming up. On a dry sunny day,  pinch off a combination of almost-opening buds and newly open buds, being sure to avoid the wilted, exhausted flower heads that are on their way dying. I filled a 1 litre mason jar about a third of the way full of blossoms, brought it into the house, and covered the blossoms by filling my jar almost full with organic sesame oil.

St.John's Wort just picked and covered in oil. I immediately set it on a sunny window sill. All the flowers will eventually settle to the bottom as they become saturated over time with the oil .

2. Then, I set it on a sunny window sill, and covered the lid with paper towel, and secured the paper towel with a mason jar lid ring. There are two purposes for this: 1) the paper towel permits moisture to evaporate in the hot and dry environment of the window sill  2) prevents bugs, dust, and other particles from ending up in my oil.

My medicine making companion placed a crystal atop the jar to charge it with crystalline energy....anything is possible...

- I chose sesame oil because it’s more stable than olive oil, readily available where I live, and it’s a thinner oil than olive oil hence less greasy in texture.
- I filled my jar not quite to the top with oil, because, as some of you know St.John’s Wort continues to produce new flowers and new fresh buds everyday, about a week when it’s in it’s prime. Thus, I want to leave extra room in my jar should the oil level rise as I add new flowers daily, as they are available by mother nature.
- Yes you read correctly — when I’m making a fresh herbal oil from flowers that are hard to come by in abundance at one time, and tend to produce over a series of days, I collect daily and put them immediately into my jar of oil. I also do this with mullien flowers.

14 days have passed-- Hypericin, the anti-viral constitutent gives the oil a bright red colour. Notice the flowers, exhausted, have floated to the bottom of the jar.

3. I leave this jar undisturbed on my windowsill for a minimum of 10 days – 2 weeks. I do not shake it, and I do not remove it from the location. This is called a Solar Infusion. We are using the powerful heat units of the sun to extract and then transfer the medicinal virtues of the plant into the oil. This can also be done on a very low flame on your kitchen stove.

Freshly pressed St. John's wort oil. This will now sit on a shelf in a cool, dark place until I'm ready to use it. The texured lines you see on the bottom of the jar are just the decorations on the glass jar.

4. After 14 days pass, I separate the plant material from the oil by running it through cheesecloth into a clean, dry bowl or measuring cup. I compost the cheesecloth and exhausted flower blossoms, and once again transfer the now-herbally-infused oil into a clean, bone dry jar, and fasten with a lid. I store this oil in a dark place with even temperature until I am ready to use it.

Up next — I’m going to make a beautiful face cream with this St. John’s Wort oil — Check back later!