How to adjust the essential oil volume in a blend? The short answer is to follow the 3P rule.
- Review your PURPOSE
- PLAN your essential oils
- PREPARE your formula! You want to formulate very carefully in the beginning so avoid any potential mishaps later.
Once you start adding in essential oils into a blend, you cannot take any away. If you can’t balance out with other oils, you will need to start over. When I was practicing in the beginning, I used to have an “ooops” jar. All of the blends that I needed to start over, went into this jar. Then when I needed to make me something for fun like a bath salt or room spray, I would use this “ooops” blend. It’s how I recycled instead of wasting those oils.
The secret is to formulate conservatively because you can always add in more oils. You just can’t take them away. So, when I formulate, I may give a range of the number of drops I am going for. That way, if an extra one falls in, I have “planned” for it.
Start small and work your way up to the desired amount of essential oil you want or need in the specific blend. Different scents have different potencies so make sure you account for the scent intensity. For example, you may want anise in a blend, but 2-3 drops can overtake an entire blend of a 2% dilution ratio in a 2oz. carrier. Too much Clary Sage can do the same thing, but if you balance it with a wood or camphor oil, it can balance out more.
Keep in mind during the formulation process, to adjust for the scent note (top, middle or base), scent intensity (odor strength), and safety precautions (what should be avoided or limited with certain people and situations).
Blending as they say is the ART part. You bring in the SCIENCE aspect when determining which oils to use.
Lastly, you also want to practice blending oils. My students at the Aromaversity get lots of practice blending so they feel more confident and competent when creating blends for clients or making products. The more you practice, the better you will be at using and managing the volume of oil that makes its way into the blend.
I have a method called the “tilt and swoop”. Some oils will generously flow out of the bottle when at a certain degree angle. These usually are the thinner oils. Others like to be turned almost completely upside down before they will exit the essential oil stock bottle and into your blend. These are usually thinker oils, but not always. For example, when you make friends with myrrh, it can pour out quickly. If your energy tells the myrrh essential oil bottle that you are not speaking up for yourself, feel stuck or disconnected, it can take a little longer for it to get out of the bottle.
