Has anyone made their own perfume? Preferably alcohol-free

[90daychallenger]

Just that really, have you ever made your own perfume? Was it worth it? Was it hard? How did you do it? Would you do it again?

I'm thinking of making a batch for Christmas presents but wanted to see whether MNers had any experience before jumping in and buying stuff.

Ideally I'd like to make some alcohol-free stuff for a friend who's Muslim but not sure how easy this is.

Hopefully someone else will come along with some useful advice. I should imagine this is a very complicated process to get right. I remember when I was younger making rose perfume, just rose petals and water, was nice to start with but went brown the next day

ButteredToast Ha ha! Oh yes, I did the rose water perfume as a child as well. I'm hoping to move on a little bit although with my craft skills that's not really guaranteed

Your username makes me hungry

Depends how much like 'proper' perfume you want it. You can make it with distilled water, vodka and essential oils, although I suspect it won't be very longlasting.

You can make a body spray using vodka/witch hazel, distilled water/flower water, carrier oil (jojoba?) and essential oils. Keep in a dark bottle, out of light.

It is 70% alcohol/witch hazel, but can't remember the rest. Google?

Thanks spank and cherylene Have either of you done this?

I think I did it many years ago when I was very into aromatherapy (90s). If you can get hold of a second hand copy of The Fragrant Pharmacy, it had recipes for lots of different sprays in it.

No - I have been thinking of making my own body spray since the current Body Shop equivalent of the one I used to like now smells like neat vodka

It does seem to be very expensive for the ingredients - the essential oils I like are really not cheapest - expensive tastes I need someone to buy me them for my birthday
www.wikihow.com/Make-Perfumed-Body-Mist

There is some info here. Recipes that only use a only a small amount of alcohol and a lot of water will go off quickly because of bacteria.

Not sure what the smell will be like with witch hazel, but you should have enough of the other ingredients to experiment. I was going to use Tosco value vodka.

My friend has that book - will read it while I am feeding her cat

A solid perfume is also an option. Here's a recipe from a famous natural perfumer. Usually natural perfumes are pretty fleeting.

Thanks everyone. Lots of reading to do. I naively thought it might be as simple as making candles but it appears there's a lot more to it. I'm shit with recipes!!