Natural, sustainable, fair-trade, and wildcrafted

Many people burn incense for a variety of reasons from use in religious ceremonies and communing with nature to the simple act of ridding your home of funky odors. Making and burning incense is one of the oldest human crafts.

Incense can be broken down into two categories: indirect-burning and direct-burning. Dried sage leaves are a form of indirect-burning incense or non-combustible incense. They will not burn without the continued application of flame. Direct-burning, or combustible, incense is blended with oils or other mediums that allow the incense to stay lit for a smoldering effect that releases scent until the incense burns out. Incense sticks or cones fit this category.

The latest trend in incense is wildcrafted incense, which loosely refers to incense makers who gather, collect, or trade raw materials through a variety of sustainable means to make incense from all-natural ingredients. The focus is on using resources in a sustainable way and to produce a superior product. It’s certainly a trend that we can get behind and one that anyone who enjoys incense should as well.

Discover the best of wildcrafted incense with these three totally sustainable and delightful brands.

Wildcrafted Incense

Sacred Wood Essence

For more than six years, the makers of Sacred Wood Essence have been working with the same family in Ecuador who source the best quality wood from the Palo Santo tree. They employ many workers in the area and provide a fair wage above the average of other local jobs. There is no harvesting or cutting down of trees which make it fully sustainable–the wood is only harvested from trees that have fallen. Palo Santo incense is similar to sage and cedar.

Sword+fern

Sword+Fern botanical incense is ethically harvested, whole plant, loose incense. The company produces three varieties of natural, wildcrafted, chemical-free, and clean-burning incense for everyday aromatherapy, magical, or spiritual use. These are hand-blended collection of the whole resin and plant incenses. The scents offered are: Your Light, which is made with lavender, desert sage, and mugwort; Speak of Me, made from frankincense, black copal, and Douglas fir; and Time Garden, made with patchouli leaf, copal, and western red cedar needles. Truly heady stuff.

Juniper Ridge

Juniper Ridge is the master of wildcrafted incense. The company offers up seven varieties of stick incense that are made with gathered and collected materials from the wilds of California. From Sweetgrass Campfire Incense, which smells like vanilla, fresh-cut grass, and cinnamon bread baking in the oven, to Douglas Fir Campfire Incense, which smells just like a mountain lodge fireplace and is perfect for the holiday season, Juniper Ridge uses only sustainably-sourced wildcrafted plants, tree sap, wood.

Related on EcoSalon

Incense-itive
7 Home Decorating Tips to Add the Spirit of a Cabin to Your Home
Easy Aromatherapy Guide: 6 Scents to Relieve Stress, Boost Your Mood & More

Wildcrafted Incense Image via Juniper Ridge

The post Discover the Scent-Sational Benefits of Sustainable and Wildcrafted Incense appeared first on EcoSalon.

Cabin life is slower, more relaxing, and a welcome alternative to the everyday hustle of normal life. These seven cabin-inspired home decorating tips will bring the spirit of the cabin into your space.

Do you yearn for the casual, outdoorsy feeling of the cabin lifestyle? Try these home decorating tips even if you live in the middle of the city.

1. Start With Scent Invite the outdoors in with Juniper Ridge’s Cabin Spray or Campfire Incense distilled from real regional plants, trees, moss and herbs.

2. Comfort at the Core Comfort and softness are key elements to the optimal cabin experience, so keep your living room comfy by adorning it with a beautifully-patterned Pendleton Blanket or two in order to create an inviting space to relax. And if you really want to camp it up, get yourself a Poler Napsack; you may never leave your house again.

3. Wood is Good Wood is an important part of the cabin aesthetic and experience. While it’s not reasonable to redo your entire interior with woodgrain, simply adding handmade wooden elements such as a driftwood candle holder helps mix up the materials in your home to capture a mixed rustic feel.

4. Decorate Distinctly While other home decorating tips on this list may be subtler methods of obtaining the cabin feel, sometimes it’s best to not beat around the bush. Adding blatantly outdoorsy decoration such as a beautiful ax from Best Made Co. can really drive your point home and serve as a centerpiece for the rest of your nesting.

5. Bring the Warmth Gathering around the fire is one of the greatest cabin joys, so buy or make a fire pit for your own backyard to create community, share stories, and keep your summer nights going longer. If you’re less drawn to a fire pit for space or legal concerns, add warmth indoors with P.F. Candle Co.’s Campire Special Soy Candle.

6. Cook Like You’re Camping Though this isn’t technically a decorating tip, large, simple, delicious summer family meals are one of the best parts about cabin life. Bring your friends and family together for camp-inspired meals as part of your weekly meal planning. (Bonus: for dessert, step up your s’mores game with specialty marshmallows from Wondermade.)

7. Loosen Up and Let Go The ethos of the cabin is one of simplicity, casual living, and the character of the space, goods and people it contains. Make it a point to loosen up on the minute details of curating and cleaning your home just as you would at the cabin. Leave room for imperfection, add interesting, non-matching “collected” items to your decoration and goods, and ultimately allow your space to feel “lived in.”

Follow Garth on Twitter @garthinkingcap

Related on EcoSalon

Love the Outdoors? Check Out a Tree House Resort, Yurt, or Airstream Hotel for Your Next Vacation

5 Prime Spots for Viewing Wildflowers in the U.S.

7 Retro Surf Style Ideas to Create Your Own Surf Shack

Photo by Chris Ford

The post 7 Home Decorating Tips to Add the Spirit of a Cabin to Your Home appeared first on EcoSalon.

Just when I was starting to feel good about my DIY granola bars, along comes a couple with a do-it-yourself project that makes my attempt look small time. Portland, Oregon residents Mariah Morrow and Ryan Lingard built themselves a 130-square foot cabin in the mountains where they can retreat, relax, and go completely off the grid.

The couple named the cabin The Signal Shed and outfitted it with, well – nothing. There’s no running water or electricity and it relies on a wood-burning stove for heat. That said, this rustically luscious cabin is beautifully decorated and cozy.

Morrow and Ryan chose the location carefully so it would blend into its surroundings, then built it on a platform designed to protect the delicate foliage of the forest floor. Using recycled building parts and uncovered treasures on Craigslist, they built the structure in a mere two weeks. The cost? $57,000 which includes the price of the land.

For $1,000, you can buy the plans from Lingard and build the same cabin in your neck of the woods. Or, for $18,000, he’ll deliver a ready-built Signal Shed right to you. If you want a tiny, eco-responsible getaway of your own, you can’t top a cabin like this. While you’re there, you can practice making granola.

The post Tiny DIY Cabin Gets You Off the Grid and Back to Nature appeared first on EcoSalon.