Product Two: Fragrance Oil Perfume + Product Three and Four: Essential Oil (Fruity) Perfume

Since I've already demonstrated the steps of perfume making in my 4rd blog entry, I'm pretty sure that the tutorial is good enough for anyone who wants to make their own perfume!

These are my end products (Fragrance Oil Batches):

From left to right - Sweet and Sweet~ Fresh

"Sweet" and "Sweet~ Fresh" are made of fragrance oil. They are not actual scents that exist in nature. They aren't as refreshing as the essence oil perfume but they sure smell like some "real perfume"! 

What's in Sweet (Drops):

Japanese Cherry Blossom	Marshmallow Fireside	Lemon Citron	-
20~21	6	10	-

What's in Sweet~Fresh (Drops):

Japanese Cherry Blossom	Marshmallow Fireside	Lemon Citron	-
8	10	20~25	-

These are my end products (Essential Oil Batches):

From left to right - Fruity~Fresh, Fruity Lemon and Green~ Fresh

"Fruity~Fresh" and "Fruity Lemon" are made of essential oils. I created it because the first perfume I made smelled way too herbal, so I decided to buy two more essential oils (Orange and Lemon) to make some real sweet, fruity perfume. 

...and they smelled really lovely! By adjusting the drops and adding two more fruity oils really helped and I'm so happy with my new perfumes :D

What's in Fruity~Fresh (Drops):

Patchouli	Rosemary	Eucalyptus	Lemon/Orange
5	5	3	10/13

What's in Fruity~Lemon (Drops):

Patchouli	Rosemary	Grapefruit	Lemon/Orange
5	6	5-6	10/10-11

Product Two: Fragrance Oil Perfume Preparation

Since I didn't really get the "fruity sweet smell" I wanted form my first product, I decided to make another one with fragrance oils, hoping for a better result. This time my goal is to create an elegant, honeyed perfume with the newly bought home fragrance oils. 

This time I'll ignore the rules of perfumery and disregard the properties and orders of the "top, mid, bottom notes". Let's see what will happen if I simply blend three different fragrance oils together!

The previous fragrance oils I bought were the ones with rich saturated color. Since they were products on sale, their qualities were relatively bad. They smelled artificial, unpleasant and sour, almost like the medicine children take while they're ill. 

Since they wouldn't even blend with the Grapeseed Oil, I doubt if these colored liquid were truly "oil" or just some kind of "flavored pigment water". The result was especially gross, it smelled really strange and the liquid was dull. 

Essential Oil Blend(L) Poor Quality Fragrance Oil Blend(R)

Here are the new home fragrance oils I bought. When I entered the store, testing and picking the scents I wanted, a staff warned me that I shouldn't use fragrance oil to make perfume because it may cause redness and  irritation due to the concentrated chemicals in the oil. However, there are many tutorials out there say that it's totally fine to make your own perfume with fragrance oil. The only thing you shouldn't forget is to add in the carrier oil or alcohol to dilute the highly concentrated oil for skin application. As I'm not going to apply the perfume directly onto my skin, it should be totally safe to continue on my product two making process. 

No Joke! These fragrance oils smell really good!

 From left to right: Japanese Cherry Blossom, Marshmallow Fireside and Lemon Citron 

Although they are all artificial flavors, they smell much better than the essential oils. Even though they do not have a refreshing, natural scent, they are what we consider "smells-good, fruity and sexy". Afterwards, I realized that our perception of scent is actually shaped by our memories and experiences. For example, I consider most of the herbal fragrance unpleasant because it reminds me the taste of the Traditional Herbal Medicine I took when I was small. Some people might have a different feeling toward herbal fragrance since they didn't share the same experience as me. 

Product One: Essential Oil Perfume

I love fruits. I enjoy smelling them, sniffing them and eating them.

Because of this simple reason, the goal of my first attempt will be creating a fruity perfume blend!

I'm going to create my first perfume with essential oils. They  are organic, natural oils extracted from plants, fragrant wood etc. 

First of all, I'd add in my base note. It is the strongest, deepest scent that holds the middle and the top notes and takes a long time to evaporate (lasts the longest on the user).

My base selection is patchouli, a plant that has an earthy, grounding scent. Patchouli leaves are known for their ability to improve skin conditions and stress relives.

The first impression I got from the patchouli oil was not very good as it smelled bitter and "too herbal" . It wasn't a scent I was expecting, I was hoping to have a refreshing, perhaps a "lovelier" smell for my base...! But because it was highly recommended by the tutorial website I was looking at, I only hoped that a miracle would happen at the end when the perfume matures over time.

The second step was to add in my middle note (neutralizes the strong base and is emerges after the top note evaporates, also known as the "heart note").

I bought rosemary for my middle note. When rosemary essential oil is applied correctly, it helps to ease the condition of hair loss and sore muscle. Women should avoid using it during pregnancy.

I'm familiar to the scent of Rosemary. My mom uses it often when she cooks. Rosemary has a refreshing and plant-like smell. I would say it is slightly sweet and light. However when it was combined with patchouli  it made the perfume blend even "more natural" and way further to my goal of creating a fruity fragrance! Or maybe... the fruity result that I was looking for was actually constructed mentally by the artificial odor (from candies, drinks etc.) that I'm used to since I was small. :(

The top note is the first sent we recognize when we smell a perfume. Since my goal was to create something fruity, I chose Grapefruit to be my top note. It is light, sour and sweet. It smells somewhat like lemon but less acidic.

Grapefruit essential oil can cure skin inflammation and dull skin. But should be aware that not to apply grapefruit oil onto your skin before exposing to the sun because it is "phototoxic", basically it becomes toxic under the exposure of sunlight. 

Finally something that is close to my expectation, I was so desperate to get rid of the strong herbal smell from my base and mid notes so I added in as many grapefruit oil as I could! I also added in a feel drops of eucalyptus (another top note), hoping to reduce the herbal scent a little. But it didn't work because the patchouli base was too strong!

The last step was to fill in the rest of the container with carrier oil. It's a Grape Seed oil that I chose, which is cheaper than the most used Jojoba Oil and Sweet Almond Oil; colorless and scentless. 

According to the label on its bottle, it is appropriate for "skin and hair care, massage, aromatherapy  personal care, cosmetics and is 100% natural".

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!! The End Product !!

I mean, you can create a really healthy, natural scent will essential oils. So for those who are looking for an "attractive, cute fragrant" I suggest you go for the artificial fragrance oils. Besides, essential oils contain a very herbal scent and can cause health conditions if applied incorrectly, so understand your oils well before purchasing them for perfume making! :)

What My Perfume Contains(drops)

Patchouli (Base)	Rosemary(Mid)	Grapefruit(Top)	Eucalyptus(Top)
4	10	19	6

Perfume Preparation

Before the magic starts, let's do some Math!

First of all, it is important to know how much my perfume bottle can hold before I add in my perfume notes (the combination of essential/fragrance oil). 


As you can see, the bottles I bought were very tiny. Since the capacity was not written on no where, I'd have to find it out on my own. 

A measuring cup would help. However, my measuring cup was not able tell me the capacity of the bottle directly because it could only measure a minimum of 50 ml.

So what I was going to do is to calculate how many bottles it'd take to fill up 50 ml as indicated by the measuring cup.

It ended up taking 4 little bottles to fill up 50 ml. From this I knew each bottle contains 12.5 ml because 50/4=12.5 . 

Each perfume blend should contain 15% fragrance/essential oil. So 2 ml of notes were what I was looking for because 12.5 x 15%= 1.87 .

Since 1 ml is equal to 20 drops, I multiplied 1.87 by 20 and got the number of 36. Hence, my perfume should contain 36 drops of perfume oil. And the rest of the bottle would be filled with carrier oil (the grape seed oil I've got). 

*My first perfume is already made, stay tuned for my next blog!*

History of Perfume and Potential Materials

Before liquid perfume was invented, people recognized the fascination of aroma that certain plants and herbs release when burned to worship the Gods. 

The very first inventors of perfume were the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians. They were known for their use of scented oils. Later on when scent extraction methods were passed to Greece, the usage of perfume was no longer limited to religious purpose but also for personal application as well. 

In the late 18th century as technology progressed, synthetic materials were invented and were manufactured in factories. This is the time when perfumery became a common practice among different classes since fragrance combinations were more affordable due to mass production. 

- Potential Materials -

There are two scented oil that I can use to make my perfume with, the first one is essential oil (organic, extracted from plants and purified) and the other one is fragrance oil (artificial, doesn't contain organic ingredient, includes aromas that do not exist in nature). 

I will also need a solvent to dilute the oil I mentioned above in order to make them more suitable for skin application. There are several choices for this procedure, this includes ethanol (vodka, high concentrated alcohol), and scentless, tasteless carrier oil (jojoba oil, sweet almond oil, grape seed oil etc.).

How can we forget about the important perfume bottles! Since this is my very first attempt of perfume making, I intend to buy some simple solid glass bottles for the various fragrance blends. Eventually, I will pick three best scents that I like the most to be my final product. 

To prevent a too concentrated/week perfume blend, I need to have measuring tools such as some medicine droppers and pipettes to get the measurements right.   

So I went to do some shopping...

• cotton wool pads
• coffee beans (to refresh my nose from inhaling different scents)
• essential oils
• fragrance oils
• 6x glass mini bottles
• grape seed oil
• medicine droppers
• pipettes 

Essential Oils

Fragrance Oils

Making My Own Perfume!

Hi there, this is Zoe.

This blog is my maker journal where I keep track of my maker experience.

When we talk about the act of "making", we usually think of something that is solid and touchable.

For my final project, I'm going to do something different. I will attempt to make a scent, a perfume, which can only be experienced through one of the five senses: smell. 

First, I will start off by researching different methods of preserving scents, and the sources of different scents (e.g. flowers, food, spice). Then I will do various experiments to filter out the best solutions for my end product. During this process, I will avoid the use of artificial chemicals to keep my perfume natural and healthy.  

My timeline will depend on how complicated the procedures are, I will update it after some brief researches.

*update!*

It is not complicated at all to D.I.Y your own perfume. Once every material is gathered and prepared, your perfume factory is ready to start! Mine has started a day ago when I

The most time consuming process is actually the "maturation" of a perfume.
It can take up at most six weeks for the whole maturation process, the longer the better. Yet it doesn't mean that the perfume is not successful before the whole maturation procedure. It only indicates that the scent of the perfume will be changing throughout the time before it eventually matures and settles.