Homemade Essential Oils: 5 essential materials and how-to-do tips

If you are an avid user of essential oils and know all about various carrier oils, absolutes, including their therapeutic properties and aromas, you can start making them at your home. By making homemade essential oils, you could save a lot of money and have loads of fun in knowing more about healing oils. Joys apart, essential oil making demands great patience and care. As a novice, you may have to have a few materials and know about the right measure of herbs, spices and oils you need to use.

Below are a few essential tips you need to know with regard to making essential oils at your home:


1. Learn about essential oils: You maybe an expert with regard to essential oil usage. But you can suck when you venture to make a preparation on your own. As a basic rule, get to know everything you can about essential oils. Know about the home preparation methods suggested and choose the best that you can afford. Instead of starting on a large scale, start with a small experiment. Try making small ounces of oil and test it to verify the results. You can even take it to a local aromatherapy apothecary to check the quality of your preparation.

2. Possible sources of essential oils: You need to know from where you can extract which oil. A general information search on the Internet or a trip to a local, alternative medicine library would help a lot. Since plant materials are the basic substances from which essential oils are made, parts of plants form the possible sources. Depending on the nature of your oil, you can extract from flowers, herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, kernels, stem, bark etc. Possible flowers are rose, lavender, jasmine, neroli, marigold, lotus, vetiver, orange blossom etc. Possible sources of herbs are thyme, peppermint, basil, marjoram, rosemary, lemon balm etc. Coriander, cloves, cinnamon and cumin form the best kind of oil sources in the spices category. Even the zest of citrus fruits can be used in essential oil preparation.

Materials you may need: Essential oil preparation is easy if you have the right materials. Here is a list of materials you may require:

3. Measuring Devices: Must for any kind of preparation, more so for essential oils. Since essential oils are highly concentrated, you need to use the right measure of oils when mixing or in combination with carrier oils. If your measure exceeds the right dose, you may feel skin irritation or the oil may go rancid quickly. You may get a different aroma too.

4. Containers, jars, Vitamin E caps: This is required to hold the oil once extracted from plants. You will also need a tinted bottle with a tight lid to store the prepared oils. Vitamin E gel caps can be used as a natural preservative to prevent oils from getting spoilt.

5. Enfleurage:
Enfleurage and maceration are the processes by which oils can be prepared at home easily. Enfleurage is a method which involves steeping of essential oils in cool olive oil. The extracted oil is purified or heated to get the desired quality. Sometimes the enfleurage container is kept in hot water to speed up the extraction process. This is called maceration. Since enfleurage may involve repetition and take about 24 to 48 hours time, better to get the detailed measurements of the carrier oils and plant extracts you need to add.