Smells like....

And so I have created my first reed diffuser ever.

I couldn't and didn't have the chance to find a nicer bottle. Anyway, since this was an initial experiment, I improvised and bought a rose essence bottle (Star Brand). Those used to flavour cakes and jellies. The bottle was only less than $1.50.

I ordered the essential oils from Qoo10 and the reed sticks as well. For the carrier oil I used grapeseed oil. Easier to find it compared to jojoba or sweet almond oil. Just step into NTUC and you can get a 500ml bottle of grapeseed oil for $5 or $6.

Composition:
- 4 drops of citronella oil
- 4 drops of lemongrass oil
- 3 drops of geranium oil
- roughly 90 drops of grapeseed oil

I used lesser geranium as it is a thicker oil compared to lemongrass and citronella and hence more concentrated. I chose to do a 10% dilution as this was an initial test, i.e. 10 drops of essential oils to 90 drops of carrier oil. If this works well as an insect repellant, I might do a more concentrated one of 20% dilution.

Purpose:
- Citronella - purifying, clarifying, anti-depressant
- Lemon grass - purifying, cleansing, energising
- Geranium - purifying, calming, uplifting

And all three oils have insect repellant poperties. This was my main purpose in buying them actually. It was only after I bought them that I discovered that the oils had other calming and purifying properties.

I did not put in any alcohol simply because I didn't know how to get any. Stop short of buying a bottle of Absolut. But anyway, alcohol is an optional item for a reed diffuser, it just helps the essential oils bind better to the carrier oil and travel up the reed sticks in a better way. But it's not 100% neccessary to put alcohol in it.

Let's see how this turns out.