You know how other people’s houses have a smell? I don’t mean a bad smell, or even necessarily a good smell, just a smell. It doesn’t smell like your house. The people who live there can never smell it. Well, every once in a while, our house doesn’t smell like our house. I’ll come home after work, walk in the door and suddenly our house smells like it did when we walked into it for the first time. It smells like someone else’s house.

The house hasn’t picked up our scent yet. I think it will over time, but I don’t like that it doesn’t now. I suppose if we were cats, we’d lift our tails and spray. But we’re people, so I made an oil diffuser.

Step 1: Find a jar you want to act as your diffuser. It should have a small opening at the top. You don’t want a large opening because you don’t want a wide open jar of oil, and you also want your reeds to sit nicely in the opening. I found the perfect jar at Dollar Tree. It had a big painted-on label that said “Vinegar” but that didn’t matter to me because I was covering it.

Step 2: I knew I wanted the diffuser to go in our living room, so I found some mosaic tiles that matched our light fixtures. I used some glue (E-6000) to adhere the tiles to the jar.

Step 3: After allowing the glue to dry overnight, I grouted the tile using some regular, plain old grout that we already had. It ended up with a beachy vibe that I really like. But they do sell grout that’s specific for mosaic tile projects (it has a smoother finish). Also, I don’t recommend doing this on a table you really love, like you see in this picture that I did. I’m seriously lucky I didn’t get that grout somewhere it didn’t belong. I’m notorious for being a messy crafter, so I really don’t know what I was thinking.

Step 4: After allowing the grout to dry overnight, I took the bottle outside to sand down the grout a bit and wash off the tiles. Just a sponge, a little water & some elbow grease will get the coat of grout off the tiles. You can see the difference in the pictures below. You might notice in the “after” picture below that the grout has some green flecks in it. That is not the grout itself, but the color from the cheap Dollar Tree sponges I used for this project. Yeah, don’t buy those. The green came off, but it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Before:

After:

Step 5: Add oil to the jar. I’m actually in the midst of attempting to make my own essential oil from the lemon verbena plants that flourished in my garden this summer (clearly they’re hardy- I did nothing to contribute to their success). Alas, the oil isn’t ready yet so isn’t a part of this project. I simply did the old-fashioned thing and bought some. Next, add your reed sticks to the oil. You can find these online or at Yankee Candle. A lesson you can learn from me is this: bamboo skewers do not work in the place of the reed diffusers. I was hoping they would, and  I think my logic was good (you’re supposed to soak them in water before you use them as skewers-so therefore they are absorbent, right?). But it just didn’t work. The oil didn’t travel far enough up the sticks to scent the room, even after a week of me patiently waiting.

Step 6: Stand back and wait for your room to start smelling lovely!

Cost for this project: $13
Jar-$1
Tiles- $4
Skewers-$2
Reeds because skewers were a bad idea- $3
Oil-$3

And, while you can certainly buy a reed diffuser for the same cost and maybe less, would you find a diffuser as perfect for your room as the one you make will be? Probably not. And making things is just fun.

Linking up to: At The Picket Fence

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