“You know Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer, and Vixen, Comet, and Cupid, and Donder, and Blitzen. . . .” But did you know that their noses make an adorable decoration or gift for the holidays? Don’t forget Rudolph!
Large red gumballs (make sure they’ll fit in your plastic tubes!)
Curling ribbon
Cute labels
Instructions:
To make these, simply place a red gumball at the bottom of each plastic tube, then add 8 malted milk balls. Close the tubes up, tie some cute ribbon around the top, and give away to friends and family. These also make a fun stocking stuffer for the kids!
Water beads absorb water and scent really well, so they are great for making a fun DIY diffuser. We tried it out with an autumn scent, but you can really use any essential oil or blend you desire!
10–20 drops essential oil (We used 8 drops each of orange and cinnamon.)
Mason Jar Mug with Straw Lid (Another glass vase or container will work, but you may need to make adjustments to the recipe in order to fill your container.)
Instructions:
Place desired water beads in a large glass dish. We used about a 1/2 Tbsp. to fill our mason jar.
Add hot water, and allow to sit for at least 6 hours until the beads are large.
Strain out any excess water. Stir in essential oils.
Pour water beads into the mason jar, and set your new diffuser anywhere you would like a refreshing scent!
If you notice the beads drying out a little, just add a little bit of water to refresh them. You can also recharge the scent as needed by adding a few more drops of essential oil.
Note: If you have young children or pets who may try to eat the water beads, you can screw the lid on the mason jar. Make sure your lid has a hole or something to allow the scent to escape. If you get your mason jar from Abundant Health, it will come with a straw lid that already has a hole in it to allow the scent to be released.
We know it can be hard to get your children excited about essential oils, so we’ve found a fun way to keep them entertained while being exposed to essential oils. Your kids will not only love playing with these bouncy balls, but they will also enjoy the smell they leave on their hands. You can put any kid-safe oils in the bouncy balls. Some of the oils we used were lemon, orange, and lavender.
Combine warm water and borax in a small cup or bowl. Stir until borax is completely dissolved, and then set aside.
In a glass bowl or cup, combine glue, essential oils, and food coloring.
Add 1/2 teaspoon of the borax solution with cornstarch to the glue. Allow the ingredients to interact for 15 seconds before stirring.
Stir the mixture together using a metal spoon until it becomes too stiff to stir. Then, pull the spoon out, and mold the the mixture into a ball by kneading it with your hands. The ball will be sticky at first, but it will solidify as you knead it. Once the ball is no longer sticky, roll it between your hands until it becomes smooth and round.
Extra Ideas:
Test the level of bounce on different surfaces. Unlike traditional bouncy balls, these balls bounce better on carpet than on hard surfaces.
Conduct a science experiment with your children by testing different ratios of borax, glue, and cornstarch to obtain the highest bounce.
Make multiple colors of balls, and combine them for fun designs.
Don’t be alarmed if your child flattens the ball; they are easy to re-shape and resume the bouncy fun after your child is done smashing and stretching the ball.
Although these balls are not super bouncy, they are fun to play with and a good way to expose your children to essential oils. These are temporary bouncy balls that will eventually lose their elasticity. Keeping them in a sealed bag when not in use will help them stay bouncy longer.
Did you know that you can use essential oils to transfer prints from a laser printer or copier onto fabric, wood, or other materials? This easy method is a lot of fun and opens up many possibilities for personalized gifts with a really neat effect! We are going to show you how to do it with a fun popsicle stick puzzle that makes a great gift for kids.
The trickiest part of this craft is getting a picture that will work. The pictures that work best are ones that have high contrast (like the picture we used of Roman chamomile flowers). Black and white images tend to have higher contrast than colored images, but you can still do this project with colored ink. High contrast means there is a very distinct difference between the blacks and the whites (or between dark colors and light colors). Pictures that have lots of different shades of grays (rather than pure black and white) or pictures with faint gradients may appear too faded and could be hard to figure out what the picture is. Keep in mind that the image will fade a bit during the transfer.
Solid text also looks great, but you do want to make sure you flip the text before printing so it is readable after it is transferred. Use a program like Microsoft Paint or Photoshop to lay out your words or design. When you have the design looking how you want it, select the design, and use the program’s flip or rotate tools to flip the design horizontally so you have a mirror-image of the design. Print the design onto normal copier paper using a laser printer (or copy it on a toner-based copier). Another important note: Be certain your printer or copier uses toner. This method doesn’t work with inkjet or wax systems.
Once you have an image printed on a laser printer, the rest is easy.
Print off you image or words using a laser printer. If you want the image to face a certain direction (especially needed for text), you need to flip the image before printing. See notes above for more information about choosing an image.
Line up your popsicle sticks (enough to cover the image you are transferring). We used 9 popsicle sticks + 2 extra to help tape the image down for a 4×6 image.
Tape the sticks together; then flip the set over.
Cut the image from the paper, leaving a 1/4 inch border to allow you to tape around the edges. Tape the image to the popsicle sticks with the ink side facing down.
Place 10–15 drops of orange essential oil in the glass shot glass.
Dip a cotton swab into the orange oil, and then swab the oil over the back of the printed design a little at a time (the design will become visible through the paper as you swab the oil over it). We found it best to do one popsicle stick at a time.
Use an extra popsicle stick to rub completely over the back of the printed design. This presses the toner into the wood, so you need to be fairly firm; but don’t press down so hard that you tear through the paper. Be certain to rub over all parts of the design. We found it worked best to spread oil over one popsicle stick, rub with the extra stick, and repeat on the next popsicle stick. Continue to repeat these two steps until the entire image has been transferred.
Once you are done, carefully peel back one corner or side of the design to ensure you didn’t miss transferring any part of it. If you did, carefully replace the paper in the same spot, and rub over the missing areas to transfer them. When finished, remove the paper and tape from the popsicle sticks.
Use a blow dryer on its hottest setting to blow hot air over the design to help fuse it into the wood (this helps prevent the design from fading or getting ink on your fingers).
Once dry, flip the puzzle over, and remove the tape on the back. Now you can mix up the pieces and try putting them back together again!
Extra Idea:
Drill a small hole in the top of each popsicle stick, and attach all the pieces to a ring. This helps keep the puzzle pieces together when not in use.
If the puzzle is a little difficult to figure out on it’s own, print off an extra image to use as a reference. Place the image and all pieces in a bag so everything stays together when not in use.
Need something to keep the kids entertained? This art project is easy to set up and fun to play with. Kids of all ages will enjoy watching the vinegar and baking soda fizz as they use pipettes to create beautiful designs. Using pipettes can even help younger children develop their fine motor skills!
Not only do the essential oils provide aromatherapy benefits, but they also help mask the smell of vinegar that can be off-putting to children. If you have older children, this could be a great time to teach them about why baking soda and vinegar react in this way.
Pour white vinegar into the shot glasses. We used about 2 1/2 Tbsp. for each shot glass.
Add food coloring and a drop of essential oil to each shot glass. Be sure to choose essential oils that are safe for children. It’s fun to choose oil scents that go along with each color, and this also makes for a fun sensory experience. For example, mix a drop of lemon essential oil in with the yellow vinegar, a drop of peppermint essential oil in with the green vinegar, a drop of orange essential oil in with the orange vinegar, a drop of lavender essential oil in with the purple vinegar, etc.
Spread baking soda in a thin layer across the bottom of a casserole dish. You want it to be thick enough that it is solid white all the way across the dish. This will act as the “canvas.”
To create your art, suck up the colored vinegar with a pipette, and “paint” the baking soda “canvas.” It is fun to create colorful designs, see the baking soda fizz, and smell the essential oils!
Do you want to make a cool advent calendar? Advent calendars are often used during the month of December for the days leading up to Christmas. They provide a fun way to count down to the holiday and are great for helping keep your holiday season focused around family and serving others. Advent calendars are a big hit with children because they usually involve family activities, but they can also be adapted to include a small treat that is enjoyed each night.
This cute advent calendar uses salve jars that allow you to put little things inside, such as chocolates, small candies, activity ideas, sample vials with oils, pictures, recipe cards, etc.
The idea is to glue strong magnets to the bottoms of the salve jars so that they will stick to a magnet board or refrigerator. Then you apply the numbered stickers to the tops of the salve jars and arrange them into a Christmas tree pattern. Apply the activity stickers inside the salve jars, and fill the salve jars with any correlated items for the activities you want to do each day. Starting December 1st, you take down the jar with the number 1, open it, and complete the activity for the day. Then you repeat each day with the jar that correlates with the date until Christmas day.
Super glue or magnet adhesive to attach the magnets (Note: hot glue seemed to work well for us, but we did have a couple magnets fall off if we accidentally dropped the salve jar.)
24 strong magnets (1/2″–1″ Neodymium magnets work really well (you could even do 3 tiny 1/8″ magnets on each salve jar), but 1″ ceramic magnets also work)
Use the templates to print the labels, or create your own.
Attach the magnets to the bottoms of the salve jars. Attach the number labels to the tops of the salve jars.
Decide what activities you want to do, and assign them to the day you want to do them. Then apply the activity stickers inside the associated salve jars. You can always rearrange the activities by changing the lids.
Add any other items associated with the activity, such as recipe cards, sample vials for diffuser blends, etc.
Arrange the salve jars on your magnet board.
To use, starting on December 1st, open the salve jar with the number that correlates with the date, and complete the activity. Continue every day as you count down to Christmas!
Update 11/18/2016: We now have these small tins that would work really well for this project! Check them out here: 2 oz. Tin Can with Window Lid.
It’s so easy to make your own perfume when you have essential oils. Plus, you can customize the perfume to whatever scent you prefer!
When creating perfume, it’s important to keep in mind the scents you are combining so that you can maintain good proportions based on the oil’s role in the blend. The Reference Guide for Essential Oils has a section on how to create your own blends as well as a chart that shows what oils are top notes, middle notes, and base notes and proportion guidelines based on the strength of the oil’s scent.
In this perfume, we used lemon as the top note, lavender as the middle note, and vanilla extract as the base note. If you wish to change the scent of your perfume, just see the Reference Guide for a list of oils that could fill the role of the oil you are replacing.
This perfume smells delicious and is a great starting point if you are new to creating your own essential oil perfume!
Would you like to customize your own breath mints? We want to show you how! This recipe may seem super unhealthy, but keep in mind that you aren’t eating more than 1 or 2 small pieces at a time. In other words, even though these taste amazing, they are breath mints and are meant to be eaten in very small doses.
Gum paste is likely the ingredient you don’t have on hand; but don’t worry, we have included an easy homemade gum paste recipe with ingredients you probably already have in your house! If you don’t want to make it yourself, you can always buy gum paste at any grocery store or craft store that carries cake decorating supplies.
The hardest part of this recipe is getting the mints all cut out. So, if you don’t have kids that can help, try cutting out squares with a sharp knife instead of using a straw to make the process faster. You can also find tiny metal “clay cutters” at a craft store that would be about the right size and come in a variety of shapes.
Some essential oils we used that taste fantastic as breath mints are peppermint, cinnamon, spearmint, and fennel. Other oils that may taste good are ginger, orange, lemon, or lime. If you want to make them sour, you can even add a little citric acid to the gum paste and dust with citric acid instead of the powdered sugar.
You can store small quantities in your purse or pocket with this 1/4 oz. Plastic Salve Jar. These mints also make a great gift!
Gum Paste (this can be bought at a store that sells cake decorating supplies or made homemade with the recipe below)
Food coloring (optional)
Essential oils such as peppermint, cinnamon, spearmint, fennel, ginger, orange, lemon, or lime.
Powdered sugar (or citric acid for sour flavors)
Instructions:
Pull out a section of gum paste about the size of an egg. Knead it with your hands until it becomes soft and pliable.
Add food coloring if desired (3–4 drops is usually sufficient), and knead until the color is well blended into the dough. (*Helpful hint: to make sure both the food coloring and the essential oil or blend stay in the dough and don’t drip off, create a well in the top of the piece of dough with your finger, drop the coloring or oil in the well, fold the dough so it closes over the well opening, and then continue to knead the dough as normal.)
Add 3–4 drops of your desired essential oil for a mild flavor or 5–8 drops of essential oil for a stronger flavor. We recommend starting with 3 or 4 drops, tasting a small piece, and adding more essential oil if needed.
Once the color and flavor are as desired, sprinkle a little powdered sugar on a clean surface. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out on the powdered sugar to a little more than 1/8 inch thick.
Cut out your breath mints using a straw (for circles), a sharp knife (for small squares), or another small shape. We used a straw cut down to an inch long.
As you cut out your mints, dust them with a little powdered sugar so they don’t stick together.
Leave the mints exposed to air until they become hard (about 48 hours); then store them in any container.
The 1/4 oz. Plastic Salve Jar is a nice sized container to keep some mints handy in your purse or pocket.
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar + more if needed to get the right consistency
Instructions:
Put 4 tsp. of water in a double boiler or in a glass measuring cup placed in a small pan filled with an inch of water (creating a double boiler).
Sprinkle the gelatin powder over the 4 tsp. of water. Let sit for 5 minutes or until it starts to look foamy.
Stir in the corn syrup, and warm on stove over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture turns clear.
Stir in 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar. Continue adding sugar little by little and kneading with your hands just until it doesn’t stick so much to your fingers.
Once the texture is soft and stretchy, it is ready to use in the recipe above.
If unable to use quickly, store in a plastic bag, making sure to remove all the air. You don’t want the gum paste to dry out before you have a chance to work with it.
Mother’s Day is quickly approaching! This year, give the special women in your life a handmade aromatherapy gift. Whether the mother in your life currently uses essential oils or not, she may love to keep a wonderful aroma around her with these personal diffuser pendants. And, even if she isn’t a jewelry person, you can give her a pendant diffuser that she can hang in her bathroom or closet instead!
Though they may seem complicated, these clay pendants are really pretty simple to make. Here is a breakdown of the process:
When you are finished making these cute little diffusers, just add a drop of your favorite essential oil and allow the oil to soak in before wearing. Then enjoy the scent for 1–2 days. Once the scent fades, simply add another drop of oil.
If you are gifting this to someone who doesn’t have essential oils, you can give them some in a little sample bottle so they can use this pendant diffuser right away.
Air-dry white or terra-cotta clay (The Crayola Air-Dry brand works well.)
Food coloring (optional; used for dying the white clay any color you desire)
Rolling pin
Cutout object (This can be a circular hairspray cap, small cookie cutters, or anything else to cut out the clay into the shape you desire. When making pendants for necklaces, you will want the size to be less than 1 1/4 inch in diameter. If you are making bracelets, you will want the size to be around 3/4 inch in diameter. Other stationary objects like bathroom diffusers can be larger.)
Stamps (sized to fit the shape of your clay item)
Chopstick or shish kebab stick (This is used to make a hole for the cord. It needs to be big enough to fit 2 strands of string through.)
Wax paper
Sandpaper (optional)
Paints (optional)
Ribbon, string, cord, or other jewelry-making materials
Essential oil(s)
Instructions:
Lay out a section of wax paper on a table to create your work station. This will help with cleanup and make it easier to roll out the clay and move the pieces.
Optional step: Take a glob of the clay and color it using food coloring if desired. (Note: The clay always dries to be a lighter color.) (*Helpful hint: to make sure the food coloring stays in the clay and doesn’t drip off, create a well in the top of the piece of clay with your finger, drop only 2 drops of coloring in the well at a time, fold the clay so it closes over the well opening, and then continue to knead the clay as normal. If it starts to feel dry, just add a few drops of water.)
Roll out the clay on the wax paper. You want it about 1/8–1/4 inch for pendants smaller than 1 1/4 inches. If you are creating larger pendant diffusers for a small room, you may want it to be thicker so it doesn’t break as easily.
Use your cutout object to cut out the pendants. With the remaining clay, you can form beads by rolling it into small pieces and poking a hole through them with the chopstick or other stick.
Stamp your design on the pendants, and poke a hole through each of them for the cord with the chopstick or other stick.
Transfer pendants and beads to a paper plate, and allow them to air dry for 2–3 days.
Once dry, you can sand rough edges with sandpaper, decorate with paint, and/or finish making them into a piece of jewelry.
When figuring out the length of cord you will need, position the cord around the wrist or neck to the length you desire. Then cut double the length you think you will need. (You can always cut more off if it ends up being too long. We have found that adding any beads or knots takes up more string than you think it will).
Put the ends together, creating a loop at the other end. String the pendant through the loop and the cut ends through the loop, securing the pendant in the middle before adding any beads.
If desired, a bead can be used to make a clasp for a necklace or bracelet by tying the bead to one side and making a loop big enough to go around the bead on the other side and securing it with a knot.
To use, simply place a drop of essential oil on the pendant, and rub the oil around. After a minute, the clay should have soaked up the oil and begun to diffuse. Reapply oil as the scent fades.
`
Abundant Health Blog 