How To Get The Essence of An Essential Oil Without Loosing Quality
I have been looking for carnation essential oil for quite a while and have found the price out of reach or just not available. So what do you do when the essential oil you need for that special project or essential oil blend is too expensive to buy or just not available? You make it yourself.
If an essential oil that normally sell for hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars for half an ounce is cheap, that's a red flag to me that maybe the seller doesn't know the real price of what they are selling (which is highly unlikely) or the oil is adulterated in some way or possibly a synethic blend.
I wanted to make an essential oil perfume for myself that called for thirteen different essential oils all of which was painstakingly collected, except for the carnation essential oil. The price of one half ounce of pure carnation essential oil was $450. What to do? Instead of blending essential oils, I decided to make a perfumed body sachet.
I bought fresh flowers and proceeded to dry them. You can see from the pictures the progression. After they were completely dried, I place them in a mortar & pestle and crushed them into a fine powder which was added to the other ingredients. BTW - it takes time to crush dry plants into a fine powder, so be prepared to use a little elbow grease if you decide to go this way. Just saying--
After the crushing, grinding and beating into a smooth powder, all ingredients were placed in a jar and used to fill sachet bags and my after bath dusting container.
I can't get enough of "Ooh, you smell so good" comments. I love this sachet. The recipe was given to me years ago by a friend who was from Africa.
You can see from the photo on the right the final dried carnation petals and leaves.
How To Make An Homemade Essential Oil From Flowers and Plants
If you don't have a home essential oil extractor, you can take fresh flowers or plants and infuse a carrier oil like sunflower, almond, jojoba or any other oil you like.
What you need:
- Flowers or Plants of your choice
- Carrier Oil of your choice (sweet almond, jojoba, olive, coconut etc)
- Mason jar or other container with a lid large enough to hold oil and plants
Label with date
- Place your plants in the jar, don't pack too tightly.
- Leave room in the jar for your oil. Pour enough oil in the jar to cover your plants but not full to the top.
- Next place the jar in a sunny place. (I use my window sill since I get full sunlight.) and my plants grow well here; the heat from the sun will help release fragrance.
- Wait a day or two, then start shaking the jar to help release the fragrance into the oil. It helps to smell the oil to see if you have the desired strength. If it's not as strong as you like, return it to the window sill for a couple more days or longer, shaking every other day.
- If your oil still isn't as strong as you want, strain the oil into another container and add more fresh flowers or plants and repeat step 3 and continue until you get the strength you desire. Remove the flowers or plants.
- Add some vitamin E oil to preserve and protect from bacteria. Put a label with the date on bottle.
Your oil is now ready for use or can be stored in an amber bottle and kept in a dark cool place.
Your oil can now be used used as a body oil or blended with other essential oil for home remedies, cleaning, room freshners or diffusing into your environment.
Happy Scenting!
If you have questions, feel free to contact us at ScentedHomeFragrance.com