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Make Your Own Essential Oil Insect Repellent

By Karen Wood


After this long and cold winter, it's time for summer, for grilling with friends and enjoying spending time outside the house. And then come these lovely insects to spice the whole experience. Luckily, they don't like certain plants' scents, and it is relatively easy to make your own essential oil insect repellent mixture and keep those ugly vampires away from your loved ones.

Mother nature makes sure you can find something to protect you on perfectly natural way. For example, those blood sucking mosquitoes cannot bare some scents, such as cinnamon, geranium, rosemary and thyme. They will stay away from peppermint and eucalyptus, too, and lemon and lavender will always scare them away, and this really is something to feel good about.

Flies and gnats dislike eucalyptus and peppermint as well, but they are especially sensitive when it comes to tea tree oil, or Malaleuca. They also won't come near you if you use cedar wood oil or maybe Patchouli. Geranium and rosemary will also work really well if you want to protect yourself from these nasty insects. There are also some essential oils you do not want to use, because they actually attract some insects, for example lemongrass.

Ticks, on the other hand, dislike plans such as geranium, cedar wood, peppermint and popular tea tree oil. Thyme is another plant ticks will gladly avoid, and all this can be used in protecting your family efficiently. The best thing is that you can make your own, personal mixtures, and create really appealing scents you will enjoy wearing.

Home repellents are really simple to make, especially rub-on ones. Basically, there are two ways of applying repellents - you can rub them in or spray them on your skin. Of course, you cannot apply essential oils directly on your skin, because some are quite hot, or could cause allergic reactions. They should be combined with oil carriers such as coconut oil, almond oil or sweet avocado oil.

For making really simple rub on repellent you need some kind of carrier oil, such as sweet almond oil, or maybe avocado or coconut oil. Using a carrier oil is really important, because some essential oils can be quite aggressive on your skin, if you don't dilute them with carrier oil, for example beautifully scented cinnamon, or also eucalyptus essential oil.

For a small quantity of this rub-on lotion you can use two table spoons of selected carrier and approximately eight drops of essential oils total, in desired combination. You may use, for example, 2-3 drops of peppermint, with a drop or two of eucalyptus, combining this with your favorite scents, for example lemon. Citruses can be quite aggressive as well.

For making a spray repellent, you have to add distilled water and witch hazel in your designed mixture, because oils will certainly clog the spray without this. You may replace witch hazel with, for example, vodka, in one small quantity, of course. You should never include plants such as lemongrass in any repellent, because bees simply love this scent, and this really would not be a very good idea.




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