Don’t you just love getting into your car when it smells good. You take a deep breath and slowly exhale because you know how awful the car can smell sometimes. Gyms socks, spilled sippy cups, and a chicken nugget hiding under the seat will have you blocking your nose. Car fresheners are not cheap, especially a decent one. If you want a natural one, it’s even more expensive. This natural car air freshener DIY is fun to make, reusable, and almost zero cost to make. Bonus points! They are a great little gift too.
What You Will Need
This recipe uses a salt dough mold for the natural air freshener. To make salt dough, all you need is all purpose flour, salt and water. It’s a lot like making cookies. When you have cut out the dough they bake at a low temperature until they are hard. An essential oil is added to the dough when mixing. To refresh the air freshener, just drop a couple drops onto it. Essential oils can be expensive but it doesn’t have to be. I picked up a small bottle from Walmart. They have quite a few different options. I used the Cedar and Lavender oil combination.
How to Make A Natural Car Air Freshener
Ingredients
- 4 cups Flour
- 1 cup Salt (You don’t need to use your good salt for this)
- 1 1/2 cup Water
- 20 Drops of Essential Oil
Preheat oven to 250 degrees
Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add essential oil to the water.
Stir water in flour. Then knead until you have a stiff dough. If the mixture is too sticky add just a very small amount of flour at a time. Too dry, start with a tablespoon of water. You will have to knead for a few minutes until all the flour is mixed in and you have a firm dough.
Divide the dough up into sections to make it easier to roll out.
Roll the dough to a half inch thick. To imprint the cedar into the salt dough, place a piece of greenery over the dough. Put a sheet of wax or parchment paper over it. Using a rolling pin, roll over the paper, indenting the cedar or other greenery into the dough. The dough should not be less than a quarter inch thick after rolling.
Remove paper and greenery from the dough. Cut out desired shapes, using cookie molds. If you do not have a cookie mold, ( I didn’t) use a canning jar ring, a cup, measuring cup or trace a design on paper and cut around it with a knife. That is how I made the tree cut outs.
Place the cut outs onto a lined cookie sheet. Using a straw, punch a hole in the top. That will allow you to hang the air freshener with a ribbon or string.
Bake the salt dough for 70 to 90 minutes. Check on them periodically to make sure they don’t burn.
Cool and then thread with twine or a ribbon.
Optional Ways to Decorate Your Natural Car Air Freshener
I used a cheap water color set to paint the cedar imprint on the air freshener. To finish, I dusted them with flour. The flour helped to camouflage my not so perfect painting.
This is a fun, safe project to get the kid’s involved in. The recipe makes quite a few, so there will be extra for them to decorate on their own.
