I love going to get a facial, but it’s usually a rare treat for me. For about three days after, my skin glows and fine lines and wrinkles are diminished. Wouldn’t it be nice to get similar results more often?

Well, my daughter Amber and I recently discovered we can when we use a French green clay mask. I’ve used bentonite clay powder before, mixing up a wonderfully effective bee-sting remedy for the occasional stings my husband and I get as beekeepers. But I hadn’t tried any other type of clay until last week.

After reading about the benefits of green clay, I picked some up at my favorite place for such sundries, at the herb room at Good Earth health food store in Indianapolis. Amber and I happened to be together

Amber and I loved our French green clay masks!

during a vacation, and we were both excited to try it. Even though we have different skin types, this green clay powder worked for us both.

Why are Clays Good for Your Skin?

First of all, all clays have absorbed goodness from the earth and help to rejuvenate the skin and protect it from aging. According to Valerie Worwood in The Complete Book of Essential Oils & Aromatherapy, green clay is the finest of clays and can be used for all types of skin including acne, oily, dry, and aging skin. I know it seems too good to be true, but it worked for my aging skin and Amber’s oily skin. French clay is rich in the following minerals: calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, and it energizes the connective tissue. It is also antiseptic, healing, and emollient, with the result being silky skin. Besides those more obvious results, it performs the important task of increasing the lymph flow and circulation, which helps to eliminate waste products from your body.

What Did I Notice After Using my Green Clay Mask?

Here’s what I noticed after washing off my face mask:

1. my skin felt silky
2. fine lines were diminished
3. my skin tone evened out

As a nice side benefit, just the very act of giving myself a home facial was very relaxing and pampering. Amber and I had so much fun doing this together too.

French Green Clay Recipe

This clay is very versatile. To make one application for a facial, here’s a basic recipe:

• 3/4 tsp French green clay
• 1/2 -3/4 tsp liquid, depending on how thick you like the mask

I know this sounds like a tiny amount of clay, but trust me, it’s enough for one application. Here’s a picture of how much it made in my bowl and how much was left after I applied it.

Before applying (This is 3/4 tsp of clay and 3/4 tsp of liquid).

As far as the liquid goes, you can use water, but my favorite ingredient to use is rose hydrosol or rose water or another type of hydrosol. Or you could brew a cup of chamomile tea and add that to the clay. I like to use a tiny whisk, stirring until the mixture is smooth.

Once you have your liquid of choice mixed in, consider adding 1 drop of an essential oil. This ups the healing properties of the mask as it can be tailored to your skin type and makes it an aromatherapy experience as well.

Here are a few suggestions of essential oils to add based on skin type to get you started:

1. For acne, try adding 1 drop of tea tree or geranium essential oil.
   

   After applying the French green clay to my skin.

2. For aging skin, add one drop of rose essential oil.
3. For sensitive, inflamed skin, add 1 drop of German or Roman chamomile.
4. To help you relax, try adding 1 drop of lavender.

The recipe is very adaptable to experimentation. If you don’t have a local source for French green clay, you can purchase it from my Square Shop.

Let me know if you have used a green clay face mask and what your favorite facial recipe is.

eScentually yours,

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If you’re like me, you struggle to get every last drop of essential oil out of the bottle.

And especially when it comes to the more expensive oils like rose, sandalwood, and jasmine, I don’t want to waste anything. Every drop is expensive.

I came up with an easy solution to using those last few stubborn drops. You can hear it in the one-minute video below.

How about you? Do you have any tricks for using up every precious drop? If so, I’d like to hear them, so please share in the comment section below.

eScentually yours,

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It’s the month of February and Valentine’s Day, so that means love is in the air. What better representation of love than a rose?

Years ago I found a lovely little book by Kate Greenaway called the Language of Flowers. Kate was an artist and writer in the late 1800s with a distinctive style the French coined “Greenawisme.” Her artwork captured the things that were the epitome of childhood in that century: bows, ruffles, ringlets, cherubic faces, tea parties, flowers, and the like.

I turned to the page in her book that lists rose, and low and behold, she details 33 different types of roses and their meanings! The very first one of the list is simply rose, and it’s meaning is love.

Rose Essence Beeswax Perfume

As I sit here writing this, I am, quite coincidentally, wearing a heart locket filled with my Rose essence beeswax perfume. As I open the locket and smooth some on my wrist, I can’t help but smile at the happy fragrance. As an aromatherapist, I love to create fragrance with rose. It improves almost everything you blend it with.

Besides smelling heavenly, rose essential oil, Rosa x damascena, is a beautiful oil that is associated with the heart, compassion, love, and forgiveness. Historically, it is wonderful for mature skin and for the female reproductive system including everything from irregular menstruation to menopause. It also relieves anxiety and is a gentle antidepressant.

True rose essential oil is one of the most expensive oils on the market. One milliter can cost from $27 to $39, which makes it about $2 to $4 per drop. Because of the pricing, rose oil is often sold as a 5 to 10 percent dilution in jojoba oil. You can also purchase rose absolute, which is about half the price as the pure oil. It is still lovely, but not quite the same as the pure oil.

Create Your Own Rose Fragrance

Whatever type of rose oil you may have, it will make an altogether lovely cream, perfume, or oil blend. To create a light rose fragrance, purchase a 1/3 ounce glass roller bottle and fill it one-quarter of the way with jojoba oil. Add 20 drops of rose oil and then fill  the bottle up to the halfway mark with jojoba oil. Gently swish the oils together and sniff. Add more if you would like a stronger aroma. This is perfect for any occasion.

Love Poetry

As I turned to the back of Kate’s little book, I found a poetry section with a poem called “Go, Lovely Rose” by Edmund Waller. In this poem, Waller addresses the rose and tells it to speak to his love for him.

Go, lovely Rose—

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young,

And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung

In deserts where no men abide,

Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired:

Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die—that she

The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee;

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Yet, though thou fade,

From they dead leaves let fragrance rise

And teach the maid

That goodness Time’s rude hand defies;

That virtue lives when beauty dies.

Have a love-filled day!

eScentually yours,

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Recently I was spending a lovely sisters’ weekend on Mackinac Island. If you’ve never been there, it’s truly like stepping back in time. No cars are allowed on the island, so the main forms of transportation are your feet, bicycles, and horse and carriages. The rhythmic clip-clopping of horses’ hooves on the roads is a welcome relief from the noise of buses, trucks, and cars.

A Fragrant Treasure

An assortment of shops fills the downtown streets of Mackinac, and my sisters and I couldn’t wait to explore them. In a little store tucked away on a back street, I found a lovely treasure
— a bottle of Rose de Mai Beauty Oil. If you’re at all familiar with aromatherapy, you know that rose is one of the most expensive essential oils that you can purchase. One ounce of (true) essential oil of Rose Otto (Rosa damascena) can cost well over $1000.

I squeezed a drop from the tester bottle onto my hand and turned the box over to examine the contents. I discovered that this oil is actually a blend. It does not contain the essential oil, but rather contains the essential waxes of Rosa damascena and Rosa centifolia in a jojoba, borage, and grapeseed oil base. But it is altogether lovely!

Essential Flower Wax

Are you wondering what an essential flower wax is? I was too! After researching, I found out that it is a vegetable wax, somewhat like beeswax, that is left over from the process of making a flower absolute.

To make an absolute, the plant scent is first extracted with alcohol and then chilled. This process separates the rose wax from the absolute. The essential wax itself contains many beneficial properties, and it can be used in other products, such as my beauty oil. In an article called Essential Flower Waxes, aromatherapist Jeanne Rose lists the properties of rose flowers’ (Rosa centifolia and Rosa damascena) essential wax:

• moisturizing
• softening
• free-radicals scavenging
  

  My sisters and I on a Mackinac hike.

• soothing for itchy, dry, delicate, or teenage skin

Review of Rose de Mai Beauty Oil

I am enjoying my Rose de Mai Beauty oil. Note that it comes with a dropper top, but does not include a regular cap. I wish it had a cap on it to prevent any of the properties from evaporating through the rubber bulb of the dropper.

Even though it does not contain the pure essential oil, it is a beautiful product with a light rose fragrance. The oil itself sinks into your skin and absorbs nicely without leaving any residue.

If you desire to use it as a perfume, realize it’s not designed as a fragrance, so the aroma doesn’t have the staying power of a day-long fragrance. It is far lighter and unobtrusive lasting an hour or so, but delightful. So far I’m using it as a facial moisturizer, a cuticle repairer, and  a light scent. With just a few day’s use, my skin feels softer. It is one of my favorite finds from our trip to Mackinac.

If you’d like to try the Rose de Mai oil or the rose essential wax, I’ve found the products on Amazon. I’m planning on buying the wax myself to use in aromatherapy products I make, as I love the aroma and properties of rose, but buying the pure essential oil or even the absolute can be pretty pricey. I’m interested to see if the wax boosts the rose scent of my products as well as adding to the beneficial qualities of them. I’ll post about that when I try it.

How about you? Do you have any favorite aromatherapy finds? Be sure to share in the comments below. Always keep your eyes open, because you never know where or when you’ll find a treasure!

eScentually yours,

*This post does contain affiliate links. I do make a small profit if you purchase any products through my links. I only link to products I use myself, have heard are reputable, or are on my own want-to-try list. If you do choose to purchase a product through my link, thank you so much. This helps me as writing and aromatherapy/natural health are my business and passion.

I saw the familiar yellow school bus in our neighborhood this morning, definitely heralding the end of summer—at least for the academic calendar. Back to school is always an exciting time for kids and parents alike, albeit for different reasons! Whether your children are just starting their school career, are somewhere in the middle, or are heading toward graduation, aromatherapy can support a wellness lifestyle throughout their entire year. Let’s look at some possibilities of how to do that.

Safety First

In discussing children and aromatherapy, I first want to set a few important guidelines.

1. Always keep your essential oils out of the reach of children. Cute tiny bottles may entice a child to take a drink, but most essential oils are poisonous to consume undiluted.
2. Do not use essential oils on premature babies. They have high skin permeability, so it is not recommended.
3. Remember, essential oils are highly concentrated, at 75%-100% stronger than the herb of the same name. So the rule for children (and adults) is to dilute, dilute, dilute! We’ll discuss proper amounts in this post.
4. Do NOT let children ingest essential oils unless they are under the supervision and advice of a doctor or certified clinical aromatherapist with years of experience in this practice.
5. For children under 5 years of age, use aromatherapy products for acute conditions such as illnesses, skin conditions, injuries, infections, and emotional upsets.
6. Do not use dermal (skin) applications of aromatherapy products everyday on children 5 and under. There is the possibility of creating sensitization and increased likelihood of developing allergies. Olfaction and inhalation is the preferred method of application unless you are treating an acute condition.
7. Do not place undiluted essential oils or highly concentrated blends of oils around the nose or mouth of children under age 2. This could cause respiratory distress.
8. Keep in mind that hydrosols are gentler to use with children than essential oils.
9. Avoid the use of menthol or 1,8 cineole-rich essential oils until the age of 2, such as cardamom, Niaouli, eucalyptus, and peppermint (avoid until the age of 30 months).

Now that we understand a few basic safety rules, let’s consider some ways you can choose to use aromatherapy for wellness throughout the school year. We’ll focus on the oils that have a safe record with children when used in the proper dilutions. As a side note, if you’re sending any aromatherapy products to school with your children, it’s always a good idea to inform the teacher and/or school nurse.

1.Handling Stress

School is often a mix of good and bad stress. While I have many happy memories of my school days, I also remember the times when projects, tests, and social stresses became overwhelming. My first weapon for combating stress is prayer. Praying for your child each day and targeting your prayers to the specific demands of that day is important. Make it a daily habit. Whether your child is struggling with the newness of classes, teachers, and students or looming deadlines of tests and projects, prayer can help tame the stress monster in your child’s life.

Next, I like to calm the physical reaction of stress with aromatherapy. It is proven that the scent molecules of aromatherapy when inhaled travel from the olfactory nerves directly to the brain and have an effect on the amygdala, which controls our emotions. When it comes to treating stress or depression, one of the quickest routes is through inhalation. Using a diffusor at home or making or purchasing a pocket inhaler that your child can take to school are two possible ways to handle this. Here’s a favorite simple synergy to help combat stress:

Calming Synergy
20 drops lemon
10 drops lavender

Combine this synergy in a glass 1-dram bottle to be used in a diffusor or an inhaler. To use a diffusor, you could choose to add 7 to 10 drops of the synergy to your water-based diffusor or follow the directions for a nebulizing diffusor. To make a personal inhaler, you may want to add 10 drops to the inhaler for a child who is in the 3-4 year age range and 20-30 drops to the inhaler tube for older children (see directions under Immune System below).

If you like scientific information, you may want to check out this study from Iran on diabetic children and the effect of orange essential oil on their stress levels.

2. Focus and Concentration

After-school time can get crazy in most families. Snacks, sports activities, play time, and youth group can all be vying for time and attention with homework. When your child does sit down to work on projects and homework, she may need some extra help to focus and concentrate. Two good oils to try are rosemary and sweet orange. Historically, Rosemary stimulates and enhances the memory while sweet orange uplifts and relieves anxiety. Try diffusing this synergy, using in an inhaler, or making a room spritzer and spray in the air as your child is studying. I’ve made this in a 2 percent dilution, which is just right for pre-schoolers through young teenagers. You can up the oil count a bit for older teens or try a blend of 15 drops Rosemary and 10 peppermint for a stimulating, refreshing aroma. Adjust the amount to your preference.

Study Spritzer
1-oz spray bottle
Distilled water
16 drops sweet orange essential oil
4 drops Rosemary essential oil

If you are using a plastic bottle, make the synergy first in a small glass vial or shot glass. Fill the spray bottle to the “shoulder line” with water (the shoulder line is when the bottle is considered full, not the neck line) and then add the synergy. Shake well before each use. If you like a milder aroma, use a 2-oz spray bottle at the same dilution rate. If you are using a glass spray bottle, you can mix the synergy directly in it and then add the water. Shake well and spray.

3. Immune System

Once kids are back in school, it’s not too long before the first bug hits and absentee calls start flooding the office. 2020 update: with Covid-19 a huge concern, doing what you can to boost the immune system should be the goal. That includes everything from focusing on healthy foods to teaching proper hand washing to using a preventive inhaler.

The idea is to try to strengthen our children’s immune systems so even if they do get sick with any type of illness, it will hopefully be a mild case. This recipe comes courtesy of Jade Shutes of The School for Aromatic Studies.

Preventative Inhaler
15 drops Rosalina
10 drops Frankincense
5 drops Saro
Empty inhaler

Mix the synergy and soak the inhaler pad until it has absorbed the mix. Assemble the inhaler and you’re good to go. I’ve found that most of my inhalers last for months, and they are easy to refresh by adding a few more drops to the pad. You can also purchase replacement pads as well. Your child can take the inhaler to school and use throughout the day. You could also make this synergy and store it in a one-dram bottle, adding 7-10 drops to your diffusor.

4. PMS Help

It’s difficult when girls have to miss out on school or life because of painful menstrual cramps. Most women have memories of missing—or being miserable through—some major event because of PMS woes. The combination of these three oils in a 3 percent dilution of a carrier oil may be enough to help relieve the suffering. Drinking a cup of herbal tea such as chamomile may help too!

Massage Oil for Cramps
1 ounce organic jojoba or sesame or other carrier oil
8 drops Ginger (Zingiber officinale)
6 drops Clary sage (Salvia sclarea)
5 drops Mandarin (Citrus reticulata)

Combine the synergy first in a glass vial. Fill the bottle halfway with oil and add the synergy. Swirl around or shake gently and add the rest of the oil. Shake again. Massage onto abdominal area.

5. Sleeping

Sometimes children just can’t seem to wind down at night, especially if they’ve been busy with lessons and studies right up until bedtime. There is definitely something to be said for allowing children time to just be kids during the day by building in time for play and de-stressing. But for those nights when sleep just won’t come, essential oils may help. German chamomile (also called Blue chamomile) is one of my favorites. It’s beautiful blue color is soothing and the aroma is milder than Roman chamomile; just to warn you, though, this is an expensive oil. If you don’t have any of the German variety, you could substitute lavender with some sweet marjoram or a drop of Roman chamomile.

Sleepy Massage Oil
1 ounce of carrier oil of your choice
12 drops of German chamomile (1.5% dilution)

Mix the oils together and store in a bottle. Massage onto the bottom of your child’s feet or on the back. The massage is incredibly relaxing, too, and may help calm and settle your child.

These ideas are just the beginning of the way aromatherapy can support a wellness lifestyle. Seek credible advice from a certified aromatherapist or expert in the field. Research as you go and don’t fall for dangerous fads that encourage unwise practices. Safety is your top priority as you explore the wonderful world of holistic health and healing that is aromatherapy. Here’s to an aromatic, successful school year!

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