🌼 DIY Calendula Cream Recipe | Homemade Herbal Skin Cream

This is my calendula flower bed and these beautiful, cheerful golden flowers have an incredible amount of uses. Everything from edible flowers to skincare and that's what I'm going to show you today. How to take flowers that you might already have growing in your garden and transform them into something that you can use every day to keep your skin feeling great. Hi, I'm Tanya from Lovely Greens and I share ways that you can make handmade soap and botanical skincare from the comfort of your kitchen. And I love using homegrown plants like these calendula. So make sure to give this video a thumbs up, subscribe, and click that little bell icon and then you'll get notifications for when new videos are out. So let's get on to making homemade calendula skin cream. This rich nourishing calendula cream is made with calendula-infused oil, cocoa butter, and fragrant rose hydrosol. You create it by heating two separate jars of ingredients then mixing them together until a smooth, creamy emulsion forms. What makes this a calendula cream recipe is the calendula oil that you use in it. This is homemade calendula-infused oil that I've made using homegrown flowers. These ones right behind me. And in a recent video I shared how to harvest and dry the flowers out to make infused oil. It's pretty simple and the easiest way of making calendula oil is taking a jar like this, filling it about halfway with dried flowers, and then topping it up to the neck with your choice of carrier oil. Leave it to infuse a month, strain it, and you've got calendula oil that you can use in all sorts of recipes including this one. This calendula cream recipe makes enough to fill a small 100 milliliter 3.4 ounce jar. The ingredients should ideally be measured by weight, but I've included approximate volume measurements as well. Measure the calendula infused oil, cocoa butter, beeswax, and emulsifying wax into one heatproof jar. In the second, measure the rose hydrosol, vegetable glycerin, and baking soda. In a third container, measure the cooldown phase. This includes an additional amount of rose hydrosol, the preservative, and essential oil. The essential oil is optional, but please don't exceed the amount given. To begin making the calendula cream, we want to gently heat the water and oil phases. Create a makeshift double boiler by placing a potholder or a folded cloth at the bottom of a wide sauce pan. Set the jars containing the water phase and oil phase on top and then fill the pan with a couple of inches of water. Bring the water in the pan to a simmer and heat the jars until the oil phase ingredients are completely melted. Stirring helps speed this along. Once the oil phase is melted, remove both the jars from the pan and set them on the kitchen counter. Stir both of them, then carefully pour the water phase ingredients into the oil phase jar. The contents will turn an opaque, creamy color, but still be liquid. Now it's time to blend. Stir the ingredients together using a spoon or glass stirrer for a minute, then leave it to rest and stir again. Repeat this until the calendula cream begins thickening. It can take up to 20 minutes when stirring by hand. When the cream is about 40 degrees Celsius, which is 104 Fahrenheit or cooler, add the cooling phase ingredients and stir well. Check the pH after this if you have a meter. The aim is for about pH 5.5, but it can be anywhere from about 4.5 to 6. Spoon the calendula cream into a dry and clean container. I use a silicon spatula to get every last bit, then allow it to cool to room temperature before sealing it with a lid. With a broad spectrum preservative, the finished calendula cream recipe can have a pretty long shelf life, but once you start using it and putting your fingers in the cream, you should aim to finish it within six months. This is a conservative personal use recommendation and not a specific shelf life though. Enjoy your homemade calendula cream. Making calendula skin cream is really easy and it feels so good to use and you'll be so proud to have made this yourself. Making skin cream is not something that a lot of people do, but once you learn how simple it is, you can carry on making more and more and it becomes even more inexpensive once you have purchased all of those initial ingredients and you can start working your way through beeswax and emulsifying wax and all of those other ingredients. And if you have any questions about any that are used in this calendula skin cream recipe, I have a full article and a printable version of this recipe over on my website lovelygreens.com. You can find tons of other recipes over there as well. Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment down below if you've got any questions or if you've made this recipe and you want to give your feedback. And also make sure to like this video and subscribe. I will see you in the next video. Bye for now!