DIY Fir Oil Holiday Gifts: Six Ideas Ranked by Recipient Risk
A homemade gift is a product you hand to someone else, so choose the format by who will receive it, not by which recipe looks best. A fir candle-style melt for a household with a cat, or a neat bottle of oil for a family with a toddler, is the wrong gift however nicely it is wrapped. This post ranks six fir gifts by the risk they carry, gives the fir oil each one needs in grams, and says what to put on the label.
Fir Needle Essential Oil
Our own Fir Needle Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.
From $10.99
Shop Now →Pick the recipient before the recipe
Three questions decide most of it. Is there a cat, a bird or any pet in the home? Is there a child under about ten, or a person with asthma or reactive airways? Does the recipient have sensitive skin or a tree nut allergy? If the answer to the first is yes, skip everything that releases fir vapour into the air (melts, sprays, ornaments, steamers). Pet Poison Helpline's essential oils page (undated) says cats and birds are at greatest risk, and ranks skin contact second only to swallowing. We sell oil, not veterinary advice: if you are unsure, ask the recipient's veterinarian.
For children, the figure that should stop you giving neat oil is this one: a 2019 Medical Journal of Australia study of NSW Poisons Information Centre calls reported 4,412 essential oil exposures between July 2014 and June 2018, 63% in people under 15, 80% accidental, and said about 5 ml of some oils can cause life-threatening toxicity in children. That is a study of poisonings across all essential oils, not of fir, and it is the reason our first rule is to gift the finished product, not the bottle. For asthma, the survey evidence is in the shower steamer post.
The six gifts, with fir oil in grams
Each quantity below comes from the linked recipe or from arithmetic we show. None of the recipes has been made or tested by us. The drop count uses our own skin copy (3 drops in 30 ml at 0.5%, so about 20 drops per ml) and the 0.924 relative density on our published COA, about 0.046 g a drop. It is arithmetic, not a measurement of your dropper.
| Gift | Gift size | Fir oil | Risk to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Lotion bar (recipe) | 30 g bar, 1% | 0.3 g, 6 to 7 drops | tree nut allergy, sensitive skin |
| 2. Melt-and-pour soap (recipe) | 100 g bar | 1 g, 22 drops (stand-in, see below) | skin, eyes |
| 3. Shower steamers (recipe) | 6 x 25 g, 1% | 1.5 g, 33 drops | asthma, children, pets |
| 4. Wax melts (recipe) | 50 g wax tin, 6% | 3 g, 65 drops | pets, children, hot surfaces |
| 5. Room spray (recipe) | 2 oz bottle | 15 drops, 0.7 g | pets, asthma |
| 6. Clay ornament diffuser | one ornament | 3 to 5 drops, 0.14 to 0.23 g | children, pets, surfaces |
Notes on each, in order of how much we would hesitate:
- Lotion bar. The 1% dose is the overlap of our product pages (0.5% to 2%) and the Tisserand Institute body range (1% to 3%), worked out in the bar post, which also covers the temperature step. A gift bar should use a nut-free liquid oil, because you do not know the recipient's allergies.
- Soap. The soap recipe post governs; 1% (1 g per 100 g of base) is our stand-in, set below the Tisserand wash-off range of 2% to 4%, because we have no soap batch to base a higher figure on. Check what your base is. FDA's soap FAQ says a product counts as soap only if its cleaning comes solely from alkali salts of fatty acids and it is marketed only as soap, and that if it contains synthetic detergents it is a cosmetic. True soap falls under the Consumer Product Safety Commission, not FDA.
- Shower steamers. At 1% of the mix, one 25 g tablet carries about 0.25 g, about 5 drops, and is the gift we would give least often because of the asthma and child questions above.
- Wax melts. Our wax melts post starts at 6% of the wax weight, so a 50 g tin takes 3 g. Gift the wax already scented, and tell the recipient it is for a warmer they run only in a room the pet does not enter.
- Room spray. The live room spray post uses 30 drops of fir (and 20 of cedarwood, which you buy elsewhere; we sell only the fir) in a 4 oz bottle, so a 2 oz bottle takes 15 drops of fir. The post's own text says to cut the oil to 24 drops per 4 oz and test on fabric first if you spray pillowcases.
- Clay ornament. The only gift here without a linked recipe. The reasoning is that unglazed clay is porous and draws in a few drops of oil, which then release slowly from the surface. We have not tried it, and no source we fetched gives a dose; 3 to 5 drops a refresh is a conservative guess from the same arithmetic as the others, not a tested figure. The oil is neat on the surface, so it can mark wood and leave oil on skin. A tree ornament sits at a toddler's and a cat's height: hang it high or skip it.
Totalling the six gifts: 0.3 + 1 + 1.5 + 3 + 0.7 + 0.2 comes to about 6.7 g of fir oil, with a little spare, which is under half of a 0.5 oz bottle (about 14 g; 0.5 fl oz of an oil at 0.924 is about 13.7 g). That is cost in grams; for live prices, see the shop page.
Label every gift
Gifting is not selling, and the FDA pages we fetched do not say how they treat a free gift. What they say is about retail products: FDA's summary of cosmetics labeling requirements lists an ingredient declaration for retail cosmetics, in descending order of predominance (ingredients at 1% or less may follow in any order), a name and place of business, and a net quantity. Its homemade cosmetics fact sheet adds that a post office box or website is not adequate as the address. Our advice for a gift is to meet the retail standard anyway, because it costs one label:
- Ingredient list, with "fir needle essential oil" named.
- Your name and the date made.
- "Patch test first. Keep from eyes, children and pets. Not for internal use." Our product pages carry that last pair of cautions.
- A use-by that you set by the shortest-lived ingredient (our copy says typically 1 to 2 years for conifer oils).
The moment you sell any of these, you are a cosmetic maker with legal duties, and FDA's aromatherapy page adds that claims like helping sleep make a product a drug and that CPSC regulates some fragrance products such as air fresheners and scented candles. That is a question for a regulatory consultant. Do not write any wellness claim on a gift tag either. Our labelling post is the starting point.
What we would not gift
We would not give a bottle of neat fir oil to a household with young children or pets, however well meant. If the recipient already uses essential oils, a 0.5 oz bottle with a card saying "dilute before skin use, keep capped and out of reach" is reasonable, and our oil is sold undiluted for exactly that reason. Otherwise gift the lotion bar.
The gift that carries the least risk to the most people is the one with no fragrance released into the air and the lowest dose on skin. Reasoning from the sources above, that is the lotion bar.
Fir Needle Essential Oil
Fir Needle Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.
From $10.99
Shop Now →Sources & Further Reading
- Cairns R, Harnett J, 2019. Essential oil exposures reported to the NSW Poisons Information Centre, Medical Journal of Australia, via University of Sydney news release. sydney.edu.au/news
- Pet Poison Helpline, undated. Essential oils (author a veterinary student extern). petpoisonhelpline.com/blog/essential-oils
- Tisserand Institute, undated. Essential oil dilution guidelines. tisserandinstitute.org/safety/dilution
- US FDA. Frequently Asked Questions on Soap. fda.gov/cosmetics
- US FDA. Summary of Cosmetics Labeling Requirements. fda.gov/cosmetics
- US FDA. Small Businesses and Homemade Cosmetics: Fact Sheet. fda.gov/cosmetics
- US FDA. Aromatherapy. fda.gov/cosmetics