Making Homemade Healing Salve

We have homemade salves a few times over the past five years. We have made healing salve, balm of Gilead, and St. Michael's oil. Each of these are wonderful salves with slightly different beneficial properties. We have given away several jars from each batch (these make lovely gifts!) and they have all been well received by the recipients.

Of the three kinds we have made so far, our all-purpose, go-to salve has been the Herbal Healing Salve. Each batch is slightly different based on what infused oils we make and use each year, but the basic recipe we follow is this one we put on our website. We have used this for rashes, cuts, bruises, dry skin, swollen tissues, and insect bites. We were nearly out of the healing salve we made a couple of years ago, so it was time to make more.

We started this year's batch by solar infusing a mix of olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil with calendula, plantain, and a small amount of comfrey. Once that was done infusing (see DIY Infused Oils for instructions on infusing oils), we mixed that with a bit of rose oil we infused earlier and kept in the refrigerator until we were ready to use it. Healing salve can be made without infused oils by using only carrier oils and essential oils, but we prefer to use infused oils to increase the healing and soothing properties in our salve. The end result is nourishing, moisturizing, and healing.

Melting beeswax in the infused oil


The process is explained in the article noted above, but the shortened version is that we melt beeswax in the infused oil over a double boiler and stir it well. Once mixed, we pour it into jars, add essential oils, and allow the jars to cool. 

The finished salve

Once cooled, you just add a lid and store in a cool, dry, and dark place. This helps to keep the oils from going rancid as quickly. You can also add a few drops of Vitamin E to help preserve the salve and add more skin nourishing vitamins.

Because each batch has a different mix of carrier oils, herbs, and essential oils, each batch can look slightly different. The batch in this picture had more of a green color due to the higher concentration of plantain infused oil, while this year's batch is a brighter yellow due to the higher concentration of calendula infused oil and beeswax pellets that were slightly more filtered.


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