A huge part of Christmas is the smells—to me, at least. The indoor fir tree, baking, gingerbread, oranges stuffed with cloves, mulled wine, and the contrasts between hot and cold; crackling fires and crisp, cold air. I just love it! So, in true holiday fashion, I developed a handful of essential oil blends for your diffuser to help your nose really enjoy your December—even if your oven isn’t constantly baking cookies, or your tree is fake. Enjoy!
To enjoy these blends you’ll need a diffuser of some variety. There are two main types; an ultrasonic diffuser that diffuses your essential oils in a cool mist with no added heat, and heat powered ones (usually a light bulb or a small flame underneath a dish with some water and your essential oil blend, though some also use pads). I far and away prefer ultrasonic diffusers, though I do have both. Ultrasonic diffusers burble away in a lovely brook-like manner (which I adore) and because there’s no added heat, you get the full benefits of your essential oils. They also automatically shut off when they run dry, unlike the heat powered ones, which have no idea when they’ve run dry. Both types of diffuser will work, and while the heated ones are definitely cheaper, if you enjoy essential oils, I can’t recommend a good ultrasonic diffuser enough. The one I have is from a Canadian brand called Saje, and it’s served me well.
Each blend is for a single use in a 200–300mL (7–10 fl oz) diffuser. If you want to scale it up, you can change the word “drops” to “grams” and weigh out the blend into a 5mL essential oil bottle. DO NOT ADD CARRIER OILS. This will destroy your diffuser.
Frosted Forest
This blend is wonderfully fresh and faintly sweet, with citrussy top notes. It smells like cold, clean air, a Christmas tree, and December clementines.
4 drops spruce essential oil
3 drops fir essential oil
3 drops clementine essential oil
3 drops cajeput essential oil
Spiced Punch
Every year my mum makes a lovely mulled cider sort of thing with apple juice, cranberry juice, and lots of lovely spices (it’s fantastic mixed with whiskey), and that’s what this blend reminds me of. It’s warmly spiced with some nice fresh top notes, and reminds me of mum’s cider on the stove with the Christmas tree set up in the corner.
2 drops clove bud essential oil
2 drops cinnamon bark essential oil
4 drops fir essential oil
2 drops frankincense essential oil
2 drops cajeput essential oil
Flurries
Juicy, citrussy top notes fade to cool freshness with a hint of spice; this one is extra great if somebody in the house has the sniffles.
4 drops eucalyptus radiata essential oil
2 drops clementine essential oil
7 drops pine essential oil
1 drop nutmeg essential oil
Morning Frost
This blend is fresh, clean, calming, and just a little sweet. I love how fresh it is, while still being comforting and wonderfully seasonal.
6 drops eucalyptus radiata essential oil
2 drops clementine essential oil
6 drops spruce essential oil
2 drops lavender essential oil
A note on substitutions and alternatives; Eucalyptus radiata can be swapped for eucalyptus globulus easily. Tangerine and mandarin are good alternatives for clementine, but orange will also work. Fir, spruce, and pine can all be swapped around relatively easily. Also, it’s hard to go too far wrong combining citrus, coniferous trees, and some spice essential oils!
If you don’t mind my lazy side here, what is the purpose of a diffuser? Is it just for scents? Or is it like a humidifier?
Love the blends! I don’t have a diffuser never really heard of them. But I’ve a spray bottle and these scent combos must be tried!
The ultrasonic diffusers don’t damage essential oils by exposing them to heat, but if the volume of it is only 200–300mL it’s a pretty laughable humidifier 😛 I love ’em for the quiet burbling, the lovely scent dispersion, and little sighing mist maker in the corner 🙂
What is the amount of water for these drops of EO’s? I have a 300ml diffuser I run almost all day and try different oils; but I have been restricted to the recipes that state quantity of water in them.
Loe your recipes and your vidos. Member for 5 yars.
Mine is about the size of yours, so diffuse away! Happy diffusing and thanks for reading 🙂
What is the amount of water for these recipes?
Love all your posts and all those I have done have been a success. Thank you.
200–300mL 🙂 Happy making!
Quick questions about your blends – do you add the recipe to a carrier oil to make the recipe in bulk? I have four diffusers around our flat and fill them up all at once from a pre-bought blend and have them on all the time during the day. How could I translate your recipes into a large bulk version to always have on hand, mixed and ready to use? This goes for these most recent blends and for others I’ve found on your site. I’d really like to try them but don’t want to have to create the blend every time I fill the diffusers. Thanks!
Hey! You should never add carrier oils to an ultrasonic diffuser as that can clog and destroy the diffuser, so no—I only ever use these as pure EOs. To scale up, just swap “drops” for “grams” 🙂
Perfect! I knew there had to be a way to do it…time to do a little shopping. Thanks! 🙂
Are these combos mixed up a head of time in a blended bottle or put directly into the diffuser out of single bottles?
I put them directly into the diffuser; each blend is a single use.
I have the same ultrasonic diffuser from Saje! It is amazing, I love using it both beside my bed at night with some soothing EOs, and in the living room with whatever blended fragrance suits my mood, or a blend very similar to your Bandits oil to ward off any pesky sicknesses that may be floating around. 😉
I love the gentle burbling sound as I’m falling asleep! So soothing and brook-like 🙂
Thank you! I’m a creative person but when it comes to scent blending, I suck. Strange for someone who uses scents to remember all the moments in my life more than sight and sound. But I suck at blending.
My guys have come into the house on more than a few occasions and crinkled their noses and said ‘ew.’
I may, or may not, have tried to improve on one or two of Marie’s blends before and totally mucked it all up. I’m not saying one way or another.
Hey! I know that feeling! I buy orange and clove essential oil in 100mL bottles almost monthly during the winter as I know it’s a good scent combo, but whenever I try to get creative…. I’m like yeah! This combo works! Visitors go… where’s the hotel? Can I open the window?
I need to invest in this cajeput essential oil. I’ve seen it in a few of Marie’s recipes!
Oooooo making a note to mix orange and clove.
Cajeput is great. I bought it for -I think- her pain roller recipe. But recently I made a lotion of hers and it called for cajeput. I seriously was questioning Maries nose. But it worked beautifully!
And, am I the only one who has to YouTube pronunciation of many essential oils? I can’t be the only one? And cupuacu? Anyone else pronounce it with a hard C like me? Embarrassing.
Anyway, have a Merry Christmas Penny! And everyone else!!
I pronounce everything the way I sound it out. And that means sometimes I am missing a sound or two! I do change it if I watch Marie’s YouTube though. No one around here knows what anything really is so I’m safe! As long as I can spell it…. all is well!
There are quite a few essential oils Marie’s suggested I cannot get yet, but once they are in…. MINE!
And have a very Merry and jolly Christmas!
I hope your find something you love here! 🙂
L’sigh. I found Humblebee and Me and I’m in love.
Lol! Not sure if your comment was at me but I laughed my tuchus off when I thought of my comment! Last night I washed down my kitchen pu
Ed out everything I need to make more of the White Chocolate lotion and realised, I have no more ewax. Of any kind. I wept!
So I bought a kilo. And then got more rose wax. And then got this new crazy sounding butter ucuuba (that google, bing and baidu say is amazing for acne and mature skin- can we say double jack pot?). And then got some mimosa wax. And then and then and then.
You do seem to live in the land of the ultimate bulk buying possibilities—what you may lack in availability you more than make up for with quantity!
Just put together the spiced punch – heavenly!
OOoh, wonderful! Happy holidays 🙂
I love all of Marie’s ideas, I too finally bought the cajeput because I was curious and she uses it alot. It smells a lot like eucalyptus.
I like the frosted forest blend but I like a stronger smell so I used a few more drops of each oil. I think my diffuser holds only 4 oz, it runs for 4 hours. I’m excited to try the other blends.
Thanks, Frann! I think the frosted forest might be my favourite one out of the batch—I can’t get enough of those coniferous scents, especially if I can enjoy them inside where it’s warm!
Hi Marie! Is there a significant smell difference between cajeput and tea tree oil? I know they both come from the same plant family, so was just curious about the differences between them. Thanks!
Oh heavens, yes! Tea tree smells really medicinal while cajeput smells mostly fresh. Tea tree is much more pungent and I find it tends to overwhelm most scent blends, while cajeput is a nice fresh addition to other blends—it plays much better with other EOs. Hope that helps!
Hi Marie!
I recently bought an ultrasonic diffuser. What is annoying is on the outside packaging it only mentions essential oils, however in the manual it notes that one should only use ‘water soluble essential oils’. I do not want to use fragrance oils or yucky unnatural stuff. As I understand it all ultrasonic diffusers use water and pure essential oils and no problem. Am I missing something or is it something super technical I shouldn’t worry about?
Hmm. That seems… flat out wrong. I only know of one water soluble essential oil, and that’s vanilla. Essential oils are, almost by definition, oil soluble. They don’t, however, contain lipids, and perhaps that is what they are getting at? I know you are not supposed to put true, lipid based oils into diffusers (things like olive oil, grapeseed oil, etc.) as that’ll gum them up. I would assume you can use all true, pure essential oils (nothing that is a dilution in jojoba or the like) otherwise… what’s the point? LOL.
Exactly! To all of the above! Im just going to do it and see.
Thank you!
Happy diffusing!