Working with essential oils can be rewarding and fun. However, if you are planning to create a recipe that uses essential oils, consider safety and practicality first. Although natural, essential oils are quite potent and most are unsafe to apply to the skin undiluted.
Fragrance or Function?
Before you begin your essential oil project, decide whether you are creating a product for fragrance or function. If, like a perfumer, you are concerned primarily with blending essential oils to create a superb scent, focus on the feeling you are trying to evoke and let your sense of smell guide you. Do you want a floral blend or a spicy one? Which "top," "middle," and "bottom" notes will you use?
On the other hand, if you are creating a product to be aromatherapeutic, focus first on the physical and emotion effects of the oils. Are you creating a blend for relaxation or for energy? Are you applying the product to your skin or diffusing it through the air? Therapeutic blends aren't always pleasing---and perfume blends don't always have therapeutic effects.
Choosing Essential Oils
Essential oils always come in amber or cobalt blue bottles; this is because they are highly volatile and lose their effectiveness when exposed to too much light. For this reason, store your essential oils in a cool, dark place. Only buy essential oils that include a scientific name along with a common name; two (or more) completely different plants can bear the same common name, and have very different therapeutic effects and scents. Buy oils from reputable sources; essential oils may be adulterated with other, cheaper essential oils or even synthetic fragrances. Avoid buying unethically harvested or endangered essential oils, such as sandalwood. You may have to do some research.
Choosing an Application
How would you like to apply your essential oils? If you plan to wear your blend as a perfume, add it to a moisturizer for your skin, or include it in body-cleansing products, your skin will come into contact with the oils. In this case, you must take extra safety precautions---like mixing them in at the proper dilution---into account.
Also, not all essential oils are safe for skin. But there are a variety of essential oil applications that are not meant for the skin. Consider carrying your perfume blend around with you as a scented sachet in your pocket or purse, adding your relaxation blend to a water-based room spritzer, or diffusing your oils in a small pan of simmering water.
Essential Oil Safety
Very few essential oils are safe to use neat (100% undiluted) on the skin. One of these is lavender. In "Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art" by Kathi Keville and Mindy Green, the authors recommend a 2% dilution of essential oils. This equates to about 10 drops per ounce of carrier oil or other base. Citrus oils, including bergamot and petitgrain, are photosensitive. This means they react to light. Do not put these on skin that will come into contact with sunlight. Also, some essential oils are particularly irritating to the skin. These include basil, cinnamon, thyme (red), and wintergreen. Use these, and other irritants, cautiously when adding to skin applications; always dilute properly. Never ingest an essential oil. And keep them out of the reach of children.
Working With Essential Oils
When mixing essential oils, add each oil by the drop. Essential oils are very potent; even one drop of an essential oil can change the smell of an entire blend or product. To experiment with different scents, blend essential oils drop by drop on a paper towel; this will save oil and give an idea of what different oils smell like together. When adding essential oils to a heated base, such as melted soap or beeswax balm, add the oils only after taking the base off of the heat. Otherwise, the essential oils might evaporate out. If you have known allergies or sensitivities and plan on using a new essential oil on your skin, try a patch test first. Dilute the essential oil in question into a carrier oil such as olive oil and apply a small amount to the inside of your wrist. Do not wash it off, and wait one day for possible reaction.
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