Ingredient Spotlight: Lavender Essential Oil

Lavender essential oil is one of the most popular and well known essential oils. It is generally known to calm and relax the body to the point that it is often used to promote sleep. Did you know that it is also antibacterial and helps burns to heal faster and without scaring? Lavender oil is also one of the safest essential oils and can be used to treat children’s minor cuts and scrapes. Many essential oils are not safe to use on children.

© Beisea | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Lavender essential oil comes from over 20 different species and they can be grouped into 3 main varieties. 

1.   True lavender. Lavandula angustifolia, L. officinalis, and L. vera are commonly known as common lavender or English lavender. These plants feature narrow leaves, short, crooked stems, and barrel-shaped flowers. The flower gives off a sweet, floral scent that sooths, calms, and relaxes.

2.   Spike lavender essential oil. L. spica and L. latifolia are coarser plants, with broader leaves than true lavender (L. officinalis). While these varieties yields up to three times the amount of essential oil as true lavender, the scent is less highly prized. The oil from spike lavender flowers is more akin to a combination of eucalyptus and lavender. 

3.   Lavandin essential oil.L. hybrida is a sterile hybrid plant that results from the cross-pollination of English lavender and spike lavender. This oil is more camphorous than L. angustifolia and has similar, but less pronounced, therapeutic properties. It can be included in formulations intended for pain relief or disinfection. Compared to true lavender plants, these plants have larger leaves, longer stems, and larger flowers that are pointed at the tip. Lavandin produces more oil than true lavender; however, the scent is quite different from true lavender. Lavandin tends to have a woody scent with a hint of a spicy-green, camphor aroma. While Lavandin does have therapeutic properties, it is not be used as a substitute for true lavender since the therapeutic properties differ. 

Lavender Oil is often the first essential oil that is used to help recover from burns. Here is an interesting tidbit: This amazing property of lavender essential oil was first discovered by René-Maurice Gattefossé in 1910. The following is a tale traditionally told about his discovery:

“In 1910 French chemist and scholar René-Maurice Gattefossé discovered the virtues of the essential oil of lavender. Gattefossé badly burned his hand during an experiment in a perfumery plant and plunged his hand into the nearest tub of liquid, which just happened to be lavender essential oil. He was later amazed at how quickly his burn healed and with very little scarring. This started a fascination with essential oils and inspired him to experiment with them during the First World War on soldiers in the military hospitals.”

While there is some truth to this tale, the real story as told by Gattefossé himself, in his book Aromathérapie: Les Huiles Essentielles Hormones Végétales (buy here translated into English), states:

“The external application of small quantities of esences rapidly stops the spread of gangrenous sores. In my personal experience, after a laboratory explosion covered me with burning substances which I extinguished by rolling on a grassy lawn, both my hands were covered with a rapidly developing gas gangrene. Just one rinse with lavender essence stopped “the gasification of the tissue”. This treatment was followed by profuse sweating, and healing began the next day (July 1910).”

Ladybug Soapworks Lavender Soap

Ladybug Soapworks uses lavender essential oil in our lavender soap, lavender bath salts, lavender roll-on perfume oil, and lavender bath oil. Try some of these products to experience the calming and relaxing properties of lavender oil.

For more information see:

Aromaweb.com  - Great website with lots of information on essential oils.

http://personalcaretruth.com/2011/04/gattefosses-burn/- Good site with the true story of how René-Maurice Gattefossé found the burn healing properties of lavender.

Tutorial: Calendula Salve

Calendula (Calendula officinalis) commonly known as pot marigold has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It has traditionally been used for treating sunburn, cuts, insect bites and stings, acne, soothing sore or inflamed muscles, diaper rashes, and other skin irritations.

Using one of the methods I explained in this previous blog post, prepare some Calendula flower infused oil. I prefer to use Olive oil for this recipe. You may also add Lavender essential oil to this salve to give it a soothing, sedative effect. Lavender is known to relax muscles, calm anxiety and promote sleep. It is also antiseptic and can be used on cleaned cuts and bruises to minimize scarring and relieve skin irritation. Lavender and Calendula really complement each other in a healing salve.

Calendula Flower

© Lessadar | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Ingredients:

3.5 oz Calendula flower infused herbal oil
½ oz Beeswax (small pellets will be easiest to work with)
20 drops Lavender essential oil (optional)

Directions:

Melt beeswax in the Calendula infused oil over a double boiler until melted. Beeswax melts at 144 to 147 °F (62 to 64 °C). Remove from the stove. Once the temperature has reached 120 °F, stir in the Lavender essential oil. Pour into clean (sterile preferred) tins or glass jars. Allow to cool thoroughly before using or placing caps on the jars. This salve should last 1-2 years if kept free of water.

As promised, more soap!

Here are the rest of the new soap pictures. I am sure I mention this a lot, but Dylan sure can take nice pictures of soap. Luckily all he "charges" me is for his regular shower/shampoo soap and the occasional shaving soap. Pretty good deal don't you think?

This first soap is my Sensitive skin bar. It is made with all kinds of oils that are great for sensitive skin. This bar feels so smooth in the shower, I just love to use it.

This soap hasn't actually changed in look, but we took some new photos anyways. This is Lavender Shea. It has a nice calming scent and smooth texture. If you look closely you can see the tops are brushed with a purple mica to give them some shimmer.

Up next is Jewelweed and Comfrey. It is made with olive oil infused with both of the herbs. Very nice bar of soap and these herbs are reputed for getting rid of the oils from a poison ivy bush.

This is my Jasmine Salt bar. Lovely scent and pretty color. The salt is a fine grain so it does not scratch. It makes a nice lotion-like lather.

Now to make some ginger souffle salt bars! Just need to decide how to make them look...any suggestions?

Organic Oils?

I have been thinking about changing all my oils over to organic oils as I run of of my current stock. How many of you currently use organic oils in your soap and other bath/body products? What is the general preference...do you care if your soap is made from organic oils or not? This would require me to raise my prices by probably 50 cents to $1, though I will have to price everything out to make a final decision on that. I would love to hear your opinion on the use of organic oils.

Finally, since it has been sooo long since I last posted pictures I will tease you with some new items that will be listed in my store soon. The first is some Pumpkin Pie Cream Soap. This is the real stuff...real soap not the foaming bath stuff.

This is Lavender Shea soap made with lavender essential oil. I brushed the top with mica so that is has a nice sparkle.

This red hot soap is cinnamon scented.
Lavender bath oil. Made with turkey red castor oil so that your tub does not get slippery. Turkey red castor is a water soluble oil.
Patchouli roll-on perfume.

More Soap Porn

Another teaser of soaps that will soon be listed on at my store. This first one is a chamomile soap. It is made with some chamomile infused oils, chamomile EO, and a bit of ground chamomile for texture. This soap is called chocolate espresso. I colored the bottom with cocoa powder and the top with titanium dioxide. I love this photo...part of my payment to Dylan for his photo skills was that delicious espresso I made for the picture. We got a nice espresso machine about a year ago and have since turned into coffee snobs.
On the theme of taste hot drinks...this soap is scented with green tea and cucumber. (Okay okay...I would probably never drink a cucumber tea, but it smells amazing with green tea!) The green swirls are made with my favorite colorant, french green clay. I also sprinkled the top with some clay, spirulina powder, and sparkles for a little pizazz.
This beautify soap looks a lot like the chocolate espresso, but it is lavender vanilla. The color is not quite what I was going for, but I think it looks nice anyways. I had been hoping for more of a lavender color instead of the brownish purple I got. Ah well...it smells great.

Productive Weekend!

After having spent all day Saturday at a renaissance fair that Dylan's kung-fu demo team performs in, I was feeling the need to make LOTS of soap. So, Sunday I made 5 batches of CP, rebatched some shampoo soap that was soft, and made a batch of cream soap. It was a lot of fun! For the cold process soap I made them all with a blend of shea butter, olive oil, castor oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. For scents I made a vanilla, lavender vanilla, black raspberry vanilla, lemon poppyseed, and chocolate espresso. They all smell marvelous. The cream soap contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, stearic acid, palm oil, and glycerin. For additives I included hydrolyzed silk protein, hydrovance, panthenol, kaolin clay, and calendula petals. The calendula petals provide a light yellow color which should look very nice once the glistening sheen develops in the soap. I will post picture of all the new soap soon!

Lavender Almond Facial Scrub

This is a face wash/scrub that I recently made and am currently testing. I will let you know what I think of it soon. I have to give props to Dylan, I am in love with the photos of this scrub! They look so professional, but back to the scrub now. This is made with very finely ground almonds, ground lavender buds, lavender EO, and glycerin. It smells great and I think it will make a nice night time scrub since the lavender EO will help you to relax.

Cake soap

I really wanted to make a soap that looked like a cake. This was my first attempt at such and it turned out nice, but boy was it a pained to remove from my makeshift mold. I had finished up all of the coconut oil from a round bottom tube and decided that it would be great to use as a mold. Since it still had a layer of oil on it I thought would help with removal. Well I made this soap last Sunday and was not able to get it out of the mold until today! Dylan took at mallet and went to town on the mold. Luckily, the bashing didn't really damage the look of the soap. I really like how the soap turned out in the end, but I think I will try to find an actually circle mold. If anyone knows of a place to get one please leave me a comment. I think this type of soap would look really lovely if you did a cream base with a colored top layer and poured the top layer at a thick trace so you could make it look a bit more like frosting. Anyways, here are some pictures of my lavender soap.
This soap should have a very nice lather as it has castor oil in it. It will also be very moisturizing and soothing to your skin because of the shea butter and silk fibers. The lavender EO adds a soothing scent.

Vanilla Chai tea, Patchouli, and Lavender soap

I made 3 new soaps yesterday: Vanilla Chai tea, Patchouli, and Lavender soap. They are looking so nice. I will be taking them out of their molds tonight. I changed the shape of the lavender soap to a large circle tub and plan to cut the soap in pie type slices. The other two were molded in my wooden rectangle molds. The patchouli and lavender soap have shea butter in them. Oh and I also put a pinch of silk fibers in all three. I have read that they help to make soap super smooth and silky. I don't want to wait 3 weeks to try them out :(

I can't wait to get my supplies this week so that I can try out making lip balm, lotion, scrubs, and deodorant. I have made lip balm in the past but I am excited to give it a try again.

New soaps

I have been dying to try out some of my new scents. So tomorrow I am planning to make a Chai tea soap, a Patchouli soap, a Cranberry soap, and a Lavender soap. I also received a shipment of shea butter, coffee butter, macadamia nut butter, and cocoa butter which I may play around with. I just placed an order for ingredients to make lip balms, body butters, and sugar scrubs which I look forward to trying out. I will let you know how the soaps turn out tomorrow!