Essential Oils vs Fragrance Oils

When I first began to make soaps, I gravitated toward fragrance oils because they were easy. They were easy to get, easy to use, no blending necessary and for the most part they were less expensive than quality essential oils. I have my favorite fragrance oils that will always have their place in my products, however, as I have grown as a soapmaker, I find that I want to get to know essential oils as well. The key difference between fragrance oils and essential oils is that essential oils are derived from the the leaves, stems, flowers, bark, roots, or other elements of a plant, whereas frgrance oils also known as perfume oils are synthetica. It is believed that most if not all essential oils offer therapeutic benefits. I am slowly building my collection of essential oils. So far I have sweet orange EO, rosemary EO, peppermint EO, clove EO, cinnamon EO, eucalyptus EO, and citronella EO. My latest aquisition was a rather pricey patchouli. We'll talk abou it tomorrow. When it arrived and I opened the bottle for a sniff, I asked myself why I had ordered it. I was not impressed. We'll talk more about patchouli tomorrow.