A unique alternative to store-bought scents, homemade solid perfume is easy to make with minimal ingredients. By making your own, you can customize your fragrance.
Making your own solid perfume or cologne is a fun, simple project. Solid scents are convenient for traveling without the mess. They can be kept in small tins in your purse, or even poured into a locket for easy application throughout the day.
This project is much easier 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 a solid perfume. The process is similar to making lip balm, lotion bars, or a salve.
Ingredients
For the solid perfume base, you’ll need a liquid oil and some wax. For the liquid oil, it’s best to choose an oil with a neutral scent like jojoba oil. (That is, of course, unless you want to add the scent of your oil to your fragrance. For example, coconut oil can add a bit of a tropical scent to your blend.)
For the wax, I generally use beeswax, but you can also use a vegan option like candelilla wax instead. Slightly more expensive and harder to find, floral waxes can add their own fragrance to your perfume.
Apart from the base, you’ll need essential oils or cosmetic-grade fragrance oils to add the scent to your perfume. While essential oils are the most natural option, their fragrance isn’t as long-lived as the more synthetic options. While you can increase the concentration of essential oils to strengthen their fragrance, adding too many can cause irritation to the skin.
Combining fragrances
When it comes to combining scents, the only rule is that there are no rules. Feel free to combine whichever scents you prefer. That said, there are some general guidelines you can follow to make a successful perfume blend.
The fragrance pyramid
When formulating a perfume or cologne, combining a variety of scents can help balance your fragrance. Ideally, you’ll want to combine different notes from each part of what is known as the fragrance pyramid.
At the base of the fragrance pyramid, you can find the ground notes that give depth to your fragrance and keep the scent lasting longer. The base notes include woody scents like sandalwood, cedarwood, or patchouli. They also include vanilla, ginger and cocoa or musk and frankincense.
In the middle of the pyramid, the heart notes last longer than the top notes, but not as long as the bottom notes. The middle notes include floral scents like jasmine and geranium and spices like cinnamon and clove. They also include fruit fragrances like strawberry and peach or herbs like rosemary, clary sage, and lavender.
Top notes are the first scents you note when you smell the fragrance. They’re the light, fresh scents that make the first impression and include citrus scents like lime, grapefruit, and tangerine. They also include sea-salt scents and herbal scents like lemongrass, peppermint, and eucalyptus.
Testing out combinations
A great way to test out combinations before combining the various fragrances in your perfume is to add a drop or two of each oil to strips of blotting paper. When you fan the blotting paper below your nose, you should be able to appreciate the scent of each oil. By fanning several strips with different oils below your nose, you should be able to appreciate how the different scents harmonize (or not) with each other.
Safety information
When using fragrance oils and essential oils, don’t go overboard. This will help prevent problems with skin sensitivity. Only use cosmetic-grade fragrance oils and follow the dosage recommended by your supplier. The best way to dose the fragrances is to use a small, inexpensive jeweler’s scale.
Essential oils are more “natural” than synthetic fragrance oils, but they don’t last as long. Generally, for safety, the concentration of essential oils should be kept at around 2% of most cosmetic recipes by weight. In the case of a perfume, you may want to go slightly higher than that so that you can note the fragrance more, but, again, be careful not to go overboard. How much higher you can go will depend on the essential oils chosen.
Some essential oils are more likely to cause allergic reactions or contact dermatitis on sensitive skin than others. (Common allergens in essential oils include limonene, linalool, cinnamal, and eugenol.) Keeping the more allergenic oils to a minimum will help make a safer product.
Procedure
Making the perfume base couldn’t be simpler. Add the wax and oil to a double boiler insert and gently heat them until the wax has melted. Once melted, remove the mixture from the heat source and add the fragrance oils. Immediately pour the mixture into aluminum lip balm tins or lip balm tubes for easy application. Allow the mixture to cool uncovered until solid.
Materials
- 1 Tbsp. sweet almond oil or other oil of choice
- 1 Tbsp. beeswax pellets
- essential oils
Instructions
- 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.
This post was originally published on November 28, 2014. It was republished with more information about combining fragrances and clearer instructions.
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Ryan
If I wanted to do just a simple pineapple solid perfume, how much pineapple EO would you suggest? 🙂
Thanks
Tracy Ariza
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!
Ryan
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!!!
🙂
Sonal
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?
Tracy Ariza
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.
Julieanne Hernandez
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!
Tracy Ariza
You’re welcome, Julieanne!
I hope you both enjoy it!
Gloria Miranda
Hi Tracy! Im Planning to have business related to diy perfumes.. Im sure this would be very useful to me. Thanks for sharing!
Tracy Ariza
Good luck, Gloria.
Mimi
Hello,
Would grape seed oil work well for this project?
Tracy Ariza
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!
Tanya
Where did you purchase the container that you melted everything in? Is it specifically for melting wax?
Tanya
Also how many drops of essential oil in total would you say you used?
Tracy Ariza
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!!
Tracy Ariza
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.
Tracy Ariza
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.
Kaye
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.
Tracy Ariza
That’s what I love about it! 🙂
mia
Where can I get these cute little tins?
Tracy Ariza
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!
Christine
Op shops
Mary
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?
Tracy Ariza
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.
Mary
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.
Tracy Ariza
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! 😉
Mary
Great! Cant wait for the lip balm post! 🙂 Thanks so much.
Christine
I bought solid and grated it.????
Tracy Ariza
Are you referring to the beeswax? That’s fine.
Loriel
I love this idea. This year I’m really starting to lean towards handmade gifts and this one fits the bill. Thanks!