Task 45: Make my own perfume

I like wearing perfume and would say I'm sensitive to smell and taste in general. There's an ingredient used in a number of perfumes which makes me feel really nauseous. Unfortunately when I was working in central London years ago there was one such perfume that was very popular for about a year. Going to the local department store at lunchtime meant running the gauntlet of shop assistants who would attempt to spray every passer-by with the stuff. If it landed on me, I would feel sick all afternoon. The bus journey from Waterloo was a daily bind, as there would always be some woman who seemed to have rolled herself in it (and in the morning, too - definitely not on). I would sit there, pretending I had a nose bleed so I could cover my face with a hankie. 

This probably sounds very prissy but it's genuine. Certain smells and tastes to me are so strong that I find it hard to understand why other people barely notice them. It's the equivalent of dressing head to foot in brilliant scarlet, and being described as possibly wearing a touch of red.

The idea of making my own perfume was definitely appealing. I always rather envied someone I knew very slightly, whose father was a former President of Haiti, as she used to have hers specially made for her, with a unique recipe that particularly suited her. (Nothing else about her lifestyle attracted me.) In my case I'd opt for something light but not fugitive, with the emphasis on citrussy, grassy scents, combined with the essence of Jo Malone's Pomegranate Noir. I've just noticed that Jo Malone has a fragrance called Wood Sage and Sea Salt, which sounds promising...

Having added this to my list of challenges, I was intending to go on a half day perfume-making workshop in London, which sounded interesting. However Peter forestalled this by including in my Christmas stocking a box by Essence of Arcadia with the ingredients and equipment to make your own blend of essential oils, to use as perfume, massage oil, room fragrance, etc:

With a rare display of self-control (I love getting presents and find it hard not to open them even before I've been given them, if I happen to spot any that haven't been well hidden), I managed not to open the box until yesterday, when I at last had the chance to settle down and tackle this challenge:

As you can just about see, the set included 4 essential oils - lavender, eucalyptus, bergamot and lavender - as well as a bottle of sweet almond oil to use as a base, and a dripper bottle (still no idea what that's for), a pipette bottle and a roll-on applicator. There was also a booklet on various blends and uses of the oils, which was in effect a recipe book:

It would have been helpful if it had explained how to get the tops off the roll-on applicator and the pipette bottle, as they seemed to be firmly wedged in place and I didn't want to risk breaking the glass. Google came to the rescue, as so often, and I found a couple of videos on YouTube which showed how to do it. You have to unscrew the bottle tops by about two-thirds, and then snap them sideways so that they disengage without breaking.

Not many of the recipes were for perfumes, as the heaviness of the oils means they're most suitable for use in diffusers as room fresheners, but the "muscle and joint blend" sounded promising. The quantities were too large for the bottles supplied, so I scaled them down by a factor of ten. That was fine for the sweet almond oil but was more of an issue when it came to the essential oils. Trying to extract only 0.7 of a drop of lavender oil wasn't easy. As a perfume it didn't have much impact - when I asked Peter what he thought, he said it smelled like dandelions - so I decided to try using it to massage my knee. It was briefly very effective in relieving the pain, but I think that was due to the massaging action rather than the oils.

I decided to add in some bergamot, so that I'd be using all four essential oils and to see if that gave it more oomph. It didn't. In general you are meant to dilute them heavily with the base oil, as most can cause skin irritation if applied in anything like neat form. Apparently some can even be fatal if swallowed, as they can attack the internal organs.

As an attempt to make a perfume, I can't honestly say this was a success, but I think I'll be able to make some pleasantly scented massage oils and fragrance diffusers. If I wanted to take this further, I would probably buy a bottle of perfumer's alcohol (to replace the sweet almond oil) and a few bottles of fragrance oils such as amber, lemon verbena, wild mint and green tea. On balance, though, I'm inclined to stick to Jo Malone.