 Hey guys, merry Christmas or merry belated Christmas because I know that was last week. How's everyone's Christmas? I'd love to hear about it. Share in the comments what you guys did. I basically spent Christmas with my family, which was really nice. It's great catching up with everybody. I also got a little bit burnt at one of our Christmas events as you guys can see for that after Sunspray came and really handy, which always happens at the beginning of summer for me. Just him to get a little bit pink. Although there wasn't too much shade to sit in. Love I got the sunscreen so it was my bad. But less than what? So now I'm going to be nice and pink for this video, so don't mind that. Also, I've had a shower tint while my hair just looks like Yeah, so we'll get straight into today's video. I've just gone and collected some lavender from my garden. We're coming to the end of the season, so we're going into summer, but there's not as many flowers growing. So I had to gather a few leaves just to kind of bulk it up a bit. But if you are doing this lavender tincture, it is recommended just to use the flowers. I'll be using some of the leaves as well. So yeah, it smells amazing. Every time I bring it into the house, I'm like, oh, it makes the house smell of lavender. It smells so good. Now, lavender tincture is just basically a concentrated like liquid or I guess herbal what would you call it? Herbal liquid, herbal remedy. Just as a concentrated level of the properties, like the beneficial properties, of whatever plants inside it. So if you use like dandelion, tincture, lavender, tincture, any other type of herb that you put into alcohol, it kind of draws out the properties and gives a concentrated level of the beneficial elements in that herb. So it's really good. Now, just keep in mind with lavender, like tincture, unlike dandelion, tincture, which you can take a little bit more of them. You don't want to overdose on lavender tincture because it can give like adverse effects and be quite toxic. Now, there are many uses for this lavender tincture that we'll be making. A few of them are, you can put a few drops in your oil diffuser at home to give off a lovely lavender scent, a bit like lavender essential oil, and it's great for helping you like to fall asleep too. Really relaxing, really calming. You can mix some of the tincture in with some coconut oil as like an after bath lotion to help you fall asleep as well. It's very soothing. You can use it in a linen spray to help scent like your bedsheets and things, again helping you to relax at night. You can use it as an extract in your favorite lip balm. So if you make the lip balm that I've made in the past, you can use some of this lavender tincture just to give it a lovely lavender fragrance or you can use lavender essential oil as well. You can add it into some homemade lemonade as an added flavor addition, giving it like a lavender lemonade kind of flavor. You can use it to scent bath water to help promote relaxation while you're in the bath. It can be effective in helping to combat against anti-fungal resistant infections. So you can use it on that. Again, it helps with healing wounds. It can help to promote hair growth. It can be used as a dandruff remedy to help with dry flaky skin. And you can also use it as an extract in baking to give it that lavender kind of taste and scent. It's really nice. But these are just a few of the many different things you can use lavender tincture for. Now, there are specific dosages for how much of it you can have. I know it's only very small. And this is by Dr. Will, I'm sorry if I pronounced that wrong. I found it online and his recommendations on dosages for lavender. It's to take two to four mil just for internal use of that lavender tincture just up to three times a day. For aromatherapy, you can add two to four drops of your lavender essential oil to two to three cups of boiling water. And this gives it a lovely fragrance in the room. For topical use, you can add one to four drops of this lavender tincture per tablespoon of olive oil and just avoid contact with eyes or like mucus membranes like your nose because it can actually irritate them. It causes them to sting. And yeah, so that's pretty much the recommendations that I found. So again, don't overdose on this lavender tincture because you don't want to receive any of the adverse effects with it. It can be very beneficial when taken in the correct dosage. So again, if you are taking it internally, just two to four mils of the lavender tincture up to three times a day. Maybe start off smaller and just see how you go if you work your way up just to see how you respond to it. There are like so many different benefits to taking lavender tincture and lavender in general, which I will share in my blog post down in the description. If you want to read into it and look up all the different effects, I probably won't go into it all today. Just will go straight into making it today. But if you are interested in wanting to learn more about it, feel free to check it out there. All right, let's get started. So I'm going to cut these up because I've left them a little bit big. I'm only making a tiny glass of it today. One because I don't have any of the flower buds and I'm only using a little bit of the leaves. I'll probably just brew the rest of the leaves up in a tea, a lavender tea later on. But for now, I'm just going to use it. There's a little jar also because I don't have as much alcohol left. I've been using it over many weeks to make many different things, one of which was my lavender oil. So we are running a little bit low and I forgot to pick some up my bed. So we're just going to make do with this tiny amount. Hence why I have this tiny jar. I don't need that much. So it just kind of works out perfectly because I don't have much alcohol and I don't have many flowers to use. Just worked out well. Great DIY today, I know. So the difference between tinctures and other extracts is that tinctures use alcohol as a solvent. Whereas other extracts may use things like alcohol, water, vinegar, glass ruin or other solvents like that. So tinctures are specific with alcohol and there are a few things you want to keep in mind with the alcohol when you're looking for it, which ones to buy. One thing to keep in mind is that alcohol proof does not equal percentage. So it does not mean that's how much alcohol percentage is in the drink. So they have a little guide here. So for example an 80 to 90 proof vodka equals about 40 to 50 percent alcohol which is like pre-standard and works well on making most tinctures. So that's a good one to go for. But side note you may need to mix vodka and 190 proof grain alcohol in equal parts for higher moisture items like lemon balm, berries and roots. This 190 proof grain alcohol is for things that are like more tricky or like highly bound essential oils. So that tends to be what you use it for. And it will not taste good at all so it's not recommended to use in tinctures. So just get that one in mind. You want to keep to more of the 80 to 90 proof alcohol. And again keep in mind that a little of the tincture goes a long way because it's a concentrated level of those beneficial properties from that herb. So really you only need a small amount. You may look and go this is like nothing. Trust me a little goes a long way. You don't want to overdose again. You don't want to have too much because it can be quite toxic. So really just starve small and just maybe work up to that limit. Otherwise just keep it to the basic level. Almost knocked my glass. That would be in the end of the tutorial. Alrighty now we'll get started making it. So once you have your lavender flowers you've got your alcohol and you've got your glass. You're pretty much that. So we'll get to it. To begin with chop and clean up the herbs to start with to help release essential oils and increase surface area. For fresh herbs fill the jar two-thirds to three-quarters of the way full. No need to pack it in. If using roots of some of the plant fill the jar with less about a quarter to halfway full. Or if using dried herbs just fill the jar halfway to three-quarters of the way full. Then pour the alcohol over the herbs in the jar. You want to make sure to cover the herbs within completely. For roots keep in mind that if you're using dried herbs they will increase in size as they soak up the liquid. So leave ample space. Once covered place the lid on the jar. Your jar should now be full but not jam packed. The herbs should be able to move around when gently agitated or swelled. Let the jar sit for two to six weeks gently shaking at most days if you're able. Different herbs require different lengths of time to sit in alcohol so it's important to do some research on the length of time required to sit in the alcohol if using various different herbs to make tinctures. Particularly if you're using it medicinally. Otherwise you might start extracting other components that are less desirable. A note forgot to mention sorry to break up the video all the way through. So I'm just going to leave it to sit for two to six weeks now. So first note if you're making a tincture you need to let it sit for two to six weeks to allow the properties to be drawn out through the alcohol. Next note which I totally forgot to mention as well is that I'm wearing my other vegan vibe shirt where it says too cute to spook. If the camera can focus on it hold on. Too cute to spook. Isn't that just cute? So that's the other shirt that I got from vegan vibe. The proceeds go towards different charities. I think this one was going towards um hold on let me double check. So the proceeds I'm pretty sure that go for this shirt and the other arctic shirt that I got as well which I showed in a different video. The proceeds from that go towards mercy for animals which helps to stop animal cruelty which is amazing. So it's really awesome to know that some of the money goes towards some charities like that. So if you are looking for a cool shirt to wear for halloween next year totally going to be wearing this one. Or you want to look at their cool different um styles and what's it called designs. I will share in the link below where I got these two shirts from. If you want to match like me. Weekend twin. Anyway we'll go back to the video now. So I'll see you guys in two to six weeks to see how the tincture goes. Pour your tincture jar contents through the filter. I just used a nut milk bag. And then squeeze the filter to get as much of the liquid out as possible. I just composted the herbs when I finished. The liquid should be coloured and no longer clear. Store the tincture in amber glass bottles to protect it from light. Or in a cool dark place of using clear glass bottles. Alcohol tinctures should last for years. Though if it looks funky don't use it. It can be a good idea to label what it is and when it was made just to be sure. This lavender tincture can be used in a whole variety of ways. It can be added to baths used as a light perfume. Just dab on the wrists to refresh sachets. As a liqueur or elixir in cooking and baking and more. You can add tinctures to a range of body care products too. So just soap, lotion, massage oil, toner and things like that. Just be sure to research the amounts recommended if you're using it medicinally. As you don't want to have too much. And that's it. There's your lavender tincture already to go. And that's how you make your own lavender tincture. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. Do share with me what uses you use your lavender tincture for. Though it's internal or external like topical. Or if you're putting in a remover therapy as well. Or if you're putting in the other DIY's that you make. Feel free to share how you use it. If you have any other herbal tinctures that you've made that are really beneficial. Please share with me. I'd love to try them out too. I am looking at making a dandelion tincture in the near future. I have dandelions just outside that I'm going to collect and burrow up into a tincture as well. Which has so many different benefits that I've been bringing up. And I'll share with you guys that when I start making that. I will be going away over the next few weeks on holiday. So there won't be as many videos coming out. So it'll be a dry spell on my channel. Because I won't be filming anything. So it will be up to four weeks I think I'm going to be away. So I won't be having any videos coming up in that time. So I apologise for that in advance. I wasn't organised enough to get them pumped out before I left. That's alright. But just hopefully you guys will be even more excited to see them when I get back. I will have some really great videos to share with you guys. Sorry about that. I think the postman's here so I will go and get that package. That's alright. Emma's got it. I have a line of some really great videos I plan on filming really soon. I'm really excited to share these with you guys. So please stay tuned. I have some really great DIYs to be sharing with you guys. Otherwise, thank you so much for sticking out this whole video with me. I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope you got a lot out of it. Please share with me your biggest takeaways. And I hope to see you guys again in my future videos. Bye.