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Body Oils
Botanical Base Oils (Carrier Oils)

A base oil or carrier oil is basically a medium for applying essential oils or perfumes to the skin. Other mediums can be used such as lotions, cream and butters. Base oils are readily available, easily blended, quick to apply and this method has been used for literally thousands of years. There are various examples of oil blenders as far back as history goes.

The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans and Chinese were heavily into aromatherapy including Hippocrates who used essential oils and massage in his medical practice.
During the middle ages, the Europeans used them to keep down the smell as the church forbade them from bathing, monks used them to treat the sick, but this was mostly done in secret as users of oils were thought to be heretics.
Everyday examples of base oils are sweet almond, coconut, soya, grapeseed, wheatgerm. You will also have heard names banded about the beauty industry depending on the current fashion; jojoba, rosehip, argan. Oils come into and go out of fashion like the weather changes, mostly on “Here say” and with very little actual documented evidence of their miraculous abilities.

Blending Oils for the skin

We generally divide our oil products into body areas as the blending ratios are different depending on the job the oil blend is going to do. The main areas are body oil, hair oil & facial oil.

Body Oils
Body oils are used in massage, to condition and perfume the skin and were also used as a fighting aid by gladiators to make them hard to grab hold of. You have probably noticed musclemen use body oil to make themselves look shiny. Body oil is very popular now; people use it to improve condition, fragrance the skin, prevent premature aging and also to improve the skins appearance. The blend of a body oil depends on whether it is a therapeutic or a pleasure blend. Also the choice of base oils to use depends on the type of skin it is being applied too.

General Purpose Body Oil
Old school aromatherapy used sweet almond or grapeseed, nowadays for general massage or body oil, soya or fractionated coconut should be considered because of their therapeutic skin conditioning properties, high vitamin e content and they are slow to go rancid . It has been found that grapeseed actually strips the skin of oil so would in fact be better used in an “Oily skin” product. A chosen base oil can be fine tuned by adding other base oils to it thus giving your blend additional properties. For instance castor oil may be added to give a percentage of waterproofing or avocado to achieve intense moisturising. There are several oils that should only be used diluted into you blend because of their viscosity (thickness) or their tendency to clog the pores, these include rosehip, jojoba, calendula, avocado, argan, castor. There are also base oils that would not be used on certain skin types, for instance, rosehip would not be used on skin with a tendency to break out in spots as its been found that rosehip will exacerbate the problem. Grapeseed & castor would not be used on dry or mature skin because of their tendency to dry the skin.

Therapeutic and Pleasure Blends
A therapeutic blend is considered to be a blend intended to cause improvement to the skin’s current condition or the mind state of the client, it is important not to make medical claims about a blend unless you have proof certified by the appropriate external bodies. A pleasure blend is considered to be a blend used for fragrancing the skin or for instance as a massage tool.

A typical blend ratio for a therapeutic blend is 20-50 drops of essential oils to 100ml of base oil(s), a pleasure blend may be more in the region of 30 drops of essential oils or pure perfume, obviously these ratios can be altered to suit your requirements but we would suggest not going over 50 drops per 100ml of base product. When you get a little practice in, you will be able to blend a body oil that is both therapeutic and pleasurable!

Choosing Essential Oils & Perfumes
It is extremely important to select the essential oils or perfumes you are going to use in your body oil extremely carefully. Take into account the characteristics of the essential oil, its therapeutic properties and also any allergen declarations or cautions. You must ensure that the blend will be safe to use on the intended client. For instance, think about pregnancy, heart conditions, blood pressure, epilepsy, whether they are using medication that reacts with essential oils, such as Warferen. Also consider whether the combination you have chosen blend well together, if you are blending for fragrance, consider the notes of the oils remembering that top note oils will fume off instantly and you will be left with very little fragrance.

We will be discussing blending fragrance later on, but here is the most important rule and don’ forget it, it will save you years of testing and messing about:

USE THIS RATIO 3:2:1
3 x top note
2 x middle note
1 x base note

The holy grail of blending, if you stick to this rule for all your blending where fragrance is important, you won’t go far wrong, if basically means, for every one drop of base note essential oil add two drops of middle and 3 drops of top note. You may have to investigate a touch to see which are which and throw in a bit of maths, but it will be worth it. Without a base note, you are without an anchor for the rest of the fragrance and you won’t get any longevity. It will be all over in the first few seconds!

Here is a basic note chart to help you choose your oils to blend your body oil or any other product.

So there you have it, now to put it into practice

A Body Oil Blend – Relaxing, Calming and Balancing for Women
(not suitable during pregnancy)

Try this blend and see if you like, I would suggest that you make 10ml initially to make sure it suits you and avoid wasting your oils

Using our 3:2:1 rule

1 x drop of ylang ylang
2 x drops of geranium
3 x drops of lavender

Blend with 10ml of your favourite base oil or use soya, sweet almond or fractionated coconut

For more impact you could try the following: This is our “For Her” blend
keep it to yourselves 

1 x ylang ylang
2 x neroli (you will notice the neroli is top to middle note, so we can achieve a better impact)
1 x geranium
2 x lavender

Blend with 10ml of your favourite base oil or use soya, sweet almond or fractionated coconut

I hope you have enjoyed these notes and they have been informative without being too boring. We are always here to help and if you need any more information or want us to check a blend for you, please don’t hesitate in emailing me. The next notes will concentrate on hair and facial oils and discuss the properties of the different base oils.
Enjoy!

Alison x