Last night I had a get-together at my house with a bunch of fun ladies to make DIY clay diffuser necklaces for our essential oils! This is one of the easiest crafts, ever — and you know that I am NOT a very DIY-type person. Also not a jewelry person. But ever since I made my first diffuser necklaces a few months ago, I have rarely taken them off. Here are the original two:

The heart is actually my daughter’s two fingerprints, inspiration taken from this post. The lower one is the Sanskrit “OM”. The string used on these and the ones we made at the party last night are hemp.

For anyone who might be interested in making these easy diffuser necklaces themselves, here’s how I did it.

First, I bought some very basic oven-back clay (affiliate link) at the craft store.

 

A word about the clay: you can get a little more “natural” by purchasing the standard reddish-orange colored oven-bake clay, but if you want to make it “pretty”, you’ll have to go with the dyed stuff. Painting the clay after baking will not work with essential oils. I am not too concerned about the dye used in the clay, since the dye is sealed in when the clay is baked.  As mentioned, I have worn my necklaces nearly nonstop for about 2 months now and so far there has been no color transfer of the dyed clay, despite the pendant being covered in oils multiple times every day. For me, the toxicity level here seems very low. Please feel free to make your own call on that. I love that the colored clays also come in metallic finishes. I think those were some of my favorite finished pieces!

Next: Getting creative

This is where Pinterest came in, for me, because I am NOT a creative person. I spent a little time over the course of a few weeks creating a Clay Diffuser Necklace Inspiration Pinterest board.

Follow Jenny’s board Clay Diffuser Necklace inspiration on Pinterest.

We kept my iPad open on the table and passed it around to look at pictures and get ideas.

One of the best ideas was pressing old jewelry and interesting buttons into the clay! If you are worried about the jewelry sticking to the clay and distorting the shape, sprinkle some baby powder onto the jewelry and/or the clay itself. Several people sprinkled the clay with baby powder directly and it did not change the color of the clay.

Don’t forget to punch a hole somewhere for the string!

Finally, bake the clay in the oven. I did remove the buttons from several of the pendants so they wouldn’t melt, then we glued them back on after baking. If you are wondering whether you can bake sequins safely, the answer to that is: YES.

I wish I had remembered to take a picture of EVERY necklace, but these are some of our faves that I did remember to take pictures of:

How to use the necklace: you probably want to wait until the clay is completely cooled before adding the first oil. Just drop your favorite oil (or the one you need the most right now!) onto the surface of the clay and rub it in a little. The first few times you put oil onto your necklace, it will mostly sit on top. The more you use the necklace, the faster it absorbs oil and the longer the scent of the oil will last. I do recommend keeping the necklace away from direct contact with clothing fabric for a little while after adding the oil, to make sure it doesn’t transfer to clothing. I usually shorten my necklaces manually by tying the hemp string at different lengths depending on the neckline of my top.

Now you can enjoy your essential oils anywhere!