Chamomile & Honey

December 30, 2018

Chamomile & Honey

Healing remedies for the cold days

In December we gathered together to create few delicious recipes for gifts and pleasure. This gifts are very easy to make and require no special ingredients or much of time. The only substance that would need longer preparation was the chamomile infused oil. One can create the warm oil version in couple of a hours or the long cold method, which needs to sit for about two weeks. In the following chapters I will tell you about the use of Honey & Chamomile and how to make yourself "Vanilla Rose Bath Melts", "Chamomile Brown Sugar Scrub Cubes", "Honey Rose & Oat Face cleanser" and "Honey & Chamomile Cream Skin healer".

The chamomile flower is common herb, known for its calming effect, used in teas for stomach and sleep problems. It has anti-fungal and antiseptic skin effect and it is considered by the pagan traditions to be symbol of the Sun. I use to rinse my hair as teen with chamomile tea, which gave it nice lightening color in the summer. This potent mood lifting flower has important place in different folk medicine and it is considered by the Anglo-Saxons, to be one of the nine sacred herbs.

I used dried chamomile flowers to make diffused oil. We chose the fast method using heated bath. To learn how to diffuse oils, please follow this link to my previous blog, where I diffused rose petals. The same steps can be applied to create heated diffused oils with almost any kind of dried flowers or herbs. Storage the diffused oil left overs in jar in dark place ready for future use.

Raw honey and diffused chamomile oil

The use of honey, must be as old as our human history dating back to Sumeria and Egypt. Honey is gift from the bees, which many vegans might disapprove of use and people misuse without knowing that by heating it for example, one looses almost fully the benefits of the 22 amino acids that the honey polen contains. The honey benefactors and uses for medicinal and other practices one can find from various of sources. From Ayurveda we learn that honey has great antiseptic effect on the skin. These texts tell that honey is great nurturer for people with poor digestion and can cure constipation and hyperacidity. The Ayurvedic teachings speak of seven layers of the skin. Curing skin burns, some eye ailments, clearing the body mucus are just few of the many benefactors.

With anti-inflammatory agents and full of antioxidant properties, the honey clearly has great effect on our skin. It can not only prevent mild skin irritations and acne, but also it does give our skin this rich golden glow. Honey does not only attract water, but it retains it in the skin. And as we know the skin is like apple, needs lots of water not to wrinkle dry. So the combination of moisturizing chamomile and the water preserving honey is absolutely wonderful skin care combination. I personally learned first in Finland to apply honey during sauna rituals, which apparently assists the skin to release toxins. Later I did learn to apply honey on chapped feet skins or when sore lips. Hmmm, honey is sweet indeed.

Skin close up. Science Photo Library / Via Batsford

"This soap-free cleanser features wrinkle fighting rosehip seed oil, soothing rose petals and skin-regenerating honey, making it ideal for dry, damaged or aged skin. The ground oats acts as a gentle exfoliator to slough away patches of dull flaky skin, leaving a soft, clean feeling behind as it washes away. Daily use will leave your skin feeling smooth and nourished."
~ Jan Berry, 101 Easy Homemade Products for Your Skin, Health and Home

Crushing gently the oats with rose petals

Honey Rose & Oat Face cleanser

This is absolutely lovely product. Leaves the skin incredibly soft and it has delicious aroma. The rosehip oil gives this incredible smoothening after glow and the oat and rose texture is gentle and quickly absorbed. The sweet raw honey touch makes this one of my most treasured self made products by far. For my sensitive skin, oats seem to be the perfect exfoliation material.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. rolled oats
1/4 c. dried rose petals (this recipe will still be effective if you don't have the rose petals or you could also try replacing them with calendula or chamomile flowers if they are available)
1/4 c. raw honey
1 tsp. rosehip seed oil (or a more budget friendly oil such as sweet almond, hemp or sunflower)

We used mortar to coarsely grind together the oats and rose petals. Instead of mortar one can use any other method with coffee-grinder or such. Place mixture in a small clean jar (4 oz. jars are perfect for this) and combine with the honey. We used rose-hip oil and stirred until thoroughly mixed. Note: If honey settles to the bottom, simply stir before each use.

How to Use:

Using a clean spoon, scoop out a small amount into the palm of your hand. Gently rub into face and neck. Rinse mixture off with warm water and washcloth. Gently pat skin dry.

Shelf Life:

One to two months as long as water isn't introduced into the mixture.

Denitsa mixing the crushed rose petals with melting oils

Vanilla Rose Bath Heart Melts

1/2 cup Shea (or mango) butter
2 Tbsp dried Rose petals
1 Vanilla bean
Rose or Geranium essential oil (optional)

Slice one vanilla bean in half and remove the seeds into the stone mortar. Melt the Shea butter in a heatproof jar placed in a small saucepan of water. While melting, grind the rose petals and vanilla beans to a very fine powder using mortar or coffee grinder.

Stir the resulting powder into the melted Shea butter. We decided not to add any essential oil, because the roses and vanilla gave settled aromas, which we wanted to preserve. After pouring the final mixture into small silicone molds, we let them refrigerate until firm. After an hour, they were hard enough to be removed from the molds. We used small and larger heart shaped silicon molds. The smaller size hearts were large enough for one bath. Best way to pack single hearts after refrigerating was in parchment paper. Sealing them in jar and storing in cool dry place.

Recipe found on page 110 from the 101 Easy Homemade Products book.

Peel Slowly and See

In the next chapter I will discuss exfoliation of the skin. Peeling ceremony roots are dating back from ancient days, when old wine, crushed sea shells, volcanic pumice rock or sand from the bottom of the river were used for removing the old skin layers to rejuvenate. Creating your own scrubs from natural products is easy to make and delicious in aromas. Most of the recipes which we have made did not require any special ingredients. Usually every household has sugar, oat or coffee. One can add different oils and essential aromas of choice to create personalized end product. Storing the exfoliates usually does not require any special refrigerating, unless fresh fruits have been used like lemons from our previous Lemon Poppy seed scrub recipe. Protecting the product from water to enter is essential, because mostly all mixtures are made without any preservatives. Every skin requires testing to find the right peeling texture. Face and body exfoliates are usually made of different consistency. For example sand and coffee substances are too harsh for the face. Oats as mentioned previously are great for the sensitive face area. Salt and brown sugar make perfect body scrub texture. This is a great source to read more about the natural exfoliates.

Chamomile Brown Sugar Scrub Cubes

These little cubes are great, because you are not digging your wet hands into a container in the shower to scrub. The sugar cubes can be sealed in zip bag or even better I store them in glass jar in my fridge. You can replace the sugar with salt, but for example salt is too harsh for my skin. These scrubs have delicious aroma and are very easy to make if you already have stored chamomile infused oil. If not, then one can simply use coconut oil and crush dry herbs, but of course the oil properties would be different. To learn how to infuse oils, please check my blog about how to infuse rose oil (the slow or quick method). In principle both methods work well and can be applied to different herbs and flowers.

Directions:

2 Tbsp Cocoa butter

1½ Tbsp Chamomile-infused Coconut oil

½ Tbsp (7ml) Raw honey

¼ Cup Brown sugar

Place a glass measuring cup or mason jar into a saucepan with water (makeshift double boiler). Heat on low heat and add cocoa butter and infused chamomile coconut oil until melted. Add honey and brown sugar. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze until solid. This cubes are perfect for single use. I usually take one out of the jar and bring with me into bathing area.

The recipe comes from book, which I find very handy to work with.

The Golden Combo

I decided to cook on my own this Honey & Chamomile Cream Skin healer, while using the left-overs from the chamomile infused oil. Making this cream required not more than 40 minutes. Even if the end mixture was not as smooth as I would have wished, this cream leaves my skin well moisturized and I like the creamy, not so oily texture it has. I realized that I should have not let it fully to cool before adding it into jars. Cream mixture should be poured right after it has been ready mixed. Otherwise it might already stick together and it is not only hard to pour it into the glass jar, but it is not nice to mix it further after once it has cooled. I gave this cream to women from different ages for testing and it seems that everyone has been enjoying it.

Preparation for 160 ml portion:

2 oz (60 ml) chamomile-infused sunflower oil (or other preferred oil)

1 oz (28 g) Shea butter

0.5 oz (14 g) beeswax pastilles

1.75 oz (50 ml) warm distilled water

1 Tbsp Raw honey

2 to 3 drops lavender essential oil (optional)

Natural preservatives (optional)

Place the infused oil, butter and beeswax in heat proof jar or pan, which sits in kettle with 2-3 cm of water. Melt the butters, infused oil and beeswax pastilles in slow burner. Once all melted, remove from heat and let them cool. Check that temperature is below 40 C and while cooling place the distilled water in another fire proof jar and use the same warm water in bottom of the kettle to warm lightly the distilled water. Pour the raw honey into the distilled water and stir it until it completely melts in. Check that the temperature of the water is not too high and once the temperature of the water and the cream is around from 30-38 C, you can finally mix the mixtures.

Pour slowly water into melted oils and mix with hand of electric mixer. After the whole water has slowly been absorbed into creamy silky texture, add the essential oils if desired. I added sweet orange essential oil for happy thoughts and then mixed for around 5 more minutes. Use dark tinted glass jars to pour mixture and after it has cooled keep it refrigerated. Because of the water ingredient, the shelf life of this cream is around 2 weeks. I usually check each time when I open the jar if there is mold, then I know it is not anymore usable. This is rich and thick face and body cream, which is wonderful for skin rashes and inflammations. I use it for daytime, but it could make great night cream. There are plenty of more combinations for healthy skin, hair and body using honey and chamomile. More recipes can be found from this inspiring blog.

Under the Theremin Sounds

My friend's daughter Nevena was playing the Theremin while we created all this gifts and it was inspiring. I usually listen to music while creating. There are many studies on how music effects plants growth, cancer, brain cells, hair growth, Alzheimer disease, bacteria and so on. Our hearing is limited to certain levels of sounds. How sounds effect the skin or cosmetics we don't really know. Since the skin is our largest organ I would assume it has great impact on it. For me music has been cure for all ailments. Life without music would be somehow empty. If moods effect how we cook, so does music has to effect the final result of cosmetic preparations. This subject of matter would be interesting to study in our future Circles.

Now I would like to wish good health to all my friends who have participated and supported me through this year's Cream bar Circle endeavors. I want to thank them for being the loving humans they are. It has been great year learning and testing so many self-made recipes. It takes an idea to begin, which requires much study, work and determination, but without support and sharing, the value could never be the same. I wish more people to discover the benefits of natural self made healing cosmetics and to celebrate all this wonderful resources from mother Earth. Many more new recipes to create and wishes for happiness and good health for the upcoming 2019!