Blending Concepts

Blending is fun. Understanding a few concepts will help you move beyond guesswork and blend with intention, consistency and confidence.

Aromatic Purpose
If you would like to create a blend where the aroma is the star, then pay the most attention to balancing top, middle and base notes. This helps to create a blend with a pleasant accord. Accord is achieved as a blend becomes a harmonious and unified aroma — when the single oils are less distinctive and perceived in the blend.

Functional Purpose
If you are creating a blend for a therapeutic purpose, such as pain relief or immune support, then selecting oils that compliment and enhance the function of the blend becomes more important than balancing the aroma with top, middle and base notes.

Start Small and Give it Time
Experiment in small batches — using only drops — before scaling up. Document your drop counts as you go so you can reproduce or refine your formula. Let a blend rest for 30 minutes or more before continuing to refine. This allows the oils to settle with each other, which can give a truer sense of the final aroma.

Balancing the Energy
Many factors determine the energy that each drop of oil contains — the distillation yield, the length of growing season required, compound density and the plant part that is used. The cost of producing the essential oil is dependant on these factors as well; therefore, price is a fairly reliable approximation of the energy. Higher priced oils generally containhigher energy. So it is naturally balancing to use less of the higher priced oils and more of the lower priced oils in a blend.

The Golden Ratio
We regularly use the Fibonacci Sequence of numbers when creating Imani Synergies. This includes both the number of oils that we use in the blend and the number of parts that we use of each oil.

Essential oil blending is an art that combines different oils to create unique aromatic experiences. We recommend starting with Crystal Massage Oil as your unscented base. A typical blend uses 15-30 drops of essential oil per ounce of carrier oil.