Essential Oil Perfume Making Tips and Recipes

Making a natural essential oil perfume is an art best learned through experience. I'll give you a few basics here and point you to more detailed perfume-making sources and recipes.

Perfume-Making Supplies

Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art has a detailed chapter on blending perfumes and lists the following required supplies:

• Blotter paper
• Carriers: oils, glycerin, distilled water, hydrosol, and/or alcohol
• Clean empty glass bottles
• Eyedropper(s)
• Funnel
• Cleanup supplies: paper towels, tissues, alcohol
• Labels (for bottles) and pencil and notebook (to keep track of your blending successes and failures)

Typically, a perfume made with alcohol is about 15 to 30 percent essential oil, 70 to 85 percent alcohol ethyl, and zero to 10 percent distilled water by fluid volume, according to the ACHS Perfumery Manual from the Australasian College of Healthcare Sciences.

However, you can also make perfumes using carrier oils without alcohol or water.

Aromatherapy Notes

Something you want to take into consideration when blending essential oils perfume recipes is the concept of essential oil notes. "Note" refers to the evaporation rate of a fragrance, which depends on its specific weight and energy. The three notes are:

• Top note – quick evaporation. Top notes tend to be light, fresh, and uplifting. Examples are bergamot, eucalyptus, lemon, orange, peppermint, and pine.

• Middle note – average rate of evaporation. Middle notes are often warm and soft fragrances. Examples are chamomile, geranium, juniper, lavender, and rosemary.

• Base note – slow evaporation. Base notes are often intense and heady. Examples are cedarwood, clove, patchouli, and sandalwood.

In general, you want to avoid mixing oils that all have the same note, and instead use all three notes, but there are no hard and fast rules.

The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy has a section on making your own perfume and eau de cologne, including quite a bit of information on aromatherapy notes.

Essential Oil Perfume Blends

Here's an aromatherapy perfume recipe:

• 4 drops orange essential oil
• 4 drops sandalwood essential oil
• 3 drops lavender essential oil
• 2 drops geranium essential oil
• 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) carrier oil

Blend ingredients in a clean bottle. Use as desired.

Source: Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art

Solid Balsam Essential Oil Perfume

• 4 tablespoons jojoba oil
• 1/2 ounce (14 grams or 1 tablespoon) beeswax
• 20 drops balsam fir essential oil
• 14 drops yuzu essential oil
• 7 drops neroli essential oil
• 4 drops jasmine oil
• Glass jars to hold about 2.5 ounces (75 ml) perfume
  

1. Place a couple inches of water in a cooking pot and bring to a boil.
2. Place a Pyrex measuring cup or other heat-proof class container in the pot.
3. Place the beeswax in the cup and let the beeswax melt.
4. Blend in the jojoba oil.
5. Remove the blend from the heat
6. Stir in the essential oils, using a glass stir rod or the handle of a spoon.
7. Pour the perfume into the glass jars.
8. Let the perfume solidify.
9. Use perfume as desired on your wrists, neck, or anywhere.
   

Source: Aromahead

You can also find essential oil perfume blends in the booklet 25 Simple Perfume Recipes with Essential Oils by Sharon Falsetto, a professional aromatherapist.

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Photo Credit: Angela Andriot [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons