How To Make Your Own Essential Oil Blends

One of the pleasures of aromatherapy is discovering your creative expression in the medium of scents. Commercial perfumes are mainly blends of essential oils and then stuck in fancy bottles. You can discover your own essential oil blends for specific moods or purposes without having to rely on Madison Avenue to tell you what you should smell like. Making your own essential oil blends is easy and enjoyable.

Equipment Needed

For making your own essential oil blends, you need an eyedropper, bottles of essential oils and some small dark bottles with secure tops. It is good also to have a few books on aromatherapy to help you choose your blends, but it is not absolutely necessary. Make your own essential oil blends on newspaper or something you don't mind accidentally ruining. Essential oils can sometimes leave a permanent stain.

You might want to also have a vegetable-based carrier oil if you want to make your own essential oil blends meant to go on the skin. Most pre essential oils will really irritate the skin because they are so strong. Suitable carrier oils include jojoba, apricot kernel, grapeseed, coconut, sweet almond and olive oil.

Notes

For best results, you need at least one drop of oil from each of the three "notes" assigned to scents. Notes means how they hit the nose. Top notes are what you immediately smell, but they soon fade away. Base notes last the longest and are usually the strongest scent overall. Middle notes are exactly that - they can be scented longer than top notes, but usually not as long as middle notes. Some oils like patchouli are assigned different notes depending on who you read. In that case, use your own judgment.

Blending

Choose which empty bottle is to have the blend. Then, fill with an eyedropper from the other essential oils. If you want to make a pure essential oil blend, then you need twenty drops of middle and top noted for every ten base note oils. If you are making a massage oil, then for every ten drops of essential oil, you need 90 of the carrier oil. Don't worry if you loose count. Near enough guess is usually still good. If you are unsure, then do a patch test. Put a drop of your new blend on your arm, leg or wrist and see if there are any adverse reactions after 24 hours. If not, your new blend is safe for you. After you make your own essential oil blend, store it out of sunlight in a cool, dark place.