How-To: Make Your Own Perfume

Hot Topics:

By nataliezdrieu
Posted August 27th, 2009
Category Craft

Head on over to Indie Fixx where Meredith of Sweet Anthem teaches you the art of making your own perfume.

In the Maker Shed

BeagleBoard BeagleBone Black

Getting Started with Arduino Kit v3.0

Make: Getting Started with Soldering Kit

Raspberry Pi Starter Kit - Includes 512MB Raspberry Pi

4 Responses to How-To: Make Your Own Perfume

SKR on August 27th, 2009 at 10:47 am said:

I suggest that if you are going to start perfumery as a hobby, that you buy disposable pipettes. 500 disposable ones will cost about the same as 3-4 glass ones, and you never have to worry about cleaning them or cross-contamination.
Also, when you first start out with mixing fragrances, I suggest using 1 drop as 1 part to get an idea of what the fragrance will be like before making a larger quantity that you let rest. Otherwise you may go through a lot of oil. In order to keep the quantities small I use a beer bottle with a small piece of aluminum foil pressed into the opening forming a tiny cup.
The article explains making an oil based perfume, but if you want to use an atomizer use alcohol as the carrier. This needs to be pure alcohol which can be difficult to get. Isopropyl, denatured alcohol, etc are right out. Don’t use them. If you can find full strength Everclear, that will work fine. I like to have custom room sprays, so I use alcohol.
Lastly, basenotes.net is a great resource for perfumery. They have a forum for DIY.

Reply ↓
Meredith on August 27th, 2009 at 12:15 pm said:

This is all actually very good advice, and just something I didn’t quite get to covering in my brief how-to post. Thanks SKR!
(Also, I prefer oil based, personally, and don’t use sprays myself. I think the texture is just plain nicer.)

Reply ↓
SKR on August 27th, 2009 at 4:24 pm said:

I think that the top notes have a lot more staying power with oil based. Their high volatility requires me to use much more when making a room spray in order to achieve the proper balance. For personal fragrance, I generally don’t use a spray. Being a guy, I don’t change up my fragrance that much from day, so I just customize everything. I was tired of smelling like fruit when I left the shower, so I added fragrance to unscented shampoo, body wash, and lotion. That does it for me, but my GF needs her oils.

Reply ↓
Chelsey Kohlenberg on November 13th, 2009 at 4:36 pm said:

This tells me nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reply ↓