Creating Scents: Crafting Your Own Cologne And Perfume

Creating your own cologne or perfume is a fun and easy way to express your creativity and develop a unique signature scent. The process involves blending different essential oils, such as top, middle, and base notes, to create a fragrance that reflects your personal taste. You can experiment with various ingredients, including alcohol, water, and carrier oils, to find the perfect combination. Making your own cologne or perfume allows you to stand out from the crowd and create a scent that is truly yours.

Choosing your essential oils

Woody scents include cedarwood, labdanum, pine, and sandalwood. Cedarwood is a very grounding oil that combines beautifully with citrus notes. Sandalwood has a subtle scent that combines woodsy elements with a hint of floral.

Musk scents historically come from animals, but there are also botanical options, such as ambrette, vetiver, and patchouli. Ambrette is the closest botanical option to musk. Musk scents tend to be deep and earthy and are perhaps better suited to autumn and winter.

Citrus scents include bergamot, lemon, grapefruit, and vanilla. These fragrances are strong, crisp, and revitalizing, and they tend to work well during warmer periods of the year.

Herbal scents include lavender, chamomile, rosemary, peppermint, oregano, clove, thyme, and cinnamon. These tend to be lighter fragrances that blend well with woody notes.

Floral scents include rose, geranium, iris, jasmine, magnolia, peony, ylang-ylang, lavender, neroli, geranium, and magnolia.

When choosing your essential oils, it's also important to consider the potential risks. Some essential oils can cause photosensitivity, such as lime oil, or skin irritation and allergic reactions, such as herbaceous oils derived from peppermint, oregano, clove, thyme, jasmine, and cinnamon. Therefore, it's important to stick to the recommended ratios and perform a patch test before using a new essential oil.

Additionally, if you are creating a perfumed room spray, be aware that some essential oils can be harmful to pets, including tea tree, cinnamon, clove, anise, peppermint, pine, ylang-ylang, citrus, wintergreen, and sweet birch oils.

When blending your essential oils, it's helpful to understand the fragrance scale, which includes top notes, middle notes, and base notes. Top notes are the first scents you'll smell, followed by middle notes, and then base notes, which form the fragrance foundation. A common ratio for these notes is 30% top notes, 50% middle notes, and 20% base notes, but you can experiment to find the formula that works best for you.

• Bergamot, jasmine, and sandalwood
• Cedarwood, cognac extract, and white rose or cedarwood
• Bergamot, lemon, and grapefruit
• Lavender, chamomile, and rosemary
• Rose, geranium, and iris
• Ylang-ylang, lavender, neroli, geranium, and magnolia

Blending the oils

Start by adding a few drops of oil, one by one, and begin mixing. It's recommended to use no more than 30 drops in total, and if one scent is much stronger than the rest, use less of it.

For a well-balanced fragrance, use a ratio of 60% base notes, 30% middle notes, and 10% top notes. Alternatively, you can try 20% base, 50% middle, and 30% top, or experiment to find the formula that works best for the type of profile you're trying to create.

Once you have your desired formula, add two ounces of alcohol. Base notes like sandalwood, tonka bean, violet leaf, and vanilla blend well with middle notes like geranium, ylang-ylang, rose, and lotus flower. Top this formula off with lavender, neroli, magnolia, and mandarin.

Now, the fragrance needs time to brew and sit. Refrigerate it for two weeks, then shake it up so that the molecules can mix.

Adding alcohol

Alcohol is a key ingredient in making cologne and perfume. It is used as a fixative, helping to merge the ingredients together and making the scent last longer on your skin.

When making perfume, you can use a high-quality alcohol with a high alcohol content, such as vodka. For cologne, a 70-proof alcohol is recommended. If you want to make an eau de parfum, you will need 190-proof alcohol. The higher the percentage of alcohol, the better.

To make perfume, you will need to add your essential oils to a small bowl first, and then combine them with alcohol before pouring the mixture into your glass bottle. Seal the bottle tightly and shake well. It is important to store your cologne or perfume in a cool, dark place to preserve the fragrance.

For cologne, the ratio of alcohol to essential oils is 5 ounces of alcohol to 20 drops of top note essential oil, 15 drops of middle note essential oil, and 10 drops of base note essential oil. You can also add 1 ounce of distilled water if you are sensitive to alcohol.

When making perfume, the ideal ratio is 30% top notes, 50% middle notes, and 20% base notes. However, some perfumers suggest using 60% base notes, 30% middle notes, and 10% top notes. It is up to you to experiment and find the formula that works best for the type of profile you are trying to create.

Once you have added your essential oils and alcohol, you will need to let the mixture sit for at least 48 hours. You can then add distilled or spring water to dilute the fragrance. Finally, add glycerine to help preserve the scent.

Diluting the fragrance

Diluting Cologne

If you are making cologne, you will need to add two tablespoons of distilled water to a spray bottle, followed by five drops of glycerin. Then, slowly and carefully, swirl in your bespoke fragrance mixture.

Diluting Perfume

If you are making perfume, you will need to add two tablespoons of bottled water to your perfume, shake the bottle vigorously for one minute to ensure the contents are well blended, and then transfer the perfume to another bottle using a coffee filter and a funnel.

Additional Tips

• If you are making a perfume spray, add more water.
• If you are making a solid perfume (like a lip balm), use melted beeswax instead of water.
• If you are making a body mist, you will need eight ounces of distilled water.

Storing and ageing the perfume

Storing and ageing perfume is an important part of the perfume-making process. Ageing allows the various scents to mingle and become stronger, and the longer you age your perfume, the more the top notes will burn off, and the more the base and middle/heart notes will bloom and darken, creating more depth.

To age your perfume, place it in a cool, dark location for a minimum of 48 hours, or up to a month. You can also refrigerate it for two weeks. After ageing, the perfume should be diluted with water and glycerine, and then it's ready to be bottled.

To store your perfume, keep it in a cool, dark, dry area, away from light and extreme temperatures. Store it in amber or darker-coloured glass bottles, and avoid clear bottles or storing it in the bathroom, as humidity can affect the perfume.

Perfumes can last for decades if stored correctly, and some fragrances age better than others. Rich, resinous, woody, earthy, and some musk blends will usually age better than lighter, fruity, green, or floral blends.

Frequently asked questions