Review of The Essential Oils Deck

The Essential Oils Deck by Hope Gillerman and Joan Arnold with photos by Angelica Cao is a boxed card deck with information about 32 essential oils and their properties and uses, as well as recipe cards, instruction cards, safety and testing and instructions on using the deck.

I saw this deck for sale on the Mountain Rose Herbs website, on Amazon, and in the One Spirit book club mailings.  It looked really interesting.  I'm sad to say, it doesn't work for me.  At all.  I guess it just doesn't match my learning style.

For starters, I was disappointed that out of 50 total cards, there are only 10 actual photos repeated throughout the deck.  I want a very clear and different photo for each herb, rather than having them grouped together on fewer photos and I have to figure out which herb I'm looking at.

Secondly, and most importantly, the arrangement doesn't match my learning style.  I learned that a book works better for me than a deck of cards, and further that when learning about herbs/essential oils, my goal is usually to look FIRST at an ailment I want to treat/correct/support and find what herbs/oils will do the best job, vs thumbing through all of the herbs/oils by name first, by use second and then having to hunt up the card for the recipe.  It just didn't turn out to be a useful arrangement of some very good material.  Plus I think I want a more comprehensive collection of oils.

When I looked on the Amazon reviews for this deck, they are ALL positive.  Except mine.  So don't mind me.  I think the bottom line is, assess your learning style and see what formats for receiving information might work best for you.  There's really nothing "wrong" with this deck, per se, it just isn't useful to my learning style.

So I have this very pretty deck that I don't think I'll ever use.  If you want it, let me know.  If I've still go it, you can have it.  Better yet, offer to trade me your essential oils book for my cards.  Win-win.