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Science-based aromatherapy you can actually use, from Certified Aromatherapists. Each episode is a recording of one of our live classes — hands-on sessions where we blend in real time, share recipes to nourish your skin, home, and spirit, and answer your questions along the way. Whether you're brand new to essential oils or deepening a practice you love, you'll come away with practical recipes and the confidence to make them your own.
How to Make Natural Bug Spray (Skeeter Beater Recipe)
Aromatics International / Natural Living Club live class
Originally recorded June 3, 2026
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Hello everyone and welcome! I don't know about you, but my— one of my least favorite things in the world is hearing the sound of bugs. Buzzing around my ears, whether I'm on the patio, whether I am out camping or by the river or whatever it is. So we've got some all-natural solutions that work just as well. In my opinion, they even work a little bit better than the store-bought alternatives, especially those that are just packed with toxic chemicals that we don't necessarily want to be on our skin unless you're in a— I don't know, I can't even think of a scenario where I would, I
would rather have that instead of the natural thing we're about to make today. So again, thank you so much for being here. We've got some prizes to give away. We have over in our Natural Living Club, we have been running a week-long giveaway challenge, and the challenge was to make an all-natural mist, either the exact blend that we made on our event last week, or to create your own mist. For whatever it might be that you would like to blend for.
And we had folks who were popping in what they were making inside of our Natural Living Club. We've got over 200 comments, over 150 submissions, which is so incredible. And we're going to do a very similar thing this week with an all-natural bug spray. So we've got some exciting things to go over. So we've got 3 randomly selected winners. Each of these winners will be receiving a $100 gift card to go and shop at Aromatics International. So we have Fresh off the randomly selected press, we've got Carol Brandon, Crystal Falcinetti, Sharon Kiesner.
And I'll pin those 3 names at the top of that post. Congratulations, each one of you are getting a $100 gift card. And maybe you're here live, maybe not, so I'll make sure that we put and tag you on that post so that you know that you're the winner of that $100 gift card. Thank you everyone for playing along. If you would like to pop in to the chat, what particular mist you made, or if you are interested in making a mist, pop that into the chat over there.
And I am going to grab my phone from Karen and pull up the comments because I really want to interact. I got it, I'll find it out, I'll figure it out. I know, so we have this challenge where we — I can't be on my computer and look at your comments, so I'm going to pull up the event over here on my phone. So here we are, here's the event winner $100 gift card. No need to hear myself again. Hello! Hi, Katie! We had just a quick note. We were able to spend some really quality time this last weekend with, um, some of— some people that are really near and dear to our hearts.
About a year ago, we lost a dear member of our Aromahead aromatics community, Andrea Butje, and we were able to go down this past weekend and really celebrate her life with a with a group of people that just were so incredible and warm and just, we were able to talk about our very favorite things about Andrea and celebrate the incredible empire she started with our harbor of aromatherapy. She's one of the most influential people in the history of aromatherapy education and dedication.
And one of those incredible folks was Mina. We were able to spend some really quality time with Mina. So Mina, thank you so much for being here and it was so nice to connect in person. Our team is scattered. All over the world, and we connect via Slack and different things. But it was really meaningful to be able to be together to celebrate our dear Andrea with Mina. So thank you so much, and I just wanted to mention that. All right, we've got folks who are saying, uh, they're from— we're joining us from Alaska and Colorado. I love it so much.
Okay, so again, if you would like to pop in your mist that you either made so that everyone here in the comments can know, or a mist that you're thinking about making, it's related to bug sprays because bug spray is a mist technically, right? When we are, when we're looking to keep those bugs away, we're misting it on ourselves. So I'm going to also go and let our, I'm gonna make sure we know about our leaderboard winners as well.
So I'm gonna pull up our 7-day leaderboard winners over in the Natural Living Club and make sure that we have— I know, here we go, leaderboard members. We are having a lot of fun working with all kinds of different technology, and I want my slides to stay exactly where they are, so I'm doing this particular part on my phone as well. So take a screenshot of that. So big congratulations and thank you to anyone who hopped into our Natural Living Club and participated, even a comment or a quick read or 3 minutes, 5 minutes, but a very specific thank you to these 10 individuals who've been in there starting conversations,
interacting with folks, especially as we have just been flying, creating content for our chemistry series that's coming up. We went down and had the opportunity to just be with Andrea's group of friends and family and really just— we— I'm specifically thankful to this group for being in there and nurturing the Natural Living Club as I've been offline a little bit the last week or so. All right, so big thank you to Chris, Mia, Angie, Donna, Elizabeth, Catherine, Lorraine, and Richa, who thank you so much for sending your direct message to me because I've been wanting to know exactly how to say your name, and she said it's ree-cha-cha-cha,
so it's Richa. So thank you so much. And we've got Joanna. So thank you everyone for your contributions into just keeping this Natural Living Club absolutely thriving when it comes to information and support and communication with everything that's been going on. So thank you. All right, I'm going to pull up your YouTube comments again because I want to make sure I'm there. All right, so we are going to— okay, great, all these mists are coming in. That's what, that's what I was hoping. So Valerie made a facial mist with myrrh hydrosol.
I love it so much. You know, I don't know about you, but I get into, um, just I get into passionate products, I call them, where I'm in that right now with Myrrh Hydrosol, using it as a toner every time I wash my face. I'm spritzing it on my face and my neck and my chest. It just feels so good. It's so good for just tightening that skin, for just creating that glow that I'm looking for. So I'm glad that you use that as a base. I just love it. Okay, let's hop on over to our presentation today on how to make natural bug spray with essential oils.
Now, if you've made an all-natural bug spray before, if you could please pop a 1 into the comments. If it is a completely new idea to you and you're not sure that this is going to work, uh, popping a 2 into the comments. Or maybe you know it's gonna work and you are excited to try, you can pop a 3. We'll do 3 options there. So 1, you've made an all-natural bug spray before. 2, you're just not sure, you're on the fence, you're not sure it's going to work and you haven't made one yet. Or 3, you're excited to make one, you just haven't had the opportunity. So pop in your numbers because it's always fun for me to see where you're coming from in terms of your background knowledge and what you are experiencing in your own aromatherapy journey.
Okay, so let's make sure we are— here we go, we're ready to go. How to make natural bug spray with essential oils. So when you change what you smell like and you reapply every 2 hours, that is the winning combination for using all-natural products to keep those bugs away. Okay, so as a reminder, bugs hunt by scent. So the simplest natural defense is to change what you smell like, right? So that is where we are building today, a lively outdoor spray for porches, picnics, gardens, summer days, rivers, whatever might be your particular place where you meet bugs, interact with bugs.
We're going to make this particular recipe with essential oils that bugs genuinely do not like the aroma of, which is fantastic. We're gonna build on last week's class where we talked about Solubol and how to use Solubol to really disperse your essential oils into your water-based products. We're going to be working with hydrosol here, two different hydrosol options for this particular blend. And so we're gonna do a little quick reminder about soluble, how to work with soluble, when it comes to your mists and making sure all of those essential oils every spray has the right amount of product
in for what you're looking for. Okay, so we're doing our quiz questions a little bit differently today. So since there is not a course that you have gone through to prepare for our workshop today, that this is the teaching, this is the content, I wanted to give you our true and false quiz questions at the beginning of our presentation. So we will answer these together throughout the presentation, and then we will do our assessment together at the end where I will bring up these quiz questions again, and you will be more than prepared to answer these questions based on the
content in our presentation today. So these are the questions that we will be quizzing you on at the end of our workshop today. So question number 1, true or false, Citronella Java is doing most of the repellent work in the blend we're about to make. Thanks to citronellol at roughly 30%. Okay, question number 2: Lemongrass ct rhodinol and regular citral-rich lemongrass are interchangeable in this recipe.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about chemotypes. If you don't know, there are different types of lemongrass essential oil, and we're going to talk about lemongrass ct rhodinol and citral-rich lemongrass class a little bit later. All right, so question number 3: a natural bug spray needs to be reapplied roughly every 2 hours to keep working. All right, and then question number 4, true or false: this water-based spray that we're about to make together will keep on the shelf for several months just like an oil blend.
All right, so we're going to come back to these questions at the end of our workshop together, and so I just wanted you to have the questions ahead of time to keep in the back of your keep in mind as we go through our presentation, and we will see these again at the end of our time together. Okay, so here is the premise of our content today. The simplest natural defense is misdirection when we're talking about bugs, right? So mosquitoes, gnats, biting flies, no-see-ums, ticks, they navigate to skin by CO2 plumes, lactic acid, and a few signature human skin volatiles.
So when you have an essential oil spray combination that you put together very intentionally for this purpose, it scrambles that signal. So the lemony, grassy notes of citronellol, the rosy lift of geraniol, the cooling slap of menthol, together they make your skin smell like something a mosquito does not want. Which is fantastic for bug repellent, right? But it also smells like something that humans enjoy. I really like the smell of all-natural bug spray, whereas I, in a different time of life before I knew how to make all-natural bug sprays, you know, you're a kid, you're deep in the woods— this was my experience— and you're spraying on mosquito repellent not even thinking
about what you're spraying on. You just don't want mosquitoes to bite, right? Whereas the stuff that we're about to formulate together this incredible recipe is so good for keeping those mosquitoes away, those bugs away in general, but also really good for our skin. As long as you're blending— we'll talk through the blend— really good for our just mind, body, spirit. So much better than DEET or different store-bought options. So I just wanted to put that, put that in there as our, as our premise as we are layering into our content today.
So a quick note, natural sprays often do not last as long as a DEET, for example. So DEET binds to the skin and confuses those receptors with bugs for hours. Essential oils tend to evaporate, although they do slow down the process when you are using a soluble and other techniques. But you want to make sure that you're reapplying about every 2 hours when it comes to your natural bug spray. That is one difference between all-natural versus the more chemical-heavy store-bought option.
So I just wanted to make a note of that too. Okay, all right, so Solubol for this particular blend. So a water-based bug spray has the same problem a mist spray has. The oils are floating on top unless you help them blend. So remember our 4:1 rule, 4 drops of Solubol for every drop of essential oil, and the recipe we have formulated for you, or that we're using, that Karen put together for us, definitely follows this particular rule.
And the Solubol does seem to help when it comes to keeping the essential oils and the blend on your skin for even longer, which is what Ruba, one of the comments that came in: with the help of Solubol, I can easily make sprays with essential oils such as bug sprays, antibacterial sprays, and cleaning sprays, which I love. It's nice to hear how other people are using different products, so I wanted to include a few examples here from Ruba from Anne and from Eileen, which is great.
Okay, so in our particular recipe, we are working with Citronella Java, Vetiver, Peppermint, Lemongrass CT Rhodinol, and then you have an option of either Witch Hazel or Yarrow Hydrosol as the base of this aromatherapy blend. So let's talk a little bit about Citronella Java, which is the workhorse oil of this particular blend. So this particular essential oil, the grassy, lemony lift that most insects generally want to steer clear of.
So if one oil was going to do the heaviest lifting in this particular blend, it's going to be our Citronella Java. So I just, I'm going to open this up, give it a little smell. So it definitely smells like a mosquito repellent or a bug repellent, but in like the freshest and nicest of ways. It's kind of like reprogramming our minds if you have come across Citronella Java in more of a synthetic or a more fragrance oil position or way in terms of like maybe a candle or
a bug spray that you've used before, but this Citronella Java is 100% natural. And it smells much like a bug spray that you might buy at the store. So this is, again, because of the citronellol and the geraniol, which again is a, the citronellol is that aldehyde, is the oil in this particular blend that's doing the heavy lifting. Now, a really great thing that I wanted to make you aware of is that if you place an order with us here at Aromatics International, starting now through next Wednesday morning.
Is it Wednesday morning or Monday? That's what I was thinking. Next Wednesday you have the opportunity of getting a free 5ml of our Citronella Java. Those of you who are in— this is the first time we're doing this— those of you who are in our Natural Living Club as a member, you have the option at checkout on your order over $75 of choosing between 3 different free options blends. You can either choose a soluble, you can choose Citronella Java, or you can choose Witch Hazel, which you can also use as a base in this particular blend.
So you're actually able to layer in more supplies if you are, uh, one of our Natural Living Club members. You get more options on our particular giveaway this week. We're just trying to make it even more fun. Oh, that's right. So you have the opportunity during this presentation till 2 PM to get, um, twice the number of aroma drops when you place your order, which is pretty cool. So we're just trying to make it as easy and affordable as possible for you to stock up on different supplies to make this particular bug repellent blend.
Now, Karen and I took this blend years and years ago. We live here in western Montana, right in the Bitterroot Rocky Mountains of western Montana. And the Lolo National Forest is deep woods, really deep woods. We took my dad, we took my brother, we hopped in the car and we drove— this was years ago— we drove way out into the woods where you get out of the car and the mosquitoes are just all around you, right? So we were geared up with hats, we were geared up clothes, and we took an arm and uncovered it, and the mosquitoes just are coming in hot, right?
We took this blend, we sprayed it all over. What we noticed was the mosquitoes came and just hovered. They never landed, which was kind of an eerie sensation, right? We just stayed still and we just let them hover, and it absolutely just repelled them. They didn't just fly 10 feet away, but they didn't land. So that felt like a huge win. And the citronella, or Citronella Java, is a huge part of this blend for that exact reason.
So with the chemistry from this particular season's batch, we have again 30% of the citronella in the Citronella Java. We've got 19% of geraniol, and, um, this is where the aldehyde and monoterpene pairing is exactly what we want when it comes to deploying that repellent aroma that mosquitoes and bugs just do not like. Geraniol is a documented mosquito avoider molecule in its own right as well, so that's what makes this particular oil just a powerhouse for bugs, not just mosquitoes but bugs in general.
Again, there's no known safety issues at this dilution, but since it's an aldehyde we want to be very careful with our aldehydes and make sure we're working within the dilution— recommended dilution guidelines, which you can find in your Aromahead courses. You can find in as a dilution guideline in your Natural Living course, or your— well, yes, in your Natural Living course, but in your Natural Living Club in the dilution guidelines pinned in the course section. So there are some different resources that you can fall back on to look at dilution blends.
Okay, all right, so another key oil in this blend is Lemongrass CT Rhodinol. Now, Lemongrass CT Rhodinol is really hard to find, but we have a farmer and distiller over in India that worked for years and years and years, Gupreet, to craft this specific chemotype for us, and he worked with the plants to create this chemotype.
And it's different than regular lemongrass in that it's CT Rhodinol, right? And this comes from, again, the same plant family, but it has a very different skin feel. So this particular chemotype, the difference is the Citral chemotype versus the Rhodinol chemotype. The Citral-rich Lemongrass is really heavy in that geraniol and nerol, and again, Citral is a documented skin sensitizer.
So when we are working with that particular type of Lemongrass, you want to make sure that you cap it at about 4 drops and lean on other nourishing carriers or skin nourishing oils like Lavender, etc. So the Rhodinol chemotype is monoterpenol-rich, and so it is more of— it's much softer, it's much gentler on the skin. So we can go up to 20 drops in our blend today without compromising comfort and keeping that skin nourishing goal in place.
Because you don't want to create a blend that's going to keep the mosquitoes away but have a drying effect or have kind of a harsh effect on your skin, right? So when you're working with the Lemongrass CT Rhodinol, you're actually working with— you're getting that bug-repellent aroma that the bugs just don't care for, with the chemotype that's very skin nourishing. Whereas the other lemongrass has that bug repellent, which you can put into candles, diffuser, etc., right?
But it doesn't have that skin nourishing effect. Where you would turn to for the citral component, the specific flexiosis chemotype, is when you're looking for, let's say, fungal infections. You need a Rambo oil to get in there and take away specific bacteria. Maybe you have a, like, a toenail situation going on. That's the oil you go for because it's got that Rambo, right? Or you could also use the Rhodinol chemotype that's more gentle but also has that effect of the antibacterial properties right there.
So again, what I love about aromatherapy, and this particular presentation is more of an intermediate presentation on purpose because I want you to see, if you're just starting out your essential oil journey with aromatherapy work, I want you to see you can really get into the nuances of your oils and become very intentional with your selections to get very specific results. And so I wanted to get into chemotypes a little bit with Lemongrass to show you the options that you have as you build your experience, as you build your background knowledge, and just become more of an intermediate to clinical aromatherapist.
When you know exactly what's in your oils and the differences, for example, between the two different types of lemongrass, the two different chemotypes of lemongrass, you're able to just unlock that profound level of work with your essential oil practice. And you're able to really meet people where they need to be met when it comes to, again, your selections and putting together nuanced blends. Not just, oh, I need lemongrass. It's like, oh, I'm gonna go for CT Rhodinol, or I'm gonna go for chemotype flexiosis or whatever it might be.
Okay, so again, the main difference between the citral chemotype of lemongrass and the Rhodinol is the skin irritation. So you want to make sure with the citral you're blending with, um, skin nourishing carriers, making sure you're not doing more than 4 drops, whereas the Rhodinol is more skin nourishing while having that aroma mosquitoes and bugs don't like. So you were able to go up to 20 drops in our blend, we're able to go up to 20 drops in our blend without compromising any comfort, which is fantastic.
Okay, all right, and then we've got our Peppermint. Let's go ahead and smell Peppermint as we're layering into this blend. I can't wait to hear how it goes if you do make this blend. And again, this is going to be part of your homework, those of you who want to participate. We are starting to get into a groove with creating whatever the topic is for the particular workshop that we're— that we do on Wednesdays. The homework in the Natural Living Club that corresponds with the giveaway of the week is to make something similar.
So either this particular bug spray or to formulate one that you like, or maybe you have a tried and true, to share that in the comments in the giveaway post is our new workflow because it's fun to take the concepts from the workshop and to turn them into action and to make a blend for homework. So that's kind of— we're getting into our new routine here inside of the Natural Living Club. All right, so Peppermint, this is the cooling slap-on application. So menthol activates the TRPM8, which is the same skin receptor that fires when you touch something cold, interestingly enough.
So the minty pop note disorients bugs and keeps the blend from feeling heavy. So not only does it feel so cooling on your skin, actually when bugs go to land on it, they're like, oh nope, I'm not sure about that, because it disorients them and keeps them from landing and biting because they are associating your skin to something that they're like, nope, that's not where I want to land, that's not where I want to bite, which is a really cool feature of peppermint.
Peppermint, right? So you want to keep in mind with kids and faces, kids and faces, that peppermint is a concern with very young children because this menthol can cause respiratory distress in children under the age of 5, which is why this whole blend is rated for adults and kids 10 and over, although we'll go through a kid-friendly version a little bit later in our presentation today. So keep this away from the face entirely in terms of your Peppermint.
So the cooling near the nose can feel suffocating, and the brightness near the eyes can be unpleasant. So you would want to spray onto your hands and then just pat onto your cheeks and your ears if you want light coverage there, which we want light coverage there, right? So just make sure you're not spritzing it on because that could be too much. So just make sure you spray it on your hand and just pat it in the areas that you need. So for ages 6 to 9, just drop the peppermint component down to 5 drops.
You could also consider using Eucalyptus CitriDora as the lift, right, instead. So same role, different molecule, which is fantastic. We've got a lot of great questions coming in. So thank you, Mina. Thank you, Karen and Devin. And our team who's here. Um, again, I love the comments. I always go back through and, um, yes, sorry, I just saw Marcy's, uh, comment. I'm going to tell you a little story.
Yes, this is about— I think it was the nephew in India. So our producer for the lemongrass chemo type, Ronald Gupreet, he's amazing. And he created all these nurseries with these little lemongrasses, chemotype rhodinol, which again has that skin nourishing aspect. He had all of these nurseries, he created just all of these little plants. And one year, the first year, he took all of that lemongrass and he planted it in his fields in India.
His nephew didn't know that that's what was going on. And he came that first year and just thought it was grass, deep grass, and just took a lawnmower and just mowed the entire large field down while his uncle was in town. So this distiller had to call us and say, you know, I'm gonna be a year longer with this project because my nephew just went and just mowed the entire field down. So they had to start over and do the baby lemongrasses, lemongrass plants, chemotype rhodinol, in the greenhouse again, plant them in the field, and then that was the first year, the year after, that we were able to, um,
we were able to carry this particular chemotype of Ronnel. And you can't find it really anywhere else unless an essential oil company purchases it from us as wholesale to sell at their store. We're the only company in the world that you can find this particular product from, the Lemongrass chemotype rhodinol. So I just wanted you to know, I actually had forgotten that story, Marcy, so I'm glad that you reminded me of that particular story. You know, the drama of essential oil production can be ripe, so we want to make sure that you have all of the background information there.
Okay, Vetiver, the final oil in our 4-part oil blend for bugs. So this is a base note. This vetiver is coming in and it's doing a very fixative job. So it's holding the lighter oils, the aldehydes, the monoterpenol molecules on the skin instead of letting them flash off in the first 10 minutes. So this vetiver is, the viscosity is thicker. It brings everything together.
It's an anchor. It holds things down because it takes longer to evaporate. So it says, hey friends, hang out with me and stay with me. So when you use the soluble in the blend to disperse everything in, the vetiver in this particular blend not only makes it smell amazing, but it keeps the whole blend on your skin for even longer, which is fantastic. So again, it brings that higher or that slower evaporation rate. It really anchors the blend.
In Ayurvedic practice, vetiver root bundles are soaked in drinking water during the hot season, so the aroma carries that coolness even in trace amounts. So I love this, this testimonial from Irene: I use this oil to blend a DIY mosquito repellent spray. It smells so good. When going to the park, I mix it in a lotion on my feet, legs, and arms farms for protection against mosquitoes. It works very well. I know, and this might be something that you consider creating a stock blend for, for the summer or whatever bug season you might be in.
So a stock blend has no base or carrier in it, it's just a straight essential oil. So what you could do is you could take the Citronella Java, the Vetiver Peppermint, and Lemongrass chemotype rhodinol, put it all together in a stock blend of just essential oil that you can then take and put into your, um, spray products. You could put into lotion. You can take it with you as you need. It's also great to travel with in a stock blend form, that kind of thing, because since this blend we're about to make doesn't have a preservative in it, you're going to want to keep this in your refrigerator and use it up, um, 1 to 3 weeks, right?
So that it's fresh, you're not having any microbes grow in and you know, when it's bug season, you're going to go through this pretty quickly. I would say once a week, right? So it's a great thing to just also take these oils and make your own stock blend, your Bug Away stock blend. Okay, so the water portion or the base of one of the options— you have two options. You have witch hazel, which is one of your free gifts for NLC members this week, your three free options, or you can use yarrow hydrosol. So yarrow hydrosol is a soft herbaceous floral hydrosol that some folks already use on bug bites, which is great, right?
So yarrow hydrosol is already— if you do get a bug bite, you spritz it on there and it's going to help with that relief, right? Which is so important, which means that if you are blending into Yarrow Hydrosol, you're already using the base product that you would use for bug relief. Leaf, right? Which is so fantastic to use this as the base. So it's doing skin comforting work already preemptively, just in case a bug does get through, a very determined bug. You're going to have more of a skin nourishing reaction.
It's gonna all— it's gonna comfort any bug bite that does get through. Okay, so Laura says it's very gentle, especially when you need something non-stinging, innocuous, and healing for a little wound. Plus, it's a great addition to warding off mosquitoes. Um, Chris M: I use it to complement bug spray and spritz on my face before I go outside. So if you can't find yarrow, or if you would like an alternative, you can use witch hazel. It has the exact— it plays the same role. It's very gentle, it's mildly cooling, it's neutral, clean aroma, lets the essential oils lead.
You would just swap the witch hazel for yarrow in this particular recipe. I'm just going to spray it in the air here. It has such a gentle aroma, which, you know, it also has— it has its own personality, of course, in terms of a light herbaceous aroma. To me, that's what my nose smells. So those are two different options that you can use if you don't have yarrow, or maybe you don't have witch hazel. Those are two really great options to use as a base for this blend.
So let's talk a little bit about DEET. So DEET works, right? We know that. But why we reach for plant-based first? DEET also asks a lot of your skin, your gear, and your family. And the label tells the story most clearly. So what DEET asks of you the skin absorption. It, um, the EPA label says to wash it off when you no longer need it, and that's never a good sign, right? When the label itself says when you're done being outside or you're done being around bugs, make sure to wash it off because you don't want to leave it on your skin.
It also can dissolve plastics, synthetics, and painted finishes, which means that it's really, if it can eat at nylon, it's really having a negative impact on your skin. Soaking in. You don't want your body— your body has a way to process that, right? But you don't want to ask your body to have to do that. So again, the label also says when you're working, if you have broken skin, or if you are— they definitely don't want you to use it on infants or under 2 months, or on young children.
So again, the only benefit is it doesn't need to be reapplied. Side, but that is to me not a reason to use it at all. And so why plant-based is an easy yes. Um, plant ingredients with documented safety profiles are there to really not only keep bugs away— remember, we're changing the way we smell so bugs don't land— and our plant-based essential oils and ingredients really do the job so well.
Plus each one of these products are also good for other things, right? Peppermint is good for uplifting, for focus, to keep depression away. Vetiver is very grounding for our mind, body, and spirit. Lemongrass, chemotype rhodinol, and Citronella Java also have emotional, energetic, and therapeutic properties. So you're bringing all of those, you're bringing just good stuff into the blend versus make sure you wash it off, make sure you're careful don't use it on kids, those sorts of things.
Okay, so again, very important when you are making your own all-natural bug spray, remember you need to reapply every 2 hours, or when you start to notice bugs landing, reapply right then. Maybe it's an hour and 15 minutes, maybe it's 3 hours, depending on your skin, your situation. You know, we all have our own unique aroma. Bugs love Karen. My mom, they just love her so much. If 5 people are sitting around in a circle, bugs will just tend— they just tend to draw— they're just drawn to her.
They love the way she smells. So Karen might want to apply this every hour to 2 hours, whereas if maybe bugs tend to leave you alone, you might be good to go longer. Just keep in mind, just keep vigilant and watch them, and you'll know when they start to come closer and closer and start to land, it's time to reapply. So this is where some people think that natural bug repellent doesn't work, and it's because if you wait 4 hours and they're starting to land— well, no, it doesn't work in terms of the same longevity as DEET, but it comes with so many upsides, and DEET comes with so
many downsides, that why not go with the all-natural version? I had a friend who sent me an article, um, in, uh, the New York Times coming out with even more research around patchouli essential as an equal to superior bug deterrent than DEET, which is pretty exciting. I love it when mainstream anything gets excited about essential oil work, so I wanted to make a little mention of that patchouli study that's happening right now. Okay, let's go ahead and make our blend.
We again are going to be working with Citronella Java, Lemongrass chemotype rhodinol, peppermint, vetiver. We're going to be working with 9 to 11 mL of our soluble dispersant. We're going to blend all of this into our 100 mL of either yarrow or witch hazel. And for this particular recipe, we are going to be using our witch hazel since it's one of our free gifts on any order over $75 for our Natural Living Club members, which is very exciting.
So let's go ahead and make this up. And yes, this blend is also great for ticks. We've put together a PDF for you that looks more into different essential oils and how they can ward off specific pets— or pests, not pets, pests. And that PDF is available for you to download in the YouTube description. You can download that PDF and as an extra resource when you're looking to formulate an all-natural bug repellent.
Repellent or tick repellent or whatever it might be. I guess ticks are definitely bugs. And it's getting scarier out there. My brother was just telling me about a specific tick that's starting to make its way here in Montana, and I'm going to forget the name of it, but it has a little white dot on it. Lone Star ticks. They're coming to Montana. Oh my goodness, they're all in different parts of the U.S. here where we are. I read an article— again, I'm not sure which— where I was at, it was— I was on Apple News, but I'm not sure where it grabbed it from.
And this one woman had a Lone Star bite and she can no longer eat red meat or dairy. And she was saying that dairy was the hardest for her to give up. So I am even extra incentivized to have all of this in the refrigerator. You can spray it on your clothes before you go hiking, whatever it might be, because we don't— no one should have to go through that. All right, let's go ahead and blend. So I'm going to put my supplies over here. Now, like we learned last week, we are going to first off in this bottle— and since I'm going to use this up within 1 to 3 weeks, I don't need to be so careful about not touching and making sure that I really
clean out the container for my water-based product because there's no preservative in this. I don't need to be as careful because I'm going to use it up pretty quickly, so I'm just going to put that down there. Now I'm going to put my essential oils and Solubol in my container and then blend that up really, really well. That way the soluble is able to really meld in with the essential oil before I fill up the rest with my hydrosol, my water-based product. So let's go ahead and do our 20 drops of our Citronella Java.
Again, this is the heavy lifter in this particular blend. It's a little bubble there. There we go. I still can't talk and count at the same time. Okay, great. Well, yes, I got 20 because I was able to focus. I can't just chit-chat.
All right, we're gonna do 20 drops of our Lemongrass ct Rhodinol. Ah, it smells so good. If you don't have it, grab it. It's just fantastic. There we go. And I'm going to do 10 drops of Peppermint. There we go.
We're going to do our 5 drops of Vetiver, and I have a sneaking suspicion I might need a pipette, but we'll see. You never know because it's so resinous and so thick, which is what we want. Remember, we want that resinous and thick— thank you so much— we want that resinous thick viscosity because it's going to take the lighter aldehydes and monoterpenols and it's going to really ground them and keep them on our skin even longer. Thank you. Devin's grabbing me a pipette. While he's doing that, I'm going to measure out 9.
I'm gonna actually do, for this I'm gonna measure out 9. You can go up to 11, but I'm gonna do 9 mL of our Solubol here. So I'm gonna measure that out, and it would be 220 drops, so that we would be here for a long time for me to measure out about 220. So we know that that is, um, not, uh, 9 to 11 mL. So I'm going to do 9 mL in here of our soluble.
There's 5. All right, I'm gonna do an extra because there's 5, so I need to— I'm going to take it up and do another instead of that. Maybe I'll meet it in the middle and do 10. It's a little over. So some of the Solubol, it's so thick that it will stay in the graduated cylinder. So I went a little over, I went like 10, a little over 10, because I know that— and I'm going to let it sit and then report in just a moment.
All right, so I've got my pipette, I'm going to do my 5 drops of Vetiver. Not only does it smell amazing, but again, it's going to really help ground these oils together. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, as you can tell or might guess, the size of drop from a pipette— just go ahead and put the extra in there— and the size of drop from an orifice reducer can be a little bit different.
So when you're starting to blend larger quantities of an aromatherapy blend, you're going to want to measure out in mL to be really specific and precise. Or if you're formulating, you're going to want to get really precise. Different essential oil companies, you just use different sizes of orifice reducer, right? So when you're working with 5 drops, 20 drops, you know, that's a smaller— well, 20 you might even want to start to measure, but 5 drops, to me, you don't need to be as precise.
But if when you're getting into 20 drops, 30 drops, 40 drops, you might want to start measuring out in mLs just to make sure you are being extremely precise, because again, orifice reducers are different sizes between companies. Pipettes, a drop is different than an orifice reducer. So I just wanted to make a little note for those of you who are really getting into formulation and want to be very— for our purposes, just making up a bug spray like this, you don't need to be that precise. It's close enough.
And to me, the benefit of making up something fast and easy and close enough is good. Right now, Devin's like, what's going on? I am really getting the soluble wrapped around each little molecule of essential oil before I'm adding in my hydrosol. Now I am going to be careful because I'm not going to use up all of the witch hazel then this hydrosol will last a year or two. So I want to be real careful not to touch the spray bottle because if I were to touch the spray bottle and put it back in it could create a bloom within a week or two or a month or two.
So I don't want to risk any of that, so I'm going to be really careful on how I do this. And I'm going to pour left-handed, just fill that all the way to the top. And I didn't need to be that careful because I'm going to use up all of the witch hazel, which is great. All right, that's great.
So now I'm going to— and because we've used soluble, all of the essential oils are evenly dispersed into my water-based blend, which— that's just the magic of Solubol, right? So I'm going to go You know, it's not like it's a perfume that I would necessarily be drawn to. What it smells like to me immediately is summer and adventure and barbecues and grilling, because it has that Citronella, which we associate with bug spray, right?
So it smells like bug spray, but in not a way that my nose is in any way I'm recoiling from. It's just a fun adventure aroma that I am excited to take home and put into my fridge. So I'm going to put a label on it, I'm going to put the date on it, and I'm going to keep it in my fridge. And it's also fun to have bug spray in fridges because when it comes out, it's extra cooling. And a lot of times when bugs are out, it's hot. And so it's a win-win, right? We've got that cooling— well, you're not going to spray it on your face because the Peppermint—you're going to dab it on your face, but spraying it everywhere else is nice and cooling, and it feels so very Nice.
Okay. I sure can. Let's do a few more sprays. To me, it just smells so good. I love the smell of bug spray. Okay. So again, thank you so much for everyone who's in here asking questions, answering questions. I, again, wish I could be in two places at once and just be in the comments and also be presenting the content today.
I know, it smells like summer, right? I love that. It does, it smells like summer. So we're going to go to the next slide. Okay, so again, some reminders. No preservative means that you want to make it fresh. So the Solubol and essential oils are not broad-spectrum preservatives, so once water is in the bottle, microbes can grow over time So the practical rule: small batches only, distilled water or hydrosol,
um, cool and out of direct light, refrigerate between uses. It gives you not only a cooler spritz but a longer shelf life. A fresh bottle every 2 to 3 weeks, or our alcohol water solution that we've been talking about, um, you could just put that in there and just clean out your bottle really well, or just soap and water, clean out your bottle really well. Toss it if the look, aroma, or feel changes at all, which is always a good rule of thumb. Okay, so again, this blend is for adults and kids 10 and over.
So under 5, the menthol can cause that respiratory distress in very young children. So reach for a hydrosol-only kid mist instead. So Yarrow could be a great kid mist to keep bugs away. And this is where you get to make, um, you get to make good informed decisions, right? So to me, this product, in terms of my comfort level, I would rather use a product like this on my niece and my nephew versus a product like DEET.
I think that's going to be, to me, more toxic on their little systems than this, even though this isn't recommended for kids. But you don't want them to be covered in bug bites either. So Yarrow Hydrosol, specifically Yarrow, could be great to keep those bugs distracted. But if you are in a place where you're in a really thick bug environment, you just need to make your best decision, right? Don't spray directly on the face. Spray on hands and pat on cheeks and ears if needed.
If you're pregnant, nursing, or working around specific health conditions, check with your usual aromatherapy guidance before using. You can come over to the Natural Living Club, ask a question. That's a perfect place to do that. So cats, this is not for them. Peppermint and citronella are not safe for cats, so keep the spray off their skin and fur and make sure that they can leave the area or the room or whatever it might be if you are wearing this particular blend, which is important.
Okay, are you ready for our true or false questions? Okay, so we I put these 4 questions on the screen at the beginning of our workshop today. Now I would love for you to pop in the comment, in the chat, true or false for the next 4 questions. So true or false, Citronella Java is doing most of the repellent work in this blend thanks to citronellol at roughly 30%. What do you think? Drop a T or an F into the comments.
So true or false, out of all of the oils we have in this blend, we've got vetiver, citronella java, peppermint. We've got lemongrass, chemotype rhodanol. Just, uh, drop a T or an F, true or false, Citronella Java is doing most of the repellent work in this blend thanks to the citronellol, which is the top chemical component at roughly 30%. And if you're new to chemical components, everything has chemical components.
Essential oils are rich in different chemical components. Those chemical components are researched and helps us as clinical aromatherapists know how to use them to get the results we're looking for. So we've got our answers pouring in, and the answer is true. So Citronella Java is doing most of the repellent work in this blend thanks to the citronellol at roughly 30% because it has citronellol at 30% and geraniol at 19% as the secondary— that's very high.
Both molecules are tied to insect repellent activity in the literature, in the studies. So this particular aldehyde-monoterpenol pairing is exactly the chemistry we built around for this particular blend. That's the goal of this particular blend. Okay, next question, true or false? Lemongrass, that's what the CT means, Chemotype Rhodinol, and regular citral-rich lemongrass are interchangeable in this recipe.
True or false? Lemongrass, Chemotype Rhodinol, and the citral-rich lemongrass are interchangeable in this blend. True or false? Just pop that into the chat. All right, I love seeing all of your questions come in, and I love seeing all of the answers come in as we go through. All right, let's go ahead and— it is false, right?
So the citral-rich chemotype of regular lemongrass can be skin irritating, especially at the 3% range where we're at right here. So if you wanted to use the Citral, you wouldn't want to do more than 4 drops, for example, and depending on dilution, you'd want to keep it very low at that 1%. So that's why we like the Lemongrass Chemotype Rhodinol, is because it has that aroma that deters bugs, but it also has that Rhodinol, which is very skin nourishing.
So that's why we're choosing this particular chemotype for this particular blend. Okay, question number 3: true or false, a natural bug spray needs to be reapplied roughly every 2 hours to keep working? True or false, a natural bug spray needs to be reapplied roughly 2 hours to keep working. True or false? All right, put your T or your F in the chat.
And again, as a reminder, while you're doing that, if you are a member of our Natural Living Club, fantastic! You have an option on any order over $75. You have the option of choosing your free gift of soluble or Citronella Java or witch hazel, which is great. And it's a way for you to start if you don't have your bug repellent making supplies, a way for you to get those supplies even faster.
If you're not yet a member of the Natural Living Club, please join us. It's only $4 a month, $29 a year, and the value is absolutely immense. For example, after this presentation, I'm going to create another little course in our course section I'm going to pop in the replay link to this, put in some extra PDFs, put in a copy of the slides so that you have indefinite access to the materials that support this particular workshop on bug spray. And remember, if they're not an NLC member, they can still get the Citronella Java.
Yes, if you're not an NLC member, you can still— your free gift is to get the Citronella Java on any order over $75, which is great. And anyone who orders between now and 2 will get double Aroma Drops. And anyone who orders between right now and 2 PM Montana time, Mountain Time, you're able to earn twice the Aroma Drops, which is fun because you're then you're able to use your Aroma Drops to go and buy other things, which is great. Okay, so yes, the natural bug spray needs to be reapplied roughly every 2 hours to keep working.
It's true. So anytime you notice bugs starting to come back this is where you would want to reapply. And this is the difference between a natural spray and a not natural spray, is that the essential oils do evaporate faster, so the protective scent does fade faster, but you're getting all of that upside with the fact that all of this is so healthy and good for your body, whereas the DEET is very strong and has potentially toxic— a toxic impact on body.
Okay, true or false, this water-based spray will keep on the shelf for months and months just like an essential oil blend. This water-based spray will keep on the shelf for several months just like an oil blend. Type in true or false into the comments. I know, and at the same time, if you're getting excited about making bug spray That is your homework as a Natural Living Club member this week, is to come on over.
I'll create the giveaway post, and I would love for you to create a bug spray. You can make this exact recipe, or we have other recipes in our new recipe app. We have over 2,000 amazing recipes that we've collected since the '90s and are putting in one app. You can find that at recipes. aromatherapy-recipes.com, and that'll take you to either your Apple or Android app store, and you can download the app.
It's a fantastic resource. There's a lot of bug spray recipes in there too, so there's options for you to make. And maybe you have your own that you formulated that works so well. We'd love to know what that is. So your homework this week and how you enter our giveaway is to go in and to make a bug spray, either take a picture of it or let us know what it is and put that in the comments of that particular post that I'm going to put in as soon as we're done with our event today, sometime this afternoon. Okay, so the answer is false.
This water-based spray will keep on the shelf for several months just like an— just like an oil blend is false. So because the water plus essential oils plus dispersant, it's a hospitable environment for microbes over time. Um, again, soluble and EO are not broad spectrum preservatives, so you want to make a small batch every 2 to 3 weeks, store cool and dark, either refrigerate between uses, or that will help with the shelf life as well. Just make sure you're making small batches.
If you do want to make a batch that lasts longer, you would just put in an all-natural preservative, and that would help keep the life of the blend even longer. But that's why we like to make small batches. It's fresh. It's like making small batches of bread versus, you know, keeping store-bought bread that lasts for months and months. It just is a little bit healthier for us. Okay, a reminder of the offer this week. So anyone who places an order over $75 will get a free 5ml Citronella Java.
Um, if you are a Natural Living Club member, your perk is that you are able to choose between a 5ml Citronella Java, 100ml Witch Hazel, or a 1 fluid ounce of Solubol. And those of you who are in the Natural Living Club, I am curious to see which of these free gifts you're most excited about. So if you want to pop in if you're most excited about the citronella or the witch hazel or the soluble, I would love to see that in the comments. It just gives us in-the-moment feedback as we put together our free gifts for next week.
So it's just a fun little survey, informal survey, that I wanted to run to see what you're most excited about. And that is the deal of the week starting today, running through the 10th of June, which is next Wednesday, right before our next Natural Living Club event. All right, well, that about does it for our workshop today. That puts us exactly at the top of the hour. So we've been here for exactly an hour. So thank you so much for being here. We've been answering your questions as the presentation has been going.
I'm excited to go back through. I always review the comments so I'm able to see what you're putting in there. It just helps me as I'm putting together future presentations. So I really appreciate all of your interactions. So thank you so much for being here. As a reminder, you can go to aromatherapy um, dot or dash recipes.com. That will take you to the download where you can have access to all of that content, which is, which is pretty cool. I'm just going to show you real fast. I'm going to go down here, find my Recipes app.
I'm going to go to my Finder. So yep, I'm going to go over here, find my Recipes app, and just kind of show you a couple things about There we go. So this is my Aromatherapy Recipes app. Now it looks different when it's on your phone. This is on my computer, so I can go into browse mode. I can search bug sprays, for example. Let's go bugs. Let's search bugs.
So here's a bunch of bug sprays. This is the Skeeter Beater bug spray we made today. So I can click on that. Now we have our own personal assistant that is able to answer questions. This is called Thymely Lite. These are some different questions that come up in terms of what you might ask, but I could say, what— oh my goodness, here we go— what would be a good replacement,
if I can spell that right, for peppermint in this blend. And Thymely Lite is going to go through all of the information we have here in the app. It's thinking and thinking, and it's going to come up with some great suggestions for me in case I have everything to make this blend but I don't have peppermint. So this is recommending Cedarwood Atlas or patchouli. Again, it's looking at the action peppermint takes in this recipe and it's coming up with a substitute that does a similar action in this particular blend, right?
So it comes up with some suggestions there, which is great. We've got patchouli or Cedarwood Atlas essential oil. One thing I'm really enjoying about this app personally is that I can go down to my oils and I can go to either essential oils, carrier oils, hydrosols, resins, butters, waxes. I can click on apricot and it will give me a full breakdown of the therapeutic properties, safety information, a description. I can look at different ways to use apricot oil.
So if you've got a product on hand that you don't use often, you can go to that section in the Recipes app and you can browse recipes specifically on how to use that particular oil. If it's new to you, you're a little, you haven't started using it yet, this app is fantastic for all of that. So I just wanted to make you aware of that particular resource. We've been, we've been working on it for so long. It's available, so we just want to shout it from the mountaintops that you're able to go to and download that particular app because we, we're enjoying it, so we want you to enjoy it too.
All right everyone, we are wrapping up for today. I hope you enjoy all these different ideas, and I hope you enjoy making your own all-natural bug spray. It doesn't take an hour. This presentation was an hour, but if to actually just sit there and make it would take about 2 to 3 minutes. It's quick, it's easy, it's healthy for yourself, your family, your friends. So I encourage you, if you haven't yet made an all-natural bug spray, to get the products you need and to make it today. All right everyone, we'll see you next week, same time, same place, for another workshop.
And I am so excited to hop in the Natural Living Club and to get your homework post started because I want to see the different bug spray blends that you already love, that you're already making in your lives. All right everyone, bye for now!