When making your own body oils, you can choose essential oils for their therapeutic properties or simply for their scent. Blending, like perfumery, is an art: it takes time, and some trial and error, to create a good blend. If you really get into making your own homemade beauty products, it is a good idea to get a book on essential oils and base oils (see the book list at the end of this post).
How to Blend Essential Oils
Choose just a few oils, especially when you first start making your own skincare products. It is tempting to throw in lots of different essential oils, but you only need three (or possibly four) for a blend. Less is more. A typical blend for a body oil contains 3% of essential oils. 1% blend is recommended for homemade face oils or for body oils for pregnant women.
20 drops of essential oil is 1 ml. To make a 3% blend, you need to add a total of 60 drops of essential oils into the 100 ml of base oil. So here’s a basic guide for making a 100 ml bottle of your own body oil:
100 ml base oil(s) and
- 3% blend = 60 drops of essential oil(s)
- 2% blend = 40 drops of essential oil(s)
- 1% blend = 20 drops of essential oil(s)
How to Choose Oils for Aromatherapy Blends
If all you want is a nice scented body oil, you can have a lot of fun experimenting with oils and blends. A typical blend contains a base note, a middle note and a top note (read more about which oils fall into which category in any good aromatherapy book). If you choose oils purely because you love the scent, it is still a good idea to check their therapeutic properties in a book so that you won’t use a stimulating oil if you want to relax, or risk using contraindicated oils. A good way to try a blend and avoid wasting oils is to add drops of each of your chosen oil on a cotton swab, and try the scent before making the actual blend.
Check out Essential oils you need to know: All about aromatherapy home remedies for help in finding oils for therapeutic blends, or read more about essential oils for different skin types.
A few recommended books about essential oils:
Patricia Davis: Aromatherapy, an A-Z (Random House, UK, 2004)
Julia Lawless: The Encyclopaedia of Essential Oils (Element Books, 1995)
Maggie Tisserand: Aromatherapy for Women: How to use essential oils for health, beauty and your emotions (Thorsons, 1999)
Valerie Ann Worwood: The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy (New World Library, 1991)
Thank you so much for the proportions table. I appreciate not having to do the math myself! Keep up the great newsletter!