I can never get tired of lavender infused home fragrance. Maybe it is because the scent is so closely associated with spa-time, which I enjoy so much. It is my go-to scent for bedrooms, while the bathrooms, kitchen and living room experiment with a different mix of peppermint, vanilla, lemongrass, recently citronella, for its mosquito repelling properties.
Come bedtime, I will unscrew the lid of my potpourri bowl recycled from a facial clay mask jar, and breathe. The lavender scent is widely known to soothe and relax the mind, a perfect way to end a day. Or when I need a little help to sleep, thankfully not that often.
DIY Potpourri is super easy, just a mix of dried flowers and essential oil. I generally use these three ingredients to make mine at home:
dried flowers – only lavender buds, in this case, as I like to keep the palette simple.
salt – I use Himalayan Rock Salt for this project, the pink hue adds extra points.
essential oil – get pure lavender essential oil from a reliable source, no synthetic concoction for me, no matter how cheap.
Why add salt? Because it is cheaper to fill up the container with salt than lavender buds, volume by volume. My 500g pack of salt costs $2.50, while a small sachet of lavender buds costs $7.50. Plus, the scent comes largely from the essential oil anyway. It’s all about being practical.
But first, choose a bowl/set up that you like since it will be part of the room decor. I like the clay mask container because it is shallow and has an 8 cm wide mouth, as diffusion of scent will be more effective with a larger surface area. Avoid deep bottles as you will need to fill it up with more content.
Another plus point of this container is that it has a lid that let me cover the potpourri during the day when no one’s inside the room, allowing the scent to last longer without topping up on the oil too often. The lid also allows me to refresh the potpourri once a while without adding oil by giving the container a good shake with its lid on.
I updated the style of my lavender potpourri bowl by wrapping it with a cooking twine. It can’t get easier than this, I did not even use glue, only entailed some delicate job of tucking in the twine’s ends. After that, simply fill up the container close to its brim with salt and lavender. The proportion of salt and dried flowers is up to personal preference. Mine’s about 4:1.
This is now sitting on my bedside table, I only need to top up with a few drops of oil whenever I find the scent getting faint. Low maintenance, I likey.
MONO and CO 