Canada is a really fantastic smelling country, with enough scents and landscapes to make any perfumer’s head spin. From the musty moss forests of the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, to the sunny alpine meadows of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, to the honey-scented apple orchards of Québec, we are a delightfully fragrant country. With some serious Canadian wanderlust tugging at my heartstrings, and in honor of Canada Day, I decided to put my beautiful new Saje Aroma Cloud to work with some custom essential oil blends designed to evoke memories of different parts of Canada.
Saje, a fantastic Canadian natural wellness company based in Vancouver, got in touch a few months ago to ask if I’d like to do some blogging with them. The answer was an obvious and enthusiastic “yes!”, and we agreed on some diffuser blends making use of one of their fantastic ultrasonic nebulizers. After my new diffuser arrived in the mail I proudly went to work, devising ways to make my bedroom smell extra lovely (and Canadian).
I quickly fell in love my Aroma Cloud (or egg, as I sometimes affectionately call it). Ultrasonic nebulizers are my favourite way to diffuse essential oils. They diffusesthem gently in cool mist, without any heat, so they retain all their goodness (and as a bonus, you can fall asleep with it on without worrying about burning your house down). They also help purify the air and add a touch of humidity, though with only about 100mL going out over the course of 6 hours, I must confess it doesn’t dent Calgary’s dry climate.
It burbles away as it spouts fragrant mist, and it has an optional glowing light band that makes a lovely night light. To use it you just add 10–15 drops of essential oils to the water reservoir (along with some cool tap water, of course), pop the lid on, and diffuse away. You do need to make sure you’re only using pure essential oils, though—you don’t want to clog up your diffuser and destroy it.
I had a lot of fun devising these blends. Sarah and I hauled a big box of essential oils over to the kitchen table on a summer Sunday and sorted them out into different blend ideas. We spent a morning debating which smokey and coniferous tree essential oils were best for alpine meadows versus the Gulf Islands. In the end we concocted five lovely blends that make your home smell like Canada. I think you’ll love them.
Before you get started I would recommend you do the blending in a small vial or bottle (I used these). This allows for a better melding of the scents—plus, some of the essential oils I’ve chosen are quite viscous, and blending them with thinner oils reduces the chances they’ll clog your diffuser. And, when I say “toothpick swirl”, what I want you to do is dip a toothpick in the essential oil, and then swirl it into the rest of the essential oil blend. It’s a way to get just a hint of otherwise overpowering essential oils.
Alpine meadow
5 drops fir essential oil
2 drops labdanum essential oil
8 drops pine long leaf essential oil
1 drop cape snow bush essential oil
2 drops South African chamomile essential oil
4 drops camphor essential oil
2 drops michelia alba leaf essential oil
After growing up in the Rockies, Sarah and I both feel more that at home in mountain meadows. This blend just might be our favourite. It’s fresh and bright, dominated by the scent of fir and pine trees, with base notes of sunshine and warm grass, and accents of fresh air and spice. With invigorating pine, calming chamomile, and uplifting michelia alba leaf, this blend is brilliant for diffusing in your room in the morning. And, with loads of antiseptic, air-purifying properties coming from the fir, pine, and camphor, it’s also fantastic if you’ve got a cold.
Riding Mountain National Park
5 drops cajeput essential oil
8 drops fir essential oil
1 drop rose geranium essential oil
1 toothpick swirl cade essential oil
3 drops labdanum essential oil
5 drops black spruce essential oil
The smell of the forest in Rocky Mountain National Park alongside Clear Lake is one that never fails to instantly transport me to childhood summers spent splashing in the lake and exploring windy root-wrought pathways through the trees. This blend melds sunshine and spruce trees with chimney smoke and a light floral note. Cajeput, fir, and spruce purify the air, while rose geranium is both uplifting and calming—perfect for an anytime reminder of summer at the cottage.
Rocky Mountain Forest
2 drops benzoin essential oil
5 drops pine long leaf essential oil
5 drops fir essential oil
4 drops black spruce essential oil
1 toothpick swirl cade essential oil
4 drops camphor essential oil
My first summer whiff of the Rockies never fails to make me smile from ear to ear. I’ve been known to close my eyes, spread my arms wide, tip my face up to the sun, and inhale deeply for minutes on end before heading for the trail head. Benzoin provides a warm, vanilla-tinged sweet base note, while fir, pine, and spruce build a forest of coniferous trees in your imagination. A drop of cade evokes a campfire off in the distance, and fresh camphor is a breeze of cool, clean mountain air. A perfect blend for diffusing if you feel something coming on, or for when you need a reminder of summer in the dead of winter.
Gulf Island Winter
6 drops cedarwood essential oil
1 drop nerolina essential oil
3 drops hydacheim essential oil
3 drops curcuma essential oil
5 drops buchu essential oil
5 drops basil, sweet essential oil
5 drops black spruce essential oil
My parents live in the Gulf Islands, and I spent last Christmas with them—that’s the inspiration for this blend. Coming from frozen, frigid December Calgary where the only thing you can smell is your nose freezing shut, the musty green humidity of the island was more than welcome. Cedar and black spruce essential oils form the base of this rainforest blend, while notes from exotic hydacheim, curcuma, and buchu add intrigue. Basil adds a nice green base note, and nerolina brings a touch of brightness to the mix. Cedarwood and black spruce cleanse and relax, while basil uplifts. It’s a lovely blend for doing a bit of reading and tidying up.
Québec Autumn Orchard
3 drops cinnamon bark essential oil
13 drops South African chamomile essential oil
5 drops peru balsam essential oil or Benzoin essential oil
1 drop nutmeg essential oil
2 drops labdanum essential oil
1 toothpick swirl cade essential oil
1 drop clove bud essential oil
This blend was all Sarah’s idea, having spent far more time in Québec than I have. She spoke longingly of picking big $10 bags of apples in an orchard with crunchy leaves underfoot, and snacking on delicious apple cinnamon doughnuts that were being sold right there in the orchard. This blend is full of sunshine, apples (from the chamomile), and spice, with just a wee hint of smoke as somebody is always burning leaves somewhere in the distance in the fall. Chamomile calms, clove is stimulating and energizing, and cade disinfects. This blend is just divine for chilly mornings and late nights.
This blog is a team-up with Saje, and is available on their blog as well as here. They provided the ultrasonic nebulizer, but this has in no way effected my opinions or impressions of it.
So I’ve been following you for almost a year and never written a comment, but it’s time. I tell my husband periodically – he says about once a week – that “I love my little Canadian girl.” I’ve learned so much and share forward with others about your blog 🙂 This one is so cool – very inventive and artistic. Love it! I don’t have many of these oils and am not sure of them since I’m not from Canada, but am now curious about the nebulizer and thinking you will post some other combinations for us all in the near future!
Hi Sandy! Thanks so much for reading—your support is truly appreciated, even if it is mostly silent 🙂
Most of the EOs here aren’t from Canada, but when blended together they’ll bring a touch of Canada to your home. The nebulizer is also truly wonderful—a great addition to any EO-loving home!
What a lot of work, but so appreciated, Proud to be a Canadian, and how well you have proven why we are proud.
thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks Helena! I had a lot of fun with this entry 🙂
It’s hot and humid here in North Carolina so thinking about fir balsam, spruce, and pine leaf is almost intoxicating. Where do you purchase your buchu essential oil? I didn’t see it on the NDA website (US version). Thanks.
Hi Jennifer! I got my buchu from NDA, but it looks like they’ve since discontinued it, and I haven’t had much luck finding it at any of my other known suppliers 🙁 Darn! If I’d known I wouldn’t have included it in my formulas.
What is pine long leaf essential oil? Is it pine essential oil? And I have never heard of at least 4 oils in the Gulf Island blend. Are these from a different continent? Cape snow bush? Just a little confused.
These are just different kinds of essential oils that are available through New Directions Aromatics (Pine Long Leaf is a specific essential oil). They aren’t necessarily essential oils of Canadian trees in those areas, but the combination of all the oils create a scent that remind a person of that area.
Okay, thanks for responding to my questions. So is New Directions Aromatics a Canadian company or a multi level marketer?
Your welcome! Sorry, I should clarify. The essential oils used here are available by other companies other than NDA (New Directions Aromatics), but these are what the essential oils are called from NDA.
I wish they would put the Latin name on them, too, so I would know what oil I was really looking at. Thanks for clarifying.
They do have the Latin names. Search whichever type of essential oil on the NDA website and when you select the one you are looking for, on the info page it has the Latin name for the EO.
🙂
NDA lists all the Latin names for their individual EOs 🙂
🙂
It’s an Australian company with branches in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Aus 🙂 No MLM, way better prices!
Nevermind. I checked the website and answered my own question.
🙂
Exactly this 🙂
Pine long leaf EO is the EO of the needles of Pinus Pinaster.
The EOs in these blends are from all over the world—if I wanted to stick to Canadian EOs I’d be limited almost entirely to coniferous scents 😛
Marie, I amazed by so many great info here, ideas and orcourse precious recipes – thank you for your hard, but surely pleasatn work! 🙂
The link to Saje Aroma Cloud doesn’t work for some reason 🙁
Thanks Veronika!
The link works for me—try this?
Yes, it’s true , Canadian is very fantastic;) beautiful view 😉
So true! I love my home country 🙂
Yay! Finally I can put my Buchu and other South African essential oils to good use. Thank you for putting these together – I’m always looking for new scents for my home.
Happy to help! Enjoy ’em 🙂
Thank you for all the inspiration, great work Marie! I actually found Buchu Essential oil. Check it out! http://www.whitelotusaromatics.com/product/buchu-essential-oil
Awesome, thanks for doing some sleuthing!
Marie, I now have all the oils for these lovely recipes. Alas, I don’t have a diffuser yet but would love to experiment using these as room spritz’s. I really would like to do a 4 ounce of each. Should I double the EO’s for a 4 oz spritz? I usually add some witch hazel to my spritz, do you think that would be okay? I have made your cottage room spritz and it is a big hit! You are so creative!
Hi Kay! I find I generally like a recipe to be about 70% water/15% solubilizer/15% essential oils for room sprays 🙂 I’m curious as to why you want to add witch hazel to your spritz—it’s awesome for skin, but it definitely smells a bit funny lol.
I will second White Lotus Aromatics, but they only sell retail, so you have to purchase quite a lot (a problem that I’m willing to live with). Also for Americans that have a hard time finding suppliers and don’t want to use SaffireBlue or New Directions for whatever reason (for me it is the need of a minimum order for that one thing I forgot last time, drat!), There is also Mountain Rose Herbs that has a fair amount of things I use for Marie’s recipes.
Marie, These are amazing. I’m so impressed generally in your recipes with your deftness in combining aromas into something heavenly. However, I put together the Alpine Meadow in a room spray to test out Christmas gifts. My husband-who-grew-up-on-Lake-of-The-Woods-and-always-talks-about-preferring-lakes-and-rocks-and-trees was basically sent by it. So thank you for that. I said, “smells like Canada?” he said yes. That’s some pretty great stuff there.
Thanks for the American supplier recommendations, Kathie!
I’m so thrilled you and your husband are loving the Alpine Meadow scent blend—it’s one of my all time favourites 🙂
I have a question concerning vanilla essential oil. So the oil is a dark color. I am making a room spray, will it stain if I spray if over bed linen or other materials?
thx,
Elle
Hi Elle! Assuming you dilute the spray enough you should be fine 🙂 Do a test on a dish cloth if you’re concerned.
Just rec’d my aromacloud and it lasted only 10 minutes and it stopped. I called and Saje is sending me another one tomorrow. I was so excited but I guess I rec’d a defective one. Any problems with yours?
thx,
Elle
Oh no! Mine is still going strong after about 6 months, and I just got one of their ceramic diffusers for Christmas 🙂
I rec’d a new aromacloud within 2 days. What a great company and I love it. Just wondering what would be a good blend for a nice sleep. thx.
Fantastic! For sleep I love roman chamomile (1 drop), hemlock spruce (6 drops), fir balsam (3 drops), and Ukrainian lavender (5 drops). It smells awesome and is very calming 🙂
These EOs as described here are truly awesome, am not from Canada either (like Sandy) but wishes to use some of them soon and will update here about the effects.
Enjoy!
I am noticing that June of 2014 the comments stopped, is this site still active? If so I am wondering about where one could look into the essential oils on this page that are mentioned? I clean houses and have just gotten into essential oils…learning about a lot of things. I came upon this web site look for an alternative to Eucalyptus oil, as I don’t have any at the moment.
Hey Christina! If you check out the homepage of this site you’ll see it is very much still active—I’m posting twice a week, and have been posting consistently for nearly five years. When you’ve got over 800 posts it’s not surprising that not all of them have highly active comment sections!
I’ve got an article on essential oil substitutions here, and AromaWeb is a good place to look for information on specific essential oils. When evaluating a source look out for red flags like encouraging the neat (undiluted) application of essential oils (there is some general agreement that this is ok with lavender and tea tree) and encouraging the ingestion of essential oils; both of those practices aren’t terribly safe, so I am disinclined to trust sources that recommend them!