DIY Essential Oil Car Air Freshener

We all want our car to smell nice right? But if you’re like me you hate the overwhelming, chemically smell of most commercial car air fresheners (I’m looking at you little dangly trees!) Now I love using essential oils in my house, so I decided it was high time to figure out how to use them in my car too!

When we bought our teenager’s car it was pretty obvious that the previous owner had been doing some partying in it… of the herbal variety. He had Febreezed the hell out of it resulting in a lovely “I just put my joint out with Febreeze” kind of smell. Anthony insisted on buying air fresheners to help with the smell then resulting in a “I just put my joint out with Febreeze and then poured cherry kool aid on it” smell.

Lovely.

Standing there in the car air freshener isle at Autozone though I couldn’t get over how bad all of them smell. How floral and fruit scents smell nothing like the actual flowers or fruit and they all knock you over when you smell them.

I’m a girl who likes things to smell pretty, but those scents are not pretty, they’re yucky.

I wondered if there was a way to make something that I could use essential oils with and put in my car. I tried an extra bead that I had left over from this project but it ended up in a cup holder and wasn’t very effective.

Then I was on Pinterest and saw an idea where they took a clothes pin and stuck little pom poms to it to clip to the vent.

Well I liked the idea of that… but not the pom poms so much, so I decided to tweak it and make a version of my own!

The nice part about this is that you can personalize it to match your car, or whatever colors you want!

Here’s what you’ll need-

A wooden clothes pin

Spray paint- or other paint

Embroidery floss

Beads (optional)

Glue – elemers or craft glue work just fine.

Masking tape

A long needle

First thing we want to do is to paint the clothes pin. I used spray paint because it’s quick and easy but if you prefer to brush on paint that’s ok too. You want to avoid painting the part of the clothes pin where the essential oils will get dripped so you can put a piece of masking tape over it… or your thumb, like I did.

Once it’s dry it’s time to wrap the end with embroidery floss. Start on the inside of the clothes pin holding the end of the thread down. Wrap it up to the top and then starting near the spring wrap it around… that’s hard to explain so here’s some pictures.

Once you have it wrapped all around once go back over it at least 3-4 times.

Now stick the end of your thread through a needle, I used a curved one and it worked really well, you can use whatever you have as long as the eye is big enough.

Stick the needle about halfway through your wrapped thread and pull the end through. Dot a little bit of glue on the end of the thread to secure it really well.

Now if you don’t want to embellish any further you can stop here.

If you want to add some dangly beads just take a length of embroidery floss and thread your beads on to it. Tie the floss around the bottom bead to secure it. Add beads to both ends. Once you’ve beaded it you can just tie it around your clothes pin. If you want to do just one strand of beads just string them and then tie the end around the clothes pin, you can use a little glue to hold down any stray strings.

Now you’re done! Just clip it in the vent of your car and drop on a couple of drops of your favorite essential oils. They will evaporate so you can just add more when you notice it needs refreshed, you can also change scents as one evaporates!

Now my car smells lovely… the teenagers smells… um… better than it did, we’ll take that!

How does your car smell?? I’d love to know what essential oils you’ll use!