My favorite thing besides salmon treats and my water bowl is MY MOMMY!
I love her head. I love sleeping on her head.
I love it when she meditates most days so I can cuddle on her shoulder and head.
She says a lot of people have been asking her about essential oils and cats these past few days, so I am guest blogging here to help her tell you about essential oil safety with both cats and humans.
Mommy has been researching, selling, and using essential oils for 32 years, since long before I was born! That’s even before Elder Boo was born (he’s 22)! She has a big room in the house where over 500 oils are arranged on shelves. We (that’s me, Romulus, Remus, and Elder Boo) are NEVER allowed to go in that room. Well, Romulus sometimes tries, but Mommy catches him, picks him up, and carries him back into the rest of the house.
Mommy has lots of oils that she uses on her body and face in the bathroom. She loves essential oils and they have healed all sorts of things for her. Her personal essential oils are all well diluted into carrier oils like sesame oil or Jojoba oil so they are safe for her sensitive skin. She uses 10 drops per one ounce of carrier oil or sometimes even less. If she spills them, she wipes up the spill immediately, then makes sure there’s none left for us to walk over by cleaning the area with rubbing alcohol. She also cleans her bottles of residue every day with the rubbing alcohol.
She always makes sure to wash her hands several times before she leaves her workshop. Same after she has used oils on herself. That way she doesn’t get oils in our fur when we like to snuggle. She’s also careful about when she feeds us. She makes sure she doesn’t have oils on her hands when she handles our bowls. Sometimes she likes to diffuse oils into the air, but she makes sure the house is well ventilated when she does, and she doesn’t diffuse for over 2 hours each day.
Mommy says I’m supposed to show you how concentrated essential oils are.
Here’s me with a pound of catnip: YUM!
Here’s me with an empty one ounce bottle.
Mommy says it takes 25-2,000 pounds of plant material to make one ounce of essential oil. That’s why you need to dilute them before you use them on humans. Again, 10 drops of essential oil to one ounce of carrier oil is a good starting point. Sometimes you may need less, like when you use them on your face. Sometimes you can use more, like when you use them on your feet. When Mommy uses essential oils on her feet, she always makes sure it’s right before bed, or before she puts on socks and shoes so she doesn’t get essential oils in the carpet that might make us cats sick. We can get sick from essential oils because we have very little of some specific liver enzymes which help us process essential oils. That doesn’t mean we have none of these liver enzymes; we just have far less of them than dogs and humans do. Also, I weigh about 12 pounds. I’m mostly fur, as a purebred Maine Coon cat. Since the average human weighs 150 pounds or so, and cannot handle undiluted essential oils, I can only handle very tiny bits of them, being much smaller.
Sometimes Mommy gets worried about some of her friends. They say they put essential oils in water and drink them. Mommy knows that this is a very dangerous practice. She says that you can erode your esophagus and your stomach lining because essential oils are so concentrated. She also says that you can get chemical burns since oil and water don’t mix and you’re drinking undiluted essential oils. She also points out that even one drop of pure essential oil is like eating 10 pounds of plant material. If I ate 10 pounds of catnip, I’m sure it would kill me! I think if a human ate 10 pounds of broccoli, that human might get very sick. Drinking any amount of essential oils seems like a really bad idea to me.
Anyway, it’s time for me to get back to snuggling with Remus now.
Let me know how you liked my blog. There’s some helpful science-y stuff here that Mommy thought you’d like to look at.
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Now let’s talk about oil categories.
1) Essential Oils- Essential oils are highly concentrated substances distilled from a single plant species like Jasmine or Sage. Aromatherapy is healing with essential oils. Essential oils are the only oils used in aromatherapy. It takes 25-2,000 pounds of plant material to make one ounce of essential oil. It is very doubtful that you could make any appreciable amount of essential oil from your garden. The plants for making essential oils are mostly grown on huge plantations devoted to the perfumery and aromatherapy industries. There, gigantic quantities of plant material are shoveled into stills over 20 feet high where they are distilled into the essential oils we love. The distillation process and other essential oil manufacturing methods will be the subject for a future article. With a few notable exceptions like Patchouli, Frankincense, and Lavender, essential oils should be diluted into a carrier oil (good quality vegetable oil like Jojoba or Sesame) before use on the skin. They can also be diluted in massage oils, lotions, liquid soaps, bath salt, and body powders. Another effective use of essential oils is in a diffusor to scent a room. Never use them on cats as they lack the ability to metabolize them. Never use them on children under the age of 10 as their bodies are not developed enough to handle them. Never ingest them. Essential oil safety will be yet another article coming soon.
2) Aromatherapy blends-Aromatherapy blends are original recipes made by Kamala (me) to produce specific effects. They are made with essential oils only, although sometimes I add some Jojoba oil to make sure they are safe for the skin. I recommend they be diluted before use on the skin, but many have found that they don’t need to dilute these blends. I always advocate safety, so I strongly recommend sampling them before use. In person, you can sample from our tester racks. On the website, you can order sample sizes of oils to test them out before purchasing a larger bottle. These blends are made after exhaustive research and testing on my part. The testing is done on myself and willing friends/family, never on animals.
3) Fragrance oils—Fragrance oils are the smallest category of oils we sell. Fragrance means that these are artificial products whose only function is to smell nice. In the past, many of these were products that I bought and sold: I had no input into their making. Over the years, however, several of my suppliers have gone out of business, leaving me high and dry without a scent that I know my customers love. I have begun to simply make my own versions of these scents so that more and more, the fragrance oils are creations of mine as well. To be clear though, fragrance oils are man made scent chemicals and have nothing to do with aromatherapy. They do not have to be diluted for use on the skin.
4) Beautiful perfumes- Perfume blends are fantasy creations of mine. I use both essential oils and fragrance oils in my perfume blends. They can express characters from novels, TV, or movies, like Cap’N Jack or interesting ideas, like Hero’s Journey. There are Drum Circle blends expressing the feel of Middle Eastern drum rhythms and Steampunk blends with elements of smoke and tea. There are pure flights of fancy like Dreamrider and goddess blends like Athene. Sometimes my perfume blends start out wanting to be aromatherapy blends but I can’t find an essential oil necessary for my concept, so they turn into perfumes of necessity. Such is the case with Taurus, one of my astrological blends. Taurus is strongly associated with spring and the scent of Lilac. There is currently no pure essential oil of Lilac so I had to use a synthetic Lilac, turning Taurus into a perfume rather than an aromatherapy blend. Creating perfumes frees my hand to blend with a wider range of scents than just pure essential oils, so the number of my perfume blends grows more quickly than the other categories. Perfume blends are all safe on the skin and do not have to be diluted like essential oils and aromatherapy blends.
I hope this short article has cleared up some questions I hear often. As always, feel free to call or email with any questions I didn’t answer here.
]]>Sassenach
Murtagh
Jamie
Jenny
Dougal
Frank
Also in the works are incenses for:
Craigh na Dun
Lallybroch
Versailles
Fraser's Ridge
]]>All scents change on your skin. That's every single scent. That's every single individual. Each one of us has our own body chemistry which is completely unique. When we apply fragrance, it mixes with our individual body chemistry and becomes something completely different. This is especially true of oil perfumes as they are lipophilic, which means they bond with the fat layer immediately under your skin.
Unlike alcohol based perfumes, which must air to evaporate the alcohol, the best way to test an oil perfume is to rub it into your skin. That way it will blend properly with your individual body chemistry. It is very important that you test out a new scent on your skin before buying it. The fact that it smells amazing on your best friend does not mean that it will smell the same on your skin. It will probably smell quite different on your skin than it does in the bottle as well.
A well designed perfume has three layers: a bottom, middle, and top. The top note is the initial impact of the scent; the instantaneous, almost subliminal first impression of the scent. The middle note is the basic personality of the scent: what you would describe as what you smell after a minute or so. The bottom note is what comes out on your skin at least 10-20 minutes later. The bottom note is the soul of a perfume, as it lasts much longer than the rest of the scent.
Ideally, when you are shopping for a personal perfume, you should sample from the bottle first, then try it on your skin and let it age there for at least 10 minutes. That is just long enough for each of the three layers to emerge on your skin. As you can see from this description, all scents change on your skin as each layer comes out. It is part of the alchemy of perfume. This is why you cannot rely on a friend or family member to select a scent for you. You must try it on yourself to experience the layers of the perfume and to see how it blends with your individual body chemistry.
When you experience Kamala's Own in person, we have testers of all our scents and encourage you to try them on. When you order on our website, we offer sample sizes of all our oils so that you don't have to spend a fortune in order to sample our perfumes. In addition, starting now, we are including a FREE sample of a popular oil blend with each web order.
]]>Why Did My Favorite Scent Change?
an article by Dana Gass (Kamala) edited 5/24/17
Having been in the aromatherapy and scent business for over 30 years, I often hear anguished cries of “My favorite scent changed! Why???” In the early days of my business, I proudly and naively told my customers that their favorite creations of mine would never change. However, as the years have gone by, I have had to change my tune. I often equate blending oils with cooking. I do my best to keep my hundreds of recipes safe and follow them perfectly each time I blend something. However, any of you who cook know that you can make the same dish and follow the recipe perfectly each time, but the the dish will always be just slightly different. Your ingredients are never exactly the same and your cooking techniques are always slightly different.
In the world of pure essential oils, these oils are like wine because they are sourced from plants. Organically grown Lemon from Israel smells different than conventionally grown Lemon from the USA. Frankincense from Somalia smells different than Frankincense from India. Weather and climate changes from year to year also affect the scent quality of a pure essential oil. When I am blending aromatherapy products, they always come out somewhat differently depending on the batch of each essential oil I am able to find at that moment.
For fragrance oils (synthetic oils used for scent only, not for aromatherapy), the picture gets even more fuzzy. Despite the fact that I source my ingredients from over a dozen suppliers, some of them have gone out of business over the years. Some of them randomly change a scent that I buy from them without telling me beforehand. Some of them also randomly discontinue a scent that I have bought from them for years. I have learned that it is very difficult to match a scent from one manufacturer to a scent from another manufacturer with the same name. I spend much time and effort trying to keep my blends from changing, but sometimes it is just a lost cause.
I decided to write this article for you, my customers, because I have just had to change another one of my scents in the past few days. I thought it would be useful for you to understand why I make these choices. The latest scent change was African Violet. Having spent over a year now trying to order African Violet from my usual supplier, and getting no response, I had completely run out of the old fragrance oil. My usual supplier continues to not have any idea when they will stock this fragrance oil. In addition, several customers have expressed that they’re not thrilled with the original scent in the first place. Faced with these challenges, I decided to create a blend for African Violet which is close to the original scent, but with added depth, and composed of ingredients I’m fairly confident will be available to me more readily.
This article was originally written in 2015. Now, in 2017, I am having to change the fragrance oils Lilac and Rain. Notes about those changes can be found on their individual product pages here on the website.
Should you have questions about this article, or whether or not your favorite scent is liable to change in the future, always feel free to email me at kamala3@kamala.com or call toll-free at (877) 424-1963.
]]>I look forward to the day when I will open a retail store and have full time employees who can fill orders for me when I am gone. I regret having to delay orders like this, but this has been reality for about 10 years now.
During the rest of the year, I usually get orders shipped within two or three days of receiving them.
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