Wyld Crafting with Romina of ROMI Apothecary

8 min readAug 20, 2019

Type of activity: Herbs and Wyld crafting

TL;DR my experience:

Getting to know plant allies is a way to reconnect to Mother Earth and our relationship with her. Romina is leading the way of offering natural plant medicine remedies and alternatives to the chemicals that are often times present in our day-to-day.

Read on to get a recipe to make your very own calming and beautifying face and body oil. Don’t want to make it yourself? Get any product from Romina’s natural skincare line and get 20% off all products for the rest of 2019!

Get in touch with Romina

romiapothecary.com
www.etsy.com/shop/romiapothecary
@romi_apothecary

Romina has generously offered all readers 20% her products until the end of 2019. Stock up now!

Here’s what happened!

We first went on a plant walk through my community garden. I’m an herbal newbie and had no idea what was even growing in my backyard!

My community garden is overgrown, so it was fun to wade through the sky high forest of nettles, the tall flower patch, the carpet of creeping Charlie’s, and finding some rogue zucchini plants we harvested.

For our facial oil, we wanted to gather some Eastern Red Cedar (which is antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory) from one of the trees. When you’re taking from the earth to make medicine or beauty treatments, it’s important to ask for the blessing of the plant that you’re taking from. We did a small blessing for the tree and asked if it would be okay if we took some springs for our medicine. When the tree said yes, we harvested a couple of branches.

For the beauty oil, we combined lavender, eastern red cedar, and red and pink rose buds into a mason jar. When making at home, you can use your intuition for proportions.

Then we added Jojoba oil. We combined all the ingredients together by stirring gently and viola! beauty oil ready to infuse. Then the fun part comes — naming your creation. We decided on Fairies of the Garden.

Make your own beauty oil:

What you’ll need:
Dried Lavender
Dried Rose Petals
Dried Rose buds
Freshly cut cedar leaves
Jojoba Oil
Mason Jar with lid

Directions:

Gather all of your ingredients together. Intuitively add each herb or plant into an empty mason jar. You can’t go wrong with how much you use.

Once you’ve combined all of your ingredients, pour the Jojoba Oil over the top and fill to cover the herbs.

Stir to combine!

Once you’ve stirred, place the lid back on the jar. Label with your own name and add the date you mixed it.

Set in sunlight for a couple hours a day (if you remember) and shake to continue to combine. The sunlight helps warm the herbs and the infusion process.

After 4 weeks, your oil will be ready to use! Use a cheesecloth to strain into a bottle of your choice. Make sure to squeeze any excess oil out of the herbs after you strain so you don’t lose any.

Use on your face or body as a moisturizer.

Enjoy!

Get to know Romina in 5 short(ish) questions!

I was born and raised in Honolulu to immigrant parents from Korea and Japan. I grew up dancing hula, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and eating a lot of rice. As a first generation Asian American woman, I came to Minnesota for the first time to go to Macalester College. My very urban and “old school” Asian parents were worried that I was going to become a “country bumpkin hippie” and I definitely lived up to that by shaving my head in a full moon ceremony, majoring in political theater and dance, and participating in public performance art.

Skip forward a few years later, now I work as an occupational therapist, specializing in neuro-rehabilitation for adults. I am also the founder and formulator of ROMI Apothecary, a natural cosmetics business in St. Paul, MN. ROMI Apothecary specializes in small-batch handcrafted skin care made from medicinal plants and oils. 80% of our medicinal skin-loving herbs are harvested in Minnesota either sustainably foraged from non-toxic lands or cultivated by organic farms operated by women.

How did you get started with herbs/wyld crafting?

I was exhausted after a challenging day at work and slowly cruising the aisles at my local food coop as stress relief, call it “retail therapy”? A cute little book by Rosemary Gladstar caught my eye and it was all about making your own natural cosmetics. I bought it and gobbled up all the content. I was enthralled by Rosemary’s voice, knowledge of the plants, and Goddess spirit. Reading her words and recipes made me feel like I too could be an Earth Goddess bathing in plant potions and jewels of the land. The first recipe I tried was her “Queen of Hungary Water” and it was so fun!

Later I decided to go the Midwest Women’s Herbal retreat in Wisconsin where she was going to teach workshops. I had to meet her and tell her how her book inspired me. The entire weekend conference opened up a whole new world into herbal medicine and plant healing for me. I found a passion that I never knew I could have. Most influential were the early morning plant spirit meditations with Rebekah Dawn and hearing Rosemary Gladstar’s stories about her journey and the people that she’s encountered. It was transformative!

From then on I took an apprenticeship with Jessica Belden owner of the Medicine Tree Apothecary in Longfellow Minneapolis, MN where I learned the basics of herbalism- identification, harvesting, medicine making, energetics, and treatment of body systems. I am also constantly reading as much as I can online and in books about plant spirit healing, herbalism, skincare, medicine making, etc. It’s an addiction that I won’t stop!

What are some of the benefits of foraging your own herbs/making your own tinctures?

When you forage your own herbs and make your own plant medicines, you get to connect with the plant and make an energetic exchange right there in the field where the plant is vibrant and alive. I always ask for permission to harvest, leave an offering of my hair or perhaps another herb (tulsi or tobacco), and I often find myself humming or talking while harvesting. Sometimes the plants tell me “no” and I move on. I always use sustainable practices, no more than 5% of a population and I never harvest herbs that are rare and hard to find. I mostly harvest common “weeds” that are not in danger of being over-harvested.

Tincturing in the field or soon after you forage ensures that you have a very fresh product. I believe that self-made fresh plant extracts are more desirable than tinctures that are made from dried plants. You are capturing life and the energys of the moment. I also believe that whole plant extracts encompass a wider range of plant constituents- all the bioflavonoids, minerals, vitamins from all the parts you harvest. Whereas most commercial tinctures are made from cut/sifted dried plants. Plant constituents are mostly isolated due to the nature of having to be tested, standardized, and quantified scientifically. This is how pharmaceutical drugs are made. However, when you make wyldcrafted medicines, you are making medicine for your body, mind, and soul with high vibrations and healing energy depending on what your intent is in the act of making the medicine.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about wyld crafting?

I don’t recommend going out and wyldcrafting by yourself until you have taken a class or someone has directly shown you which plants to harvest, how to harvest, and which parts of the plant are most desirable for medicine. It is easy to misidentify plants and an unassuming small mistake can have large negative consequences if you don’t know what you are doing. It is also very important to practice sustainability and utmost respect for the plants. We are plant stewards. We share the plants with the Earth and Animals. Instead of asking what a plant can do for you, ask what you can do for the plant!

How do you think magic/spirit/the great unknown appears in your work?

Plant spirit healing is embedded throughout my working process and inherently in my products. It starts at the moment where I meet the plants in the field and offer an exchange for harvesting them either a song, prayer, piece of hair, or another sacred plant. The process of harvesting, garbling, drying, and manufacturing are all meditative moments where i am handling plant bodies and have full opportunity to touch, smell, and interact with their vital nutrients and high vibrations.

I have a rule that I cannot formulate or handle products when I am in a negative mood. Sometimes I have to actively clear or change my mood because there are schedule production times where my mood does not align. I use walking in nature, ingesting tinctures or tea, crystals, incense, or sound from a gong/singing bowl to shift my consciousness and mood so that I am open and positive when making my plant potions.