How to Make Essential Oil With Cantaloupe

Making your own essential oils at home gives you the opportunity to use them in your own botanical bath and body creations. Essential oil is the concentrated essence found in botanical material such as fruit, flowers and other plant life. It doesn't take long to make essential oils from the rinds of cantaloupe and other varieties when you use steam distillation, which uses steam to trap the essences for collection. You can use essential oils from cantaloupe in soap creations, lotions and hair cream conditioners. The essential oil can also be used in your own homemade perfume formulations.

Things You'll Need

3 lbs. of cantaloupe rind
8-qt. stock pot
Steam basket
Ice
2-oz. glass dish
2-oz. glass oil vial
Plastic pipette

Instructions

- 1
  Add the cantaloupe rinds to the stock pot. Pour in about 1 1/2 gallons of water. Drop in the steam basket. Make sure the steam basket sits just above the water level.
- 2
  Place a small glass dish in the center of the steam basket. This will collect the concentrated oils from the steam.
- 3
  Turn the stock pot's lid upside-down and place it over the pan. This allows the knob or handle of the lid to dangle just above the dish in the steam basket. Set the stove to a medium-low heat for simmering.
- 4
  Fill the upside-down lid with ice. This creates condensation on the inside of the lid while the concoction simmers.
- 5
  Allow the contents of the pot to simmer for approximately one hour. Dump the melted ice from the lid and refill it with ice as many times as needed during this time.
- 6
  Turn off the stove and remove the lid of the pot. The bowl in the center of the basket inside of the pot will contain about 2 ounces of concentrated essential oils. Suck the oil up with a plastic pipette and inject it into an oil vial for safe-keeping. Pipettes are thin plastic tubes with bulbous handles for squeezing. This allows you to squirt and suck-up liquids and oils.