Muscle Rub Salve

Here's a recipe for making your own muscle rub salve that I used to make when we lived on the homestead. 

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup Arnica flowers
4 heaping teaspoons cayenne pepper (the more the better)
Olive oil
Vitamin E
Beeswax
Tea Tree oil
Essential Oil (your choice)

Put the arnica flowers and cayenne pepper in a glass container
Cover with oil so the oil is a few inches over the top of it all.  Let it sit 6 weeks and gently shake, swish it every day if you remember.  (No big deal if you forget once in a while.)
* If you're impatient, you can gently heat this concoction for a couple hours and then move on to the next step, I prefer to let it sit and take it's time extracting the properties. 

After the oil has done it's job, you strain out the herbs making sure to squeeze all that precious oil out from it.  Toss the strained herbs out.

The ratio I use for my salves is 1 pint of oil to 1 1/2 oz of beeswax so that will be what this recipe is based on.  The consistency of this salve will not be soft, nor will it be hard.  It's an in between salve that does not drip nor is it hard to spread at all. Feel free to make a small batch and see if it's to your liking then adjust the beeswax more or less depending on how firm or soft you like it.

Once you have your oil and the rest of your materials you just warm the oil only to the point that it will melt the beeswax but don't overheat. When the beeswax is melted you can add in the Vitamin E. 

I like to use 800 IU Vitamin E per cup of oil.  This helps preserve the salve as well as add additional healing properties from the Vitamin E.   (You can find Vitamin E capsules at most stores or online and all I do is poke it with a pin and squeeze it out.) 

I also like to add 1 drop of tea tree essential oil per cup of oil as it adds antifungal properties to help preserve the oil as well as help skin issues.
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You can also add whatever essential oil you like to make it smell nicer, I choose lavendar because of it's soothing properties and the smell is pleasant.  I drop maybe 10-15 drops in per cup.

Pour it into your waiting containers...

(I used these containers because I had an online store that I sold them but you can use any containers you like.) 

Let them sit until the salve firms up and cools. (This picture shows the salve in it's warm state, it turns a lighter color as it cools.