Making Homemade Essential Oils

One of my favorite ways to bring the garden into the home is making essential oil. It's easy, beneficial to your health & smells great.

Lavender & Mint Essential Oils

Here's all you need: Carrier Oil, Dark Glass Bottle & the desired Plant

My favorite is essential lavender oil, but you can try it out about any flower, herb, even spice you like. As for a carrier oil, olive or sweet almond oil are best. I cannot stress enough that you should use dark bottle, it helps protect the oil from being broken down from sunlight.

First Step: Pack the Bottle

You basically pack as much of the plant into the bottle, then fill it up with oil. Afterwards, seal the bottle and tuck it away in a dark, cool spot. You need to keep it out of the sun because light can break down the oil and ruin your product. The hardest part then is to wait. I normally wait a month or two as the oil takes in the plant.

Keep In A Dark, Cool Place

Later on, you will need to get your hands on a filter so you can extract the plant's remains from the oil. That can be either a cheese cloth, fine strainer, or even a coffee strainer. Just place the filter over a new bottle or jar and pour your fused oil through the cloth into it. This process is called enfleurage.

I normally also store it in a dark bottle, but figured I'd try it in a glass bottle

Now that I've covered the basics, here are some details depending on what you want to make.

As I said, I love making lavender oil, but you can really use any kind. You can use anything from roses, jasmine, violets, honeysuckle, orange blossom, sweet pea, even marigolds. You can even mix scents! Most suggest that if you use flowers, cut just before they are fully open and only use the pedals. And each essential oil brings is own health benefits.

Herbs are the same way, you can use any of them for fragrance: peppermint, thyme, lemon verbena, lemon balm and rosemary. You can even make basil oil for cooking! But use only the leaves, no stems.

If you really like the smell of certain spices, you can even make those into an essential oil. Cinnamon, coriander, cloves, cumin and nutmeg are said to be the best. But it is suggested that you ground the spice up before packing the bottle.

There you have it, the easy way to make essential oil. And if you're wondering what you can do with essential oil; there are a lot of purposes: cosmetic, medicinal, even cooking!