DIY Life

Join me each week as I explore the naturally aromatic side of DIY. Helpful recipes for your "scentual" pleasure: from essential oils, herbs, and other botanicals to soap-making, body care products and other useful blends.

I made several batches of soap today. There is nothing quite like being surrounded by the scent of essential oils, blending them, inhaling them. Ahhhhh...

Sometimes I wish they weren't so expensive, because I would do a pure rose otto soap, which would only be about a hundred dollars a bar! Or how about a dripping-in-neroli body butter? Well, OK, I might do that last one if I were feeling particularly decadent.

One of the fun things about becoming skilled at blending is the way you can stretch your expensive luxury scents with other more affordable essential oils to create scents that satisfy, without breaking the bank -- too much anyway!

After the break, I'll discuss floral waxes and give away some blending secrets you don't want to miss.

Floral waxes are one of the best ways to get a luxury oil scent without selling your first-born. You can use them in soaps, body butters, and lotions. A good rule of thumb is to use about double the amount of floral wax as you would an essential oil, but it will vary from scent to scent and will also depend on what you are blending it with. I very rarely do a single note blend, so I don't expect my floral wax to be my total scent, and if you can do it, boosting the floral wax with some genuine oils would help too.

A sample blend using floral wax for a five-pound batch of jasmine soap would look something like this:

• 3 oz. jasmine floral wax
• 1 tsp. jasmine absolute
• 1 tsp. ylang ylang, to boost the floral
• 1 tsp. geranium, ditto
• 1 tsp. sweet orange, to get the scent moving to your senses
• 1 tsp. patchouli, to ground and help the scent stick

Ready for those blending secrets?

Here's a blend to stretch just 25 drops of rose otto into 53 glorious, all-natural, rose-scented drops:

• 25 drops rose otto
• 5 drops ylang ylang, to boost the floral
• 10 drops rose geranium, to ehnance the rose
• 10 drops rosewood, to enhance and ground
• 3 drops vanilla infusion, just to smooth it all out

You've grounded and boosted your rose otto into a lovely rose scent for nearly half the cost, still using only natural ingredients.

Want your finished product to smell like neroli? Try this blend:

• 25 drops neroli
• 10 drops bitter orange
• 10 drops petitgrain
• 5 drops green mandarin
• 3 drops patchouli
• 3 drops green coriander

It retains the exotic, green neroli scent, boosted and balanced -- and affordable!

Finally, sandalwood:

• 25 drops sandalwood
• 12 drops amyris
• 5 drops patchouli
• 5 drops cedarwood
• 3 drops vanilla infision

Woody, slightly sweet, and all things natural.

You can make luxury scented products while saving money and avoiding synthetic fragrances.