Following Up

[badstar]

Some of you may remember this from last year...it's a recipe for some superawesome bug repellent. When I've used it in the past, it's been good for keeping everything - and I mean everything- off for about 5-6 hours before reapplying. Da bugz adore me, and it was highly amusing to watch them get a few inches away from me before flying away. Mosquitos, black flies,you name it.


As a base/carrier oil, you can use grapeseed, almond, jojoba, apricot kernel, or even olive oil.

5 oz carrier oil

Essential oils:

1/2 oz citronella oil
1/2 oz texas cedarwood oil
1/2 oz eucalyptus oil
1/2 oz lemongrass oil
1/2 oz peppermint oil
1/2 oz neem oil

mix 'em all together, shake before using. it can be put into a spray mister bottle. safe to use on pets, but try to keep them from licking their coat.

the stuff I used had grapeseed oil as the carrier oil. it's nice and light, doesn't leave your skin feeling all icky in the heat.

Note, these are essential oils, not scented or fragrance oils.

Comments

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Where did you get the oils?

I remember there was some confusion between citronella oil and lemongrass oil, since they come from the same plant...

[fuego.livejournal.com]

i haven't actually bought the oils yet...i got the recipe last may from Jen, though I'm hoping to be able to get the stuff in the next few weeks. I haven't found anywhere in the area yet that all the oils can be purchased on a single location. Neem can be found in a lot of health food stores, all of the essential oils except for lemongrass are availble at Grandma's Candles downtown (it's a religious supply/occult shop) and I've not found a local place that sells lemongrass oil.

I haven't heard of citronella coming from lemongrass, though I know it comes from lemon balm and lemon thyme, as well as a particular species of geranium and a few others....and now I see lemongrass also in a quick google search.

This is the recipe as she gave it to me. It might be worth playing with omitting one or the other and seeing if the effectiveness is reduced, if nothing else, it would make it less expensive to make- espeically if omittig the lemongrass oil, which seems to be the most expensive component

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I priced stuff out online...and actually Texas Cedarwood was the most expensive of all of them.

Lemongrass 1/2 oz Essential Oil
$2.95

Citronella Java 1/2 oz Essential Oil
$2.04

Cedarwood Texas 1/2 oz Essential Oil
$3.75

Eucalyptus Globulus 1/2 oz Essential Oil
$2.33

Peppermint Japanese 1/2 oz Essential Oil
$2.20

Grapeseed 16.66 oz Carrier
$6.28

Neem 1/2 oz Carrier Oil
$2.63

What kind of prices have you been finding?

[caletara.livejournal.com]

*BOL* this was just posted on natural living. Your not a part of that comm are you?

[seaya.livejournal.com]

No...I just found a wholesaler and added stuff to my cart then posted the contents here, that's all.

Is this on lj?

[caletara.livejournal.com]

yup! the exact recipie just posted by someone else!

[fuego.livejournal.com]

that was my friend acousticdream that reposted it there.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Another note on this.

When the recipe was posted by a friend of yours on naturalliving, the people there balked at the high quantities of essential oils. Do you think that much of essential oils could be dangerous?

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I've used it without issue, no one that used it that weekend seemed to have any problems that I ever heard of.

If one is concerned about the quantities, one could reduce the amount of essential oil. I'm not sure at what point it would become detrimental to the overal effectiveness of it.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

iyt also looks like the post was removed....