Making your own spring oil macerates
How to make your own oil macerate? Find out how to make ivy macerate and bellis macerate, better known as daisy macerate, easily.
What is a macerate?
Oily macerates are made by macerating leaves, flowers, roots, seeds or branches of aromatic and medicinal plants in a vegetable oil.
After a long maceration, the liposoluble active principles of the plant will diffuse into the vegetable oil. These active ingredients may be aromatic compounds, pigments or tannins.
Once filtered, oily macerates are fabulous skin care products. They can be used on their own for massage or targeted skin care, or as part of a balm, cream or oily serum recipe.
How to choose your base oil?
It all depends on the use of the macerate! The vegetable oils most frequently used to make oily macerations are sunflower and olive. Sunflower oil is frequently used to make sun macerations for the face, because of its neutrality (little smell) and its good absorption by the skin, without leaving a greasy film. Its high vitamin E content also makes it a stable vegetable oil that is not susceptible to rancidity.
Olive oil, richer and more fragrant, allows a good conservation of the macerate in time and will be more adapted for targeted care. It is frequently used as a base for calendula, plantain and arnica macerates, to name but a few.
For more "precious" macerates, such as rose macerate, you can choose more specific oils such as jojoba, avocado, sweet almond, sesame or macadamia vegetable oils.
Two manufacturing methods
An oily macerate can be made either cold or hot. The hot method consists of slightly heating the oil infused with plants to accelerate the release of the active ingredients. This method takes less time than maceration over several weeks, but there is a risk of altering the active ingredients of the plant if the heat is too strong.
In this dossier, we will only present the cold solar maceration method, which preserves the benefits of the plants and provides the best quality macerations.
Recipe: Oily macerate of climbing ivy, hedera helix
- Pick your ivy leaves, keeping only the leaf, without the stem. Choose a sunny day to pick, if possible making sure there has been no rain for a few days with the harvest.
- Clean your leaves one by one with absorbent paper or a clean cloth to remove excess moisture and any dust.
- In a jar sterilised in boiling water, place ivy leaves up to three quarters of the jar, without packing too tightly.
- Cover the ivy leaves with vegetable oil, either olive, macadamia, sesame, sunflower or jojoba.
- Close the jar and shake lightly. All the leaves should be well immersed in the oil.
- Cover your jar with a brown kraft bag to protect it from UV rays, so that the jar heats up without the sun's rays altering the vegetable oil.
- Leave to macerate for three weeks in the warmth of the sun, stirring your jar at least once a day. If no sun, macerate inside the house, the temperature must be at least 20°C.
- Filter your oil maceration with an ecological coffee filter or a clean cloth. Squeeze the remaining plant must to express the oil.
- Pour your macerate into an amber glass bottle and add vitamin E. Add 1 drop of vitamin E per 10 ml of preparation. Shake your bottle.
- Label your bottle, indicating the composition: base oil and macerated plant, the date of manufacture and the shelf life (ideally a macerate should be used within one year of its production).
Renowned for its draining action, ivy macerate is used in all body care products to improve the figure and shape. It is used in massage to fight against cellulite. Ivy macerate is also known for its healing action and for soothing rheumatic pains.
Recipe : Bellis perrenis oily macerate, also known as daisy macerate
- Harvest daisy flowers, keeping only the flower, without the stem. About one bowl of daisies will be enough for personal use. Even if daisies are abundant, let's just take what we need from nature. For the day of harvesting, prefer the morning, a sunny day.
- Dry the flowers for 12 to 24 hours by placing them on a clean cloth, flat, in a dry and well-ventilated place. You can also place them on a drying rack, if you have a dryer.
- In a jar sterilised in boiling water, place the daisy flowers up to three quarters of the jar, without squeezing too much.
- Cover the flowers with vegetable oil, sesame, sunflower, sweet almond, macadamia or jojoba for example.
- Close the jar and shake it gently. All the flowers should be well immersed in the oil.
- Cover your jar with a brown kraft bag to protect it from UV rays, so that the jar heats up without the sun's rays altering the vegetable oil.
- Leave to macerate for three weeks in the warmth of the sun, stirring your jar at least once a day. If no sun, macerate inside the house, the temperature must be at least 20°C.
- Filter your oil maceration with an ecological coffee filter or a clean cloth. Squeeze the remaining plant must to express the oil.
- Pour your macerate into an amber glass bottle and add vitamin E. Add 1 drop of vitamin E per 10 ml of preparation. Shake your bottle.
- Label your bottle, indicating the composition: base oil and macerated plant, the date of manufacture and the shelf life (ideally a macerate should be used within one year of its production).
Bellis macerate is used in bust care for its tightening and firming effect. This beautiful spring macerate can also be used in face or body massage to soften and beautify the skin.
