herbal crafts

Spray Perfume DIY

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When making your own natural perfumes, you have plenty of options to consider. What scent? What base? What container? Most perfumes will either have a base of oil or alcohol, unless you are making a solid perfume which also requires oil but also beeswax, or carnauba wax for a vegan option. If you want a spray perfume, that makes it pretty easy to decide on your base because only alcohol will work with a spray top. There are other ingredients you can mix in with the alcohol, but the fundamental base should be an alcohol that is 80-100 proof, with vodka being the most common choice because it has the least amount of scent. You can find perfumers alcohol if you look around, but I like to follow the rule of ‘if you wouldn’t put it in your body, don’t put it on your body’ when making my own products.

I always have a perfume body oil that I use first thing in the morning and right before bed at night. I put it all over my torso and arms, sometimes legs too, and then it has to soak in before I put clothes on so that makes it confined to the above mentioned applications. Spray bottle perfume is something I like to keep on hand for applying before I leave the house or when I just need a mood lift from the scent, because no matter what is in there, it always lifts my mood. I even spray the inside of my coats because they need a little refreshing after so much use in the winter, especially since I tend to wear my coats inside quite often. I’ve actually tried to break that habit by putting a warm sweater or hoodie or something always accessible in the kitchen near the coat closet to make myself change out of coat. My aversion to being cold is a mighty one. Here’s the current situation here by the way:

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Even my 15 year old son asked if I had any sprays he could use to freshen up before leaving the house last week and since I’d just used the last of my perfume I handed him a bug repellent spray that we had leftover from the summertime, and he thought that just fine. After spraying it he said that it smelled really good so I hope I wrote that recipe down in my notebook!

For the spray perfume I’m making today, I’m using homemade rose-vanilla extract and vodka with some of my favorite essential oils for winter. It’s a two ounce bottle, which means 12 teaspoons, and the general rule is 5 to 20 drops of essential oils per teaspoon. That means I’ll want between 60 (12X5) and 240 (12X20) drops of essential oil in my two ounces of alcohol base. (I made the extract with vodka, rose petals, and vanilla beans, so it is indeed an alcohol base, just an enhanced one.) I’m using about an ounce each of the two bases.

I decided to make this focused a bit more on mental and emotional well-being while my normal perfumes are usually all about the scent. January through March is not my favorite time of year so I thought some uplifting essential oils were in order. Here’s what I made:

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2 oz dark glass spray bottle

A little less than 1 oz vanilla-rose extract

A little less than 1 oz vodka

50 drops sandalwood

40 drops ylang ylang

10 drops clary sage

20 drops bergamot

10 drops frankincense

5 drops rosemary

This turned out to be a really refreshing scent. I might add more rosemary once the blend settles, but for now I like how it smells. I won’t know for a few days if it needs any changing as it takes time for everything to mix and mingle and meld together.

Thank you for reading and let me know if you have a favorite essential oil blend for the wintertime!

 

DIY Holiday Gifts

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Since there is so much gifting this time of year, I wanted to share two more recipes from Aura Cacia that seem like nice, simple luxuries to share this time of year. I’m working on a writing project so my posts here might be more infrequent than usual, but I’ll still be checking in and you will be the firsts to know more about what I’m up to when the time is right. For now, here are two bath and body recipes to get you through the holiday season, either through gifting or using yourself. The first is a peppermint foot soak for those that are on their feet all day, athletes, dancers, or anyone that gets tired, achy feet and legs. Peppermint is the go-to herb and essential oil for tired feet and legs and this soak is guaranteed to make your tootsies tingle in the best possible way.

Peppermint Foot Soak (recipe from Aura Cacia)

Ingredients:

4 Tbs sea salt

4 Tbs baking soda

16 drops peppermint essential oil

16 drops tea tree essential oil

16 drops tangerine (or Sweet Orange) essential oil

4 oz. wide mouth amber glass jar

Directions:

  1. Measure sea salt, baking soda and essential oils into a small bowl and mix until blended. Sotre in an airtight container.
  2.  To use, measure 1 to 2 Tbs into a basin, fill with hot wather and soak feet until water cools. Rince and towel dry.

The second recipe is for a fizzy bath powder which is easier to make than it sounds. The citric acid granules combined with the baking soda is what creates the fizziness. These can be fun for tweens and teens to make their friends, although anyone can enjoy this scent. If mixing a citrus aroma with lavender sounds strange to you as it did me at first, try it! You will be surprised at how well they blend together and if you are looking to shed a few pounds, lavender and grapefruit or lavender and sweet orange are actually great combinations because they relax while also being uplifting and energizing. And we all know that anxiety and stress = cortisol = weight gain so relaxing is just as key as the uplifting/energizing part.

Grapefruit and Lavender Fizzy Bath Powder (Aura Cacia’s recipe)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup baking soda

2 Tbs sea salt

2 Tbs citric acid granules (you can find these at well-stocked natural foods stores like Whole Foods, usually in the bulk bins section, or craft stores, or online)

24 drops grapefruit essential oil

24 drops lavender essential oil

4 oz. wide mouth amber glass jar

Directions:

  1. Measure baking soda, salt, citric acid and essential oils into jar, replace lid and shake until well mixed.
  2.  To use, add up to 1.4 cup to bath water.

As always, be sure to label everything and write down what you did because if you are like me you will surely deviate from the recipes a bit and you will want a record of what you did and if you liked it. I’ve been thinking recently about how families pass on their food recipes and how if you are a crafter you should really pass down your craft recipes as well. With herbs and essential oils, these materials have been around for all our ancestors before us, and will be around (hopefully) for generations after us and how amazing would it be for your great great grandkids to be able to make the same scented body oils or bath salts that you did…? So if for no other reason, make sure you write down those recipes because your descendents need heirloom, family history, herbal knowledge. Pass it down and pass it on.

XOXOXO

 

 

Valentine’s Day Herbal Gifts

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Homemade gifts made with heart and intention are perfect for the holiday that celebrates love. Valentine’s Day is a warm reminder during this cold season that love should be celebrated fully and joyfully in all its forms, from friendship to family, and of course that special someone. Everyone can appreciate an herbal gift that conveys not only love, but also health, beauty, and green thoughtfulness.

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What plant could be more associated with Valentine’s than the rose? A flower of beauty that signifies love, it also has healing attributes that qualify it as an herb. Drinking rose petal tea is relaxing, due to its mildly sedative properties, and it also has some historical use as a headache reliever. The petals are used extensively for skin health, anti-aging, and beautification, while rose hips are full of bio-available vitamin C. Rose oil makes a lovely base for a massage or bath oil, and bath salts with rose petals would make a relaxing gift that encourages self-care and rejuvenation. Baths full of rose petals are picturesque and you will see plenty on Instagram, but if you don’t want to clean up wet petals after a restful bath, I suggest packing them in a muslin bag. You get all the benefits without worrying about the messy clean-up afterwards. The proportion of salts to rose petals is completely up to you, but if you want to add essential oils to the mixture, keep the essential oils down to about 10-20 drops per cup of mixture. Example: 1 cup Dead Sea Salt, 1/2 cup rose petals, 15 drops of lavender oil, and 10 drops of rose absolute in jojoba. Mix all together in a bowl before adding to a jar with a tight cap for gifting. Don’t forget to add the reusable muslin bag inside the jar, or tie it on the outside. 

Making a rose petal mask is another lovely way to gift roses and encourage self-care. Make a powder from dried rose petals either by using a mortar and pestle or a food processor. I actually use an old coffee grinder for making herbal powders and it works great. Mix the rose powder with either French Green Clay or another clay that suits the skin of your recipient (or yourself if this is a self-love gift) in the proportion of 1/3 rose powder, 2/3 clay. Example: 1 tablespoon rose powder mixed with 2 tablespoons clay. Store in a dark glass jar and mix one tablespoon at a time with either a water, a hydrosol, honey, or yogurt to apply. Actually, adding the powder mix to any of these one ingredient masks will make a multifaceted concoction, and you can choose if you want more of a firming, brightening, or evening out action. Leave on for 10-15 minutes, then rinse off with warm water. Skin will be moisturized, clean, firmer, and more even-toned.

Making a massage oil out of rose oil is as easy as adding the desired essential oils to the homemade rose oil. Aim for no more than 50-60 drops of essential oil per cup of base oil. You can also add in more base oils to the rose oil, so the mixture is more suited to the recipient’s particular skin. The heavier the oil, the more appropriate for dryer skin, and the lighter oils are more beneficial for oilier skin. Massage oil should not soak into the skin but rather allow for easy gliding, so sticking with sweet almond oil, avocado oil, apricot kernel oil, and grapeseed oil are good choices, especially when mixed together. Here’s a sample recipe including the aphrodisiac scents of rose, vanilla, and jasmine:

Massage Oil

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Making Massage Oil
1/2 cup Rose Oil (olive oil infusion)

1/2 cup Vanilla Oil (sweet almond infusion)

1/4 cup Avocado Oil

1/4 cup Apricot Kernel Oil

30 drops Sandalwood absolute in jojoba

40 drops Vanilla CO2 essential oil

5 drops Jasmine absolute in jojoba

 

I hope your Valentine’s day is full of love for your family, your friends, your partner, and yourself. We are experiencing the most snow in most of our lifetimes here in the Seattle region right now so I’ll be herbal crafting away happily this week. I also managed to make my first sourdough loaf this past weekend and it turned out splendidly! There’s a pic on my Instagram if you are interested.

Thank you for reading and Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

 

How to Make an Herbal Oil Part 1

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Making an herbal oil using the ‘cold method’ is very similar to making an herbal tincture. For the base oil you can use olive oil, almond oil, or grapeseed oil, but olive oil is the one most commonly used. Herbal oils are a great way to get the healing benefits of the herbs onto the skin where they can work on skin issues (Calendula or Rose), and also be absorbed into the body through the skin to work on things like sore muscles (St. John’s Wort). Herbal oils can also be added to baths or made into a healing  balm or butter, and essential oils can be added to herbal oils for added benefits as well.

The skin benefits of roses from their nutritious rose hips to the highly prized essential oil are well known. Making an herbal oil of roses is another way to make use of the healing and beauty-imparting benefits of roses. It is far more economical than the essential oil, and also less potent, but it makes a great base for any perfume blending or body butter creations. Rose oil itself is skin healing and beautifully scented enough to make a lovely gift just as is, even without added essential oils. After the oil has cured and been strained, simply add a few new rose buds or petals back into the strained oil for a luxurious look. How to video below:

Here is part 2 of this series, as well as how to make an herbal oil using The Quick Method.  Please subscribe for weekly posts about herbs, natural health, and green beauty, and please share this with anyone who might be interested.

 

Herbal Gifts Kids Can Make (Adults too!)

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This time of year it can be nice to take a break from the holiday craziness for a couple of hours and be creative, work with nature’s gifts, and maybe even a kid or two, to make something for yourself or others. I remember watching Little House on the Prairie and being shocked at how excited they were for their Christmas gifts which were always something like a penny and a hand-sewn apron for their one and only doll. Those days may be long gone but we can still appreciate the small things, the natural gifts that are crafted by hand that can add a sparkle of ‘special’ to a bath, a meal, or a daily routine. Kids love to be creative and make things, something that seems to happen less and less in school these days, so really if you are crafting with kids you are giving them a gift in the making as well as in the giving. Part of the fun is the labeling and packaging too, so let yourself or your young helper/s let out their inner artist. Including instructions with the gifts is also a good idea just to make sure the receiver remembers how to use the gift days later when all the chaos and hubbub of gift giving is over, plus it’s a sneaky little writing exercise for youngsters too, and can be awfully cute. It’s also a great time to share the value of reusing glass bottles and other containers, as well as why choosing ‘natural’ over ‘artificial’ is important. Some ideas to consider:

For the cook~ Bouquet Garni, Olive Oil and Vinegar infused with herbs (For the bouquet garni you will need cooking twine or muslin bags, parsley, thyme, and a bay leaf or two, plus other herbs if you want.) Use dried herbs only with the oil, but vinegar can take dry or fresh. See video below for more details.

For the homebody~ Room spray / body spray (could even be labeled car spray for the new driver or car aficionado), body oil These links take you to other posts with videos.

For the bath and spa lover~ Bath salts, Herbal bath mixtures, Bath milks,  Salt Scrub, Massage oil (can be made the same as a body oil). See video below for more details.

For the traveler~ Herbal Eye Pillow (this link takes you to Pinterest tutorials), Relaxing essential oil perfume (this link takes you another post with a how-to video).

For the yoga and/or meditation practitioner: Chakra oils (This link takes you to another post with a how-to tutorial.)

For men~ Cologne (video below but using a recipe from Wormwood’s The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy), body oil, hair growth blend (Links to other posts with the how-to info.)

 

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Bottle of 2 oz. Castor oil with 5 drops of Rosemary Essential Oil with a dropper (for hair growth)
For the cat fanatic~ Catnip pillow (you can do this for dogs too, just sick some treats in there instead of the catnip.) Link is to Pinterest how-to tutorials.

I really enjoy the labeling process (as you can clearly see by all the options I included) so here are ideas to get you started:

Chalkboard Labels or these

Apothecary Labels

Craft Labels

Japan Style Labels

Natural History Labels

Art Nouveau Labels

European Tiles Labels

In case you can’t reuse the glass bottles and jars that you already have, here are a couple of options:

Clear Vintage Bottles

Green Vintage Bottles

Vintage Apothecary Jars

Craft Jars

Enjoy being creative and fashioning nature’s gifts into self-care treats for yourself or others, and please share with anyone who might be looking for DIY ideas, especially if they have little ones they are crafting with. Kids love creating and especially love working with herbs and essential oils. They just seem to have an instinct for the ancestral authenticity of it. I hope your winter season is full of natural delights and plenty of rest and rejuvenation. Please subscribe for weekly posts about herbs, natural health, and green beauty, and please share this with anyone who might be interested.