These oils are the basis of any natural cosmetic that you want to make yourself from home and. How to make essential oils. The best thing is that they ensure effective care and treatment adjusted to your skin type, whether it is sensitive, normally dry, or oily.
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Ingredients to make your own essential oils:
- Decide the method of extracting the oil from the plant. We recommend a Distiller: Although it is not a mandatory requirement, it will undoubtedly help you create essential oils with much higher quality. The main problem that comes from making your own essential oils from home is that if you don’t use the correct tools, you end up getting flavored vegetable oils and not actual essential oils. If you don’t have a stove, you can use a pressure cooker that you have at home.
With the distiller, you can prepare essential oils from all the oils that are extracted from the leaves of natural ingredients, such as lavender or rosemary, but not from those obtained from the bark (citrus fruits), in which it is preferable to use a pressure extraction method.
- Distilled water: in any production of natural cosmetics it is necessary.
- The plant that you are going to use for your essential oils: Make sure that the chosen plant is free of insecticides in its care and choose the best parts of the plant, the most tender and fresh.
If you want to make your own essential oil, the first thing you have to do is choose which plant you want to extract from, this will condition everything else.
To do this, think about what cosmetics you want to make. Here is a list of essential oils and their benefits for the skin and health.
- A container to store your essential oil. We recommend a glass dropper.
How are essential oils obtained from plants ?: Extraction
- If you have a distiller, you just have to follow the elaboration instructions that we detail below
- If you don’t have a still, you can do it with a pressure cooker.
Extraction Of The Oils With A Still
To obtain the oils you will only have to take into account one thing: how to use the distiller.
As we have commented, you must use distilled and/or scented water at all times. You add the water to the still tank and then the plants. The amount of plant you use will depend on the amount of oil you want, the more you put the more oil you will get.
Ideally, the plants should not be in direct contact with the water, so the oil is separated only by evaporation. To do this, you can put distilled water at the bottom of the still tank and the plants on top of a metal grid.
The time that the distillation should be in progress will depend on the type of plant, now we add the average time of the most common ones.
Once the process finishes. You will be able to obtain the oil from the distiller in the designated container. And you will be able to start making your own natural cosmetics. In the process, he ensures not to plug the evaporation hole of the machine. The end result can be a disaster.
Other Methods To Extract Vegetable Oil From The Plant
The most common oil extraction method as an alternative to still is the pressure cooker.
The process is the same as with the still. Apply the water with the amount of plant that you decide and ensure that the tube through which the steam comes out does not obstruct. As this is how we will obtain the liquid. You can change the water. Or pump more cold water or even add ice to make the extraction process last longer.
When you see that steam stops coming out of the tube of the pot. And a more oily fluid begins to come out. You should adjust the temperature until a fine thread of this substance falls.
When you see that no more oil comes out, turn off the heat and let it rest until cool. Then you have to collect the essential oil stuck on the surface of the pot. And store it in a dark bottle. The normal thing is to obtain a small amount, but it concentrates and 100% natural essential oil.
A few drops will be enough to give aroma and beneficial properties to your cosmetics and natural soaps.
You can also use other less effective methods to obtain a higher quality in your essential oils. Everything will depend on what you have at home.
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