Making this easy solid perfume is probably one of my favorite recent projects. I’m not the only one who loved it, though…
I had some friends over last weekend after having made my last batch, and they were curious as to what I had made in those cute little aluminum tins. When I showed them and let them smell it, they both wanted me to make them some.
Would you be surprised if I told you that I’m not talking about two girls? 😉
That’s what’s so great about this. You can make these in whatever scent you like, be it fruity or floral or woodsy or whatever you prefer. It can be masculine or feminine or even unisex like my last citrusy batch which appealed to both my male and female guests.
This is one of those projects that is truly much more simple than most people would imagine. If you can warm up a bit of oil and wax in a double boiler, you can easily make yourself some solid perfume. Seriously!
I’ve been making salves and lip glosses for years using this technique, but this time I decided to add in more scented essential oils to make myself a solid perfume.
Why would you want to make solid perfume?
Why wouldn’t you?
But seriously, I love having solid perfume for traveling or just taking around in my purse. Liquid perfume isn’t as compact or practical.
Why would I make my own?
Because it’s easy and I can choose the (natural) ingredients to make whatever scent I want to make.
- 1 Tbsp. sweet almond oil or other oil of choice
- 1 Tbsp. beeswax pellets
- essential oils
- Measure out your oil and wax and place in the top of a double boiler. I used sweet almond oil this time, but have also used both coconut oil and jojoba oil in the past. Coconut oil is solid at cooler room temperatures, so the end product will also be a bit more solid in the end. If that concerns you, you can use slightly less wax to compensate.
- Warm your ingredients over medium heat until the wax melts.
- Remove from the heat and mix your wax into the oil thoroughly.
- Choose your essential oils and mix into your oil and wax mixture.
- Pour your perfume into small containers. It will set as it cools off. In the winter mine was ready in just a few minutes, but in the summer, it will take longer, of course.
My popular citrus perfume was made with a mixture of all of my citrusy essential oils.
Citrus Perfume
5-10 drops lemon EO
5-10 drops sweet orange EO
5-10 drops tangerine EO
10-15 drops bergamot EO
Great idea! I live in Australia. Where would I get the lipstick moulds and lipstick containers from?
Hi Myra,
I usually buy mine online either from a soap supply store, amazon, or eBay. It’s not the type of thing I can find locally in stores here in Spain either.
Usually you can get free shipping or very reasonable shipping, especially if you are also buying other things like the beeswax and/or oils. I hope that helps. 🙂
I have vegetable glycerine, can that be substituted for the carrier oil and will it make a smother product without it getting to soft. Thank you, Jackie
Hi Jackie,
I have no idea what would happen if you were to combine glycerine with beeswax for something like this. I’ve never tried it.
If you don’t have almond oil, you can use another liquid oil, preferably one that doesn’t have much of a scent of its own. Solid oils like coconut oil would also work, but you may need to use a little less beeswax so that the mixture isn’t too hard in cold months.
I hope that helps!
Finally something I can use my beeswax for. I bought it and then forgot what I bought them for, tried to melt them and mix them with nothing but lipstick and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Of course it needs a softer oil. Thanks. Just wondering why you don’t use shea butter instead of mixing wax with oil? Is it the scent?
Hi Helena,
I’m sure if you were to use a refined shea butter without a lot of scent, that that would be possible. The scents are pretty subtle, though, so using an unrefined shea butter would probably overpower the scents added. Otherwise, yes, you could do something very similar. I did something similar by adding natural color to shea butter to make a homemade blush stick of sorts.
Why did I use what I did?
I used the beeswax and almond oil because at the time I had been experimenting with that mix for making lip glosses. Shea butter doesn’t work well for a lip gloss because it sort of melts off right away. Beeswax gives these sorts of recipes a bit of staying power. The combination of oils and beeswax is also a lot cheaper around here than shea butter. I do use shea butter a lot, though, and love it too. 🙂
Just lovely! Have you ever put your solid perfume in a lip balm container? I’d think “stick” perfume would be pretty neat.
Hi Margaret,
I haven’t done that, but that is a great idea!
I made lip balms in the round aluminum containers and later decided I don’t like them as much as the stick containers.
I’ve recently bought a lipstick mold and lipstick containers, and I’m finding them very useful for lots of DIY projects- so much so that I haven’t even gotten around to making lipstick yet. Hahaha
I’m working on getting a few new DIYs using them up on the blog soon. 🙂
Hi! Gathering my supplies to try this awesome DIY tutorial, but….I don’t have a stove on which to boil the water. Can I melt the wax and oil mixture in the microwave or in the convection oven? What would be your suggestion? I really want to try it, but I don’t want to mess up all my supplies for naught! Thanks!
Hi Kristen,
I would think that either method would work. You just need enough heat to melt the beeswax. If it were me, though, I would probably try boiling the water in the microwave, and mixing the ingredients in a bowl over the hot water. If one time through wasn’t enough, I’d reheat the water and try again. I’m not sure what would happen if you were to microwave the ingredients directly, so I’d prefer just using the microwave to heat up the water and using the double boiler method. My microwave stopped working months ago and I never bothered to fix it, so I can’t really try it out to see.
I hope that helps! 🙂
BTW, I should say that if you’re using small pieces of beeswax like I use, I’d think that just boiling once would leave enough residual heat to completely melt the wax. It usually melts pretty quickly.
Hi. Where can we find those cylinder tins to store them in? Thanks.
Hi Monica.
I bought mine through eBay because I couldn’t find any locally or through the Amazon here in Spain, but I found these tins on amazon that look just like the ones I bought. (Mine are 15ml aluminum tins, which is half an ounce.)
Wow Tracy! I really love your post.
This is fantastic! I’m actually wondering where I can get one of those double boiler pots shown in your photo, with the pour spout and wire edge to hang over the saucepan… Thanks!
Hi Mary,
Thanks!
I actually bought mine at a local store (here in Spain) so that probably doesn’t help you much. They sell them every year at the local ALDI, but I’m not sure if the same goes for the US. Mine was pretty inexpensive. I think it cost around 6euros ($8-$9?) at the store, but of course, I bought it at the right time at an inexpensive store.
The closest thing I could find online for the US was this one from Amazon (affiliate link):
It looks to be just like mine, albeit a tiny bit more expensive. I hope that helps!
My daughter wants me to make her favorite perfume from Dior. Where can I find the recipes for these. This is very exciting for both of us.
Hi Iris,
Yes, it’s fun to experiment with these sorts of things.
As for trying to replicate another perfume, that’s a bit trickier. There may be people out there with recipes for that sort of thing, but I’m not sure about it. They would likely use synthetic ingredients, but I wanted to make a natural product to replace the commercial perfumes.
Made with essential oils, the scent doesn’t last as long, and the scent is lighter and more “natural” than commercial perfumes, so I think it would be difficult to replicate a commercial brand perfume only using EOs.
That said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t take some of the ideas of your favorite perfume and apply them to your own home blend. For example, my favorite sent used to be the DNKY original perfume because I loved the citrus notes it had. I made my essential oil blend with citrus-y scented EO’s, and I loved the results.
I don’t know about the new Dior perfume, but you can take a look at how people describe it and try to use EOs that are described in the same way to try to find a combination you like.
I know that’s probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it at least helps somewhat.
How much essential oils do you use? Your citrus recipe called for 25-50 drops so is that the amount needed? Could we substitute essential oils for actual perfume?
Hi Kylie,
That sounds about right. Certain oils are more potent than others, so I like to take a whiff as I’m adding in each oil. The final scent is usually a bit more subtle, so I like to err on the side of adding to many in.
As for adding actual perfume, it depends. If you have a perfume oil, you can use that and shouldn’t have any problems. If you are using a water based perfume, though, it likely won’t mix well with the oils and wax base. Normally when adding liquids, you need some sort of emulsifier and also need some sort of preservative. Perhaps the perfumes already have a preservative of some sort, and the wax itself may be enough to emulsify it if you were to carefully mix everything together as it was cooling, but I’m not really sure. Whenever you add liquids to homemade mixes, you are taking the chance of getting bacterial growth if you don’t know what you are doing so I tend to avoid it if possible.
If I wanted to do just a simple pineapple solid perfume, how much pineapple EO would you suggest? 🙂
Thanks
Hello Ryan,
As far as I know a true pineapple essential oil does’t exist. There are places that sell pineapple fragrance oils, though, but I guess their strength would really depend on the manufacturer. In any case, you add your oils in at the very end so you can give the mix a sniff and see if you think you should add more. In the worst case scenario, if you add too little oil in, you can remelt the oils over a double boiler and add a few more drops in. I’ve been successful doing that right in the container I want to keep the perfume in, so the process isn’t very messy the second time around. 😉 I hope that helps! Good luck!
HI Tracy,
Thank you very much for your comment. You are correct, I bought pineapple fragrance oil and from the sound of the buyer comments it’s pretty aromatic so I will do as you suggested and add it directly to the container it will solidify in. I can’t wait to try it. Thanks for posting this and happy wishes on future creations!!!
🙂
Hi! I have oily skin and I live closer to the Southern Hemisphere, which means the temperatures here are very high. Could you suggest any other replacement for the oils? Can I do completely without them?
Do the oils serve any purpose in getting rid of the smell of sweat?
This isn’t a deodorant, but is just a topical perfume, so it won’t really do anything for the smell of sweat, it will only add another scent.
The oil is added to the wax to make a product that you can apply easily.
I also have oily skin and don’t have issues with this, but I don’t apply it to my face.
If you are having issues with acne from certain oils, you can replace them for oils that are lower on the comedogenic scale.
Jojoba oil and shea butter are good options. Shea butter is more solid than the other oils, though, so you wouldn’t need to add as much wax to get the same consistency.
I hope that helps.
I was looking for tips or suggestions related to DIY perfume, planning to make something new for my sister on her birthday. Glad I found this article. Thank you Tracy!
You’re welcome, Julieanne!
I hope you both enjoy it!
Hi Tracy! Im Planning to have business related to diy perfumes.. Im sure this would be very useful to me. Thanks for sharing!
Good luck, Gloria.
Hello,
Would grape seed oil work well for this project?
Hi Mimi,
Any oil should work just fine. Some, depending upon their consistency might make a more solid perfume that is a bit more difficult to use, and you’d have to add less wax to compensate for it.
I’m not really familiar with grape seed oil, as I’ve never used it, but if it is normally liquid, you should be fine.
The other thing to take into account is that you want to use an oil that doesn’t have much of a fragrance so that it doesn’t compete with the fragrances of the essential oils you are using.
I hope if works out well for you!
Where did you purchase the container that you melted everything in? Is it specifically for melting wax?
Also how many drops of essential oil in total would you say you used?
Hi Tanya,
It really, really depends upon the essential oils that you use. Certain oils have really strong scents, and you don’t need to add as many drops, but the citrus oils tend to be a bit more subtle. At the very end of the post, I wrote out, more or less, the number of drops of each type of oil that I used for my 2 Tbsp. of perfume. It ended up being around 40-50 drops total. Depending on the oils you have, you may even use more than that. I have tried using less than that, but the resulting perfume isn’t very strong, and doesn’t last very long when worn.
These are natural scents, and tend to be a lot more subtle than store bought perfumes. When applying them, you don’t apply very much at a time either, so I like making a relatively strong concentration. Because you aren’t applying very much each time, the amount of EO’s that you are applying at a given time are pretty low.
Keeping that in mind, it’s a good idea to keep sniffing at ti as you are making it. I like to err on the side of a little more than I think I’ll need.
I hope that helps!!
Oh, and I’d also like to mention that I tend to bring the little aluminum tub with me in my purse, and can easily reapply as the day goes on, if needed.
Hello, Tanya.
I bought it at a local store, but it is meant to be a double boiler insert for melting chocolate and other things. The most similar pan I could find to mine on Amazon (affiliate link) is this one: http://amzn.to/19rcREk
I do like the idea of it because it’s small and easy to work with, but you can use any type of small, inexpensive pan over your other pan of water.
I agree.. why not make a solid perfume..? This seems like a totally great concept. Thanks for sharin your step-by-step diy perfume making. Making your own can give you the choice to choose what ingredients to work with.
That’s what I love about it! 🙂
Where can I get these cute little tins?
Hi Mia,
I found mine locally in Spain, so that probably doesn’t help you much.
That said, through Amazon I found these (affiliate link) that look similar to mine. Mine were 15ml, which is about one half ounce, just like these. They seem to have great reviews in comparison to others I saw on Amazon, and they also come in 1 and 2 ounce sizes for other similar projects. If you do a search with the name of the company that makes those tins, you’ll see that they actually have a big variety of fun tins. 🙂
I hope that helps!
Love this! I’m hosting a pinterest party with my moms club and would love doing this craft! Could you tell me how many of these large tins were filled from one batch?
The tins I used weren’t very big, but I think they were a good size for something like this. With the amounts stated above, you end up with around 2 TBSP. of solid perfume, which for me filled up two 15 ml (about .5 oz.) tins. So, I guess it would probably just fill one 1 ounce tin. I hope that helps.
Hi again, I am having trouble finding beeswax pellets. Do you know of any stores that sell them? If I can only find beeswax blocks, do you think it’s the same as the pellets and I could just chop off what I need? Thank you for your time.
Hi Mary,
If you click on the (affiliate) link in the recipe, it will show you some beeswax pellets available on Amazon. (Here is another example… http://amzn.to/1zLvwAu )
That said, any beeswax should work fine; you just want a similar volume of beeswax to oil to get the consistency of a solid perfume. With a little more wax, it will be a bit more solid, and with a little less wax, it will be a little softer. You can play with the combination to get the consistency that you like for the product you are making.
I have been playing with making lip balms lately with a variation of the same recipe. It’s a lot of fun, and I love it! I’ll be adding those experiments to the blog soon! 😉
Great! Cant wait for the lip balm post! 🙂 Thanks so much.
I bought solid and grated it.????
Are you referring to the beeswax? That’s fine.
I love this idea. This year I’m really starting to lean towards handmade gifts and this one fits the bill. Thanks!