How to Make Natural Perfume. Project #1

I must to confess I always was fascinated by the smell. And by meaning it I’m not simply saying I was attracted to the nice aroma, or I have a sensitive nose (which in fact I have, and even suffer from it sometimes, I can smell which of my dogs peed sometimes in their toilet when no one else in a house sense a bad smell, and that is pretty much disturbing, trust me), but what I am saying is that I love different scents, I love to smell and see how the aroma changes over time, or how new scents appear when you combine 2 or more aromas together.

So I decided to start a Project “Perfume”. Just like that, out of curiosity, passion, love to the scents, naturally sensitive nose (at least getting use of it), unexpressed creativity inside of me. This perfume which I will share here I will call Project #1.

The truth here is that you don’t do it in just one day. It takes time, a lot of tries and wastes, so be patient. Once you blend you need to let it sit in a dark place for a week at least, even a month, and keep on smelling it regularly to see how the scent is changing (blending with each other in a natural way).

When I did my blend the first day it smelled very strong and even too heavy. My husband told me it’s way too heavy. Then I smelled it after 24 then 48 hours, it was changing. I’ve got really excited to see what happens over longer period of time. I opened it after 1 week, it changed, but was missing something, so I had to adjust it by adding more of some existing essential oils and by adding some other oils which I thought would work there. I didn’t know what will happen, but I wanted to experiment, not to waste the whole effort I put in to be frank.

After 2 weeks it smelled way better and harmonic. Then I let it sit in a dark cool place, which was my wardrobe, for the whole month. Today I opened and tried. It smelled pretty much good, very classy scent, simple, not perfect, but more harmonic and definitely great for the first perfume concentrate I’ve ever made (well, not really, in fact I did play around with my essential oils before).

When I was starting to pick which essential oils to use, I really first had an idea of what I want to see, I had a picture in my head. Then I tried to place it in a scent. I didn’t have these special strips for smelling, so I used a paper which can hold aromas (the ones I received alone when was ordering my essential oils), cut it into strips, wrote down on each of it the name of essential oil I want to try. Then I tried to combine them by smelling each paper separately and then in combination by placing them together, to see if they can smell good together. At least half I didn’t use after all. But it’s a good way to see what you want to use without wasting much of your precious essential oils.

These are the strips I used for picking my oils and they the same ones I used to try the aroma of the perfume while blending

I also broke down the process on base, heart and head notes. I combined each part separately, and then tried to combine them all together. Of course, it didn’t happen very pleasant at first. I had to constantly add this or that essential oil. Leave it for a day, let it sit, then smell again, add some more for adjustment, and repeat the whole process.

Eventually, today when I came back for my glass bottle with the “Project #1” to smell, I was surprised that it started to smell pleasant enough to wear it. I applied a little on my hand to see how it would interact with the chemistry of my skin (the same perfume can smell very different on different people due to the personal skin scent). And it was pretty much nice, I waited for some time, the aroma started to open, and it is actually nice.

The dry out was earthy and woodsy and slightly sweet, just as I wanted. I was focusing more on heart notes, and I can smell this deep rose aroma alone with sensual jasmine, spicy notes from the clove, floral tones from palmarosa and neroli. The head notes are spicy and sweet, strong, tart and citrusy. I really like the overcome of my experiment. Including the fact that I never studied any perfumery, and just did what I was feeling and seeing in my head.

So now I’ve created my own first natural perfume which I placed in a beautiful crystal bottle and I enjoy wearing it. My husband also liked it when I showed to him, without saying what it was, and then once I told him about that my perfume he was really surprised. I didn’t have any perfumes alcohol, so I use here jojoba oil as a base instead. Both ways can be used, but if using oil base bare in mind that the aroma itself will be stronger so you need to add less if the perfume concentrate.

So, let me share the formula and the process here. It’s a lot of fun and the result can really surprise you.

Base

Heart

Head

This will be the actual perfume concentrate which you will need to mix with either perfumers alcohol or carrier oil like jojoba. For the oil based perfume I used 30% dilution ratio and it happen to be a little bit strong, so 20% would be the best ratio here.

Once you blend them together let it sit in a dark place for at least 24 hours. Then smell it again and see how it changes. Feel free to adjust it upon your own preferences, as the perfume is very individual thing. But bare in mind that I let it sit for a month before I got final result.

Also for the blending ratios you can follow these guidelines for the desired intensity of the perfume (alcohol based):

Stay creative my friend.

Forever yours,

Anna

∗ if you decide to create your own perfume keep in mind that some essential oils are known to be phototoxic at certain levels of concentration, you can read about it here