Back in 2014, Bill wrote to me with a recipe request for a lavender salve he’d been really enjoying using. He described it as “terrific stuff, with a texture just slightly lighter than Vaseline, a quite pungent lavender aroma, and yellow in colour (like lemongrass soaps).” Oooh. And I just happened to have a vintage “Hendonia Ye Olde English Lavender Brilliantine” tin begging to be re-filled, and some brand new cera bellina burning a hole in my pantry. And roughly seven different kinds of lavender essential oil. All that is to say that this salve really needed to be made, and here we are with Bill’s Lavender Salve.
Bill’s “slightly lighter than Vaseline” comment is what got me started playing with cera bellina. I’d ordered a wee bag for a few reasons; I was intrigued by its ability to create oil gels (seriously, so cool!) and including it in concoctions can really help prevent the graininess that can occur when you include shea butter. The gel bit is really what I was thinking about here, but since this concoction does include some shea butter, it’s doing double duty. Parfait!
The original was a blend of shea butter, avocado oil, jojoba oil, beeswax, and lavender oil. I switched that up a bit for a handful of reasons. I chose cera bellina instead of beeswax for that gel-like/vaseline-y/ointment-like texture it gives. You could use regular beeswax instead, but the consistency is going to be quite different.
Here you can start to get a feel for how unique the consistency of this salve is thanks to the cera bellina. It’s actually quite ointment-y, which is super cool.
I used mostly dry-feeling macadamia nut oil and fast-absorbing grapeseed oil, and rounded that out with jojoba and shea butter. This creates a salve that isn’t exactly fast to absorb into the skin, but I can’t imagine how heavy it would be if I’d used predominantly slower to absorb oils! For this reason, I really recommend paying attention to the absorption speeds of any oils you want to swap out.
Bill mentioned the original is quite yellow, like a lemongrass soap. I suspect that comes from large amounts of golden jojoba oil, which I’ve toned down quite a bit to get a lighter, faster-absorbing final product. If you’re keen on having a yellower end product, though, you could swap out a gram or two of the jojoba for some uber-orange seabuckthorn oil.
It’s firm enough to hold a shape for a while, at least.
You’ll want to use a nice lavender essential oil here; I chose a nice French one from New Directions. Choose your favourite “whole” lavender, rather than ones that have been balanced (like lavender 40/42)—those are great for soaps and other places where we need really reliable scents, but not for anything where we’re hoping for some aromatherapy benefits. You’ll notice that once the high notes of the lavender fade away you’re left with a lovely mild nutty scent—that’s from the macadamia nut oil. Yum!
Once you’ve got all the ingredients all you’re doing is melting ’em together in a water bath, letting them cool, and stirring in the lavender. Et voila! Bill’s Lavender Salve. It’s pretty darn lovely 😊 It’s quite soft for a salve (like vaseline, just softer), so I do recommend keeping it in something that seals well if you’re planning on letting it rattle around in your bag, but I love how that softness means it spreads wonderfully. It’s creamy, smooth, and beautifully multi-purpose (lips, hands, dry spots, you name it!). It glides over the skin easily and absorbs quickly, leaving a relatively dry finish that I always want in a salve, but rarely get. I think you’ll like it.
Bill’s Lavender Salve
8g | 0.24oz cera bellina (USA | Canada)
5g | 0.17oz refined shea butter
15g | 0.53oz jojoba oil (USA / Canada)
10g | 0.35oz grapeseed oil
18g | 0.63oz macadamia nut oil20 drops lavender essential oil
Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a small saucepan.
Weigh the cera bellina, shea butter, jojoba oil, grapeseed oil, and macadamia nut oil into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through—leave in the water bath for a solid 30 minutes to ensure everything is very thoroughly melted.
Once everything has melted, remove the measuring cup from the water bath and dry it off. I popped it into the fridge for about twenty minutes to kick-start the thickening process before removing it and stirring it with a flexible silicone spatula. I stirred it on and off as it cooled, breaking up any clumps from its time in the fridge. Once it was room temperature, I stirred in the lavender essential oil and moved the salve to a tin. And that’s it!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this salve is 100% oil based, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Kept reasonably cool and dry, it should last at least a year before any of the oils go rancid. If you notice it starts to smell like old nuts or crayons, that’s a sign that the oils have begun to oxidize; chuck it out and make a fresh batch if that happens.
Makes ~65g (2.3oz).
Want to learn more about these ingredients, including information on substitutions and where to buy them? Check out their entries in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia!
Would walnut oil be a good substitute for macadamia nut oil? I have some left from another project and would prefer not to buy another oil that may go bad before I use it all.
Thanks for all your awesome recipes!
The important thing isn’t the from-nuts thing, it’s the absorbency speed. Choose something else that absorbs very quickly, like rosehip or camellia seed 🙂
And so it begins.
Marie, you wasted no time including Cera Bellina in a recipe
I really gotta buy me some as it sounds so cool. I thought telling giftees that a recipe included that song like candelilla wax was impressive. Wait till I roll Cera Bellina off my tongue!
Yup! I think I developed this recipe in tandem (or perhaps before haha) with the ratios experiment 😛
Merry Christmas Christie!
I think I just bought some of this cera bellina. It’s always a gamble when you buy something new here. But it’s French, translated into Chinese, translated into English. They stroked out all the French, so who knows!
I really was impressed with the consistency of this salve in Marie’s pictures. There is this cuticle cream I’ve been reverse engineering but can’t seem to get the consistency right, and this ingredient might be the key to getting it just right.
I’ve got to make a rose lotion today for my boss for Christmas. Since I made it the other week she’s been mental singing, “all I want for Christmas is some rose lotion, some rose lotion. All I want for Christmas is some rose lotion.” She sang it so often, my tiny humans have caught on and have been singing it too.
I have used sunflower wax to get a gelled oil consistency, but never cera bellina – do you know whether they behave similarly?
I’m afraid I’ve never worked with sunflower was before, so I have no idea.
Mmm… looks like lemon curd. Maybe I’ll make this one day and scent it with lemon, though I’ll only be able to use it at night and will have to label it clearly. Has anyone actually eaten your concoctions though?
Well, not that anybody has admitted to me haha… though I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people had taken an exploratory bite. My parents tell me mice have eaten some of my soaps at their place in the country!
Ive made this recipe to great reviews from my wife, daughter and friends. But I would like to know how much bees wax to use if I make a harder balm with this recipe, and if it is possible to substitute lemon oil instead of lavender?
Refer to this for information on beeswax. The lemon is a “no”; read this for why 🙂
Thanks for this response. I did make some balm with orange oil for myself, but for my chest and shoulders, which at this time of year, are completely covered. But this is very important information. So, thank you very much, before I put it on my cheeks!))
If you’re interested in more details on the different citrus EOs and safe usage, this book is FANTASTIC! It’s more expensive than some, but think of it more as a textbook as that’s what it is. It is completely packed with wonderful, scientifically backed information on essential oils.
Hi there! I wanted to know if the consistency of this ointment would be able to work well, if placed in a silicone based squeeze tube, like the “go tube”, so I wouldn’t have to keep dipping my fingers into it. If not, could you recommend a dosage with a thinner consistency?
Hey Michelle! I think it would, though you might want to add another gram or two of liquid oil; perhaps make it, see what you think, and adjust if you think it’s necessary before popping it in a tube?
Made the recipe today! Love it! I substituted macadamia oil with argan oil and shea butter with mango butter because that is what I had available. Also substituted some of the lavender drops with chamomile essential oil because I like their combined smell.
I’m now going to play with it so that I can place in a tube for easy access. This will make a great hand balm.
Thank you!
Woo! It definitely sounds like you’re having fun with it 😀
Hi Marie,
I’m looking to make a balm-like body oil/butter blend that works with a squeeze tube and doesn’t melt too easily. Would a 60% carrier oils/30% butter/10% beeswax create something softer than a body butter yet firmer than a soft oil consistency? I will be using 2 oils with different absorption rates and a fast absorbing butter in addition to the beeswax. I will probably end up having to experiment, but are the ratios above a good starting point to give me the consistency I want?
I’m trying to find a butter that melts at a higher temp as well to keep the consistency from turning liquid on a warm day. Is 10% beeswax too much? too little?
I’m new to this but have learned a lot from reading your posts. Very enjoyable and I lose track of time 🙂
Thank you!
It’s honestly pretty hard to say without knowing the exact packaging you’re using and the ambient temperatures you live in. 10% is probably a good place to start, but you’ll definitely need to do some fiddling to find out for sure 🙂 Happy making!
Thank you Marie! 10% was too much for the consistency I wanted, so I will play until I get it right 🙂
I suggest you try Cerabelina. It’s a by product of beeswax and may be purchased at Amazon.
Thank you Rebeca, I will try it!
I recently made about ten bottles of micellar water with varying levels of surfactants all below 0.5%—I feel you! 😛 Have fun playing!
I made this a few months ago and really love it! But it has since formed tiny hard beads in it (is this crystallization?). I notice I run into this problem alot, especially when using coconut oil in blends (I didn’t for this recipe). Do you have any insight on why this happens and how to avoid?
I’ve got an FAQ on this 🙂 In the Formula Botanica course I’m doing they teach that stirring the concoction until it reaches “trace” in an ice bath helps, and so far I’ve found that to be very useful!
do you have a video for this Lavender salve
No.
Thank you Marie for this wonderful recipe. I love the information you put together regarding substitutions. It gave me some ideas for reusing ingredients I already had.
I replaced all the liquid oils with fractionated coconut
Oil. This made the salve look a translucent white. Also used a little bit of rose essential oil instead of lavender. I had some that was getting too old if i didn’t use it up.
The combination of the texture, the feel and the very mild fragrance is just sublime.
I use it all over for my 3 year old. He has really dry skin.
I just whipped a 10X batch so everyone can have some and I won’t run out anytime soon!!
Hi Vijetha!
Just be careful with the rose essential oil! Marie talks a little about the methyl eugenol content here. Always be sure to check out the IFRA database before using essential oils especially on kids. Happy to hear you are enjoying this formula!
Is it ok if I replace shea butter and jojoba oil with coconut oil?
You can certainly try it 🙂 Happy making!
Thanks for this formula. I used it as inspiration to make a lavender infused salve rather than one with essential oils. It turned out so well I then infused chamomile and calendula (via the cold process and separately) and made up a lavender and chamomile salve, a calendula salve, and am currently trying a lavender, chamomile, and calendula salve.
I wasn’t able to get hold of cera bellina from my preferred seller so I used a combination of bees wax and cetearyl alcohol, which came out a little softer than petroleum jelly closer to chest rub consistency. For me it is ideal. It is firm enough to stay in the pot, whilst soft enough to glide onto the skin whilst not draging that you can sometimes get with beeswax alone.
Thanks again and keep up your inspiring work.