Predominately Powders and Salts

If you’ve been following on the main blog, you have probably come across my shower shakers. This is a combination of powders and salts that are applied and used as an exfoliant in connection with showering.

Not only are they super easy to make and customize, you can eyeball the amounts and still get it right.

Curious? Check it out right here.

Create Your Own Bath Products With Essential Oils

Thoughts While Starting a Calendula Infusion

There is something incredibly uplifting about working with plants. I’m not sure if it is the beautiful colors, mood-boosting fragrances, the eye candy factor, or the knowledge that these humble ingredients carry powerful qualities that will soothe, calm, invigorate, and even help heal.

Many plants come up all by themselves offering their goodness without the least bit of prompting. A lot of folks call these weeds, but in some instances, I beg to differ. One example is dandelions with all their amazing properties.

Whether they are weeds or carefully sown and tended plants, I seem to be able to find beauty in all of them - even the ones that require protective gloves to work with (I’m looking at you, stinging nettle).

All this comes to mind quite by itself during the simple process of starting a calendula infusion.

Bundle Offer! Get Started Making Plant Extracts & Three Extracts Guide

Healing Herbs - This Old Book is Still Current

This is a bit of an oldie in my book collection. It’s a Danish book by M. Marcussen – known for his popular ‘Universal Tea’ - an herbal blend sold all over Denmark.

The title of the book translates to ‘Healing Herbs’ and lists different medicinal and beneficial herbs that grow in Scandinavia. It also describes several methods of use for different health issues.

I had the book out (again) not long ago and couldn’t help noticing this passage (circled above). The passage translates roughly to:

It was not from behind a desk nor by theoretical thinking that healing herbs were discovered. It happened via people, by experience and experimentation - refined over hundreds of years. Man, like the natural animal, has instinctively found his way to what worked. Let us not discard the history of this development! And let us not arrogantly dismiss the experiences from the past as long as we have not proven their lack of worth.

Food for thought to be sure, and still quite relevant today.

Put Your Heart into What You Do

Pictured above: a formula under development with a little message of love. This seems to a relatively common occurrence in the LisaLise lab: ingredients that either smile or show up as a heart. Sometimes I don’t register these things until after I have taken the picture.

This is one instance, and it reminded me of the importance of putting your heart into what you do - regardless of whether you are creating cosmetics, working with essential oils, baking, sewing, writing, acting or anything else.

As the year draws to a close and the coming season starts enveloping my small Scandinavian country in a non-stop stream of holiday busy-ness, I thought I’d share this little ingredient heart with you and wish you a relaxing upcoming weekend.

A Rosa Damascena by Any Other Name

I wax poetic every time I work with this wonderful ingredient, and I work with it a lot.

Rose has so much to offer skincare and general wellbeing that I cannot even begin to imagine being without it. Rose is a constant in my stockroom and personal formulas – as hydrosol, powder, oil, infusion, tincture, wax, or in any other form.

It’s impossible to not love.

So I love.

Which ingredients are your absolute favorites?