How To Make Perfumes

Today, I'm going to show you how to make perfumes. I have made a selection of some of my favorite smells, and I'm going to build a perfume based on - I think today - the florals. Let's just have a look and see what we have here. I have a selection of fruity-type smells. I have a selection of floral smells. I have some green and fresh smells, some woody smells, some spicy smells and some sweet smells. So, a good perfume may have a selection of many different smells, to give it structure and an interesting blend. I'm going to start with the smells I like best. So I'm thinking it's going to be the floral ones. Let's go for jasmine, first of all. On my little cotton roll pad here, I'm going to build up a sample of a smell, and if I like it, I will then convert that into a little perfume oil. If I don't like it, I can reject it and start again. So, I think I'm going to select jasmine, gardenia, and I'll go with lily of the valley. So, I start off with putting just one drop of each onto my cotton roll pad. Now, some of these come out very fast and some of these come out quite slowly. There's my gardenia fragrance oil. Now, my jasmine, slap bang on top of the gardenia, lovely! So what I have here now is a combination of equal amounts of jasmine and gardenia and already, it smells good but we're going to put a few more smells in - lily of the valley. Okay, one drop of lily of the valley, coming up. Wave that around. Wow! That is very floral. Actually, almost a little too floral, so I think now is a good time to start adding one of the other smells just to break through that kind of richness of those florals. I'll go with some fruit I've got. I've chosen a mango, pomegranate and strawberry. I think pomegranate is nice, it's quite fresh. This is a top note, so when you smell your perfume, pomegranate is going to be the first impression that you get. So, whenever you smell, you smell in layers. Pomegranate is rushing up into my nose and going, "Here I am!" and then immediately afterwards, come the richer florals. Actually, the pomegranate alone has improved that enormously. I'm still going to add a little bit more to it, though. I think I won't add any green and fresh or any woody, but I'm going to focus on this area now. We've got some spicy smells like clove or anise seed and we've got some nice sweet smells like vanilla, chocolate, amber, and tonka bean. I'm going to go for tonka bean which is almost a cross between a chocolate and a vanilla. Lovely. It's not too chocolaty and it's not too vanilla but it is sweet. Now, tonka bean is a base note. By base note, we mean that this smell is going to hang around for a long time. It's not going to evaporate off too quickly, and that gives depth and structure to my perfume. So, my nose is having a real adventure at the moment. Pomegranate! Ah, now some flowers, then the lovely, lovely tonka bean just to round it off. I actually think that's a very nice smell. It's a little heavy. I wouldn't wear it as a daytime spray, but I think as a body oil - perfect. Right! Let's work on that formula then. We had equal amounts of lily of the valley, gardenia, pomegranate, jasmine and tonka bean. Now, I need to mix that into my little beaker. My measuring beaker allows me to put in 25 milligrams which, coincidentally, is exactly what I need for my perfume bottle. I need to put in 30 drops of each of my chosen oils so bear with me while I just count up to 30. So I have my lovely selection of drops in there but as it stands at the moment, that would be way too strong to go onto my skin. So I'm going to dilute it with perfumer's alcohol. This is going to allow the smells to blend together. It's going to allow it to evaporate off my skin and into the air, so that everybody enjoys the perfume while I'm wearing. Just need to top this off to the 25 mL mark. Just give it a little swish around. Now, before I put it in the bottle, I think I'm going to test it. Let the alcohol evaporate off. Oh, that's lovely. Floral, a little bit fruity, and that lovely little tonka bean just to round it off, I think that's a very lovely perfume. Some perfumes would have up to 50 different smells in it so this is not a complex perfume at all. But it is built using my favorite smells, so I knew that I would like it. I can probably fit a tiny little bit more perfumer's alcohol in there so I'm just going to swill this out. All right, let's give it a test. Lovely! And that's how you make a perfume.