Updated February 14, 2022
Is there anything more beautiful, relaxing and intoxicating all at once than standing near a real lavender field? What lovely color and romantic scent! Nature brings us such joy and beauty!
For Valentine’s Day, I had the idea to create a hand-crafted healing body butter.
I’ve been thinking about making some infused lavender oil for a while. My clients often ask me about which herbals might be good as complementary care for anxiety. (Note: This website never recommends substituting herbals for needed psychotropic medications, this website only recommends herbals for complementary use.)
Lavender has long been known for its marked sedative effects on the nervous system and healing effects on the skin. This is due to the chemical constituents of linalyl acetate, linalool, and cineole, which penetrate the skin easily and enter the bloodstream (Babar et al, 2015; The Herbarium, 2018) .
So for my Valentine’s Day mixture, I thought I’d use make infused lavender oil to create a soothing and lightly scented carrier base oil. I began the project early, around Thanksgiving, before the Christmas hoopla began! I took a few moments out of the start of the holiday hoopla to infuse jojoba oil with some purchased dried lavender flowers and put the mixture out on a sunny windowsill. In a few weeks, the lavender oil was nicely infused with color and scent. I pulled the top off of the mixture and the scent is subtle, not overpowering, like a fake lavender scent, just nicely infused floral in jojoba. Heavenly! Since I have a bunch of lavender flowers left over, later I think I’ll use the rest of the flowers to make a stuffed pillow with a washable cover for my craniosacral clients.
I looked around my homemade herbal apothecary and realized I still had a little infused calendula oil left from the 2018 Summer batch. This will definitely be part of the mixture!
The calendula plant, with its molecular constituents of flavonoids, triterpenes, saponins, has many healing anti-inflammatory, tissue and wound healing properties, so like lavender, it is also soothing to the skin (The Herbarium, 2018). (I want to use up the 2018 supply! Spring is coming, the garden will be blooming once again, and I’ll be making the 2019 batch of infused oil.)
Mixing the oils, I took a sniff. I just wanted a very subtle scent, not overpowering, so I wasn’t planning on adding any essential oils to the mix. The herbal infused oils have the same chemical constituents as essential oils but on a more subtle level, with more subtle scents and effects and are less likely to be irritants.
I took 1/2 cup of the calendula and lavender oils and mixed this with 1/2 cup of melting shea butter plus 1/2 cup coconut oil in a double boiler. Then, I cooled the mixture for two hours in the refrigerator and whipped up it all up with a hand held mixer.
This is a very soft body butter. It will probably melt outside the refrigerator. So take it out when you are ready to use it! And, having no preservatives, it probably won’t keep too long. Store it in the refrigerator, and it will hold the whipped form and last about 6 -7 months.
Voila! A romantic lavender-rose soft body butter! This is thick mixture, so it won’t be absorbed into the skin as fast as an emulsified lotion.
References
Babar Ali; Naser Ali Al-Wabel; Saiba Shams; Aftab Ahamad; Shah Alam Khan; Firoz Anwar (2015). Essential oils used in aromatherapy: A systemic review. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine, Vol. 5(8), August 2015, 601-61. Retrieved January 8, 2018 from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apjtb.2015.05.007
The Herbarium (2018). Monograph: Calendula. Retrieved January 8, 1018 from https://herbarium.theherbalacademy.com/monographs/#/monograph/2025
The Herbarium (2018). Monograph: Lavender. Retrieved January 8, 2018 from https://herbarium.theherbalacademy.com/monographs/#/monograph/1004