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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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Marilyxrose
What can I use instead of essential oil, I dont have any essential oil nor I can buy them? any suggestions.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Marilyxrose,
Fragrance oils are also available, but many have toxic ingredients. That’s why I prefer making a more natural perfume with essential oils.
Essential oils can be easily found online and in herbal stores in most parts of the world.
Amelia
For how long can you store it ?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Amelia,
Because no water is involved in the recipe, it should keep for as long as your oils and waxes would. I’d go by the expiration date of the oil you use as a guide. 😉
Michelle
This looks like a wonderful recipe. I currently don’t have any tins, so do you think twist up chapstick tubes would work instead?
Thanks!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Michelle,
Yes! That’s an awesome idea for easy application. It should work perfectly! 🙂
Manoj
Hi,
Awsome post, just loved it. Too suprised to see its that simple.
Just one doubt, you have mentioned almond oil and essential oil along with beewax, will just using almond oil with beewax work fine or will it make it difficult to apply?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Manoj,
The essential oils are what gives the perfume its fragrance, so if you don’t use any, you won’t really be making a perfume. You’ll end up with a sort of hydrating balm instead that you could use to soothe chapped lips instead. 😉
Kathleen
I have made the solid perfumes and really love the scent. However, the scents don’t have much longevity. This is the same case for my experimentation in making liquid perfumes in which I’m using vodka as the medium. I read that you have to use a fixative to make the scents last. Do you have some experience in this or recommendations? I read to use vetiver EO but that didn’t work so well.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Kathleen,
You’ve just touched on the major disadvantage of natural perfumes. I normally bring a small tin with me for using whenever I want to, but you’re right- the scent doesn’t last very long at all. The problem with the fixatives is they are all usually synthetics. It depends on how stricly natural you want your product to be.
To be honest, I bought a couple of fixatives at the last minute on a whim one day when I was already making a large purchase of materials for making soaps and lotions. My intent was to come up with a liquid perfume recipe for the blog. I normally buy from an all natural suplier, so I didn’t even really look at what I was buying. (I guess I figured I’d study it when it was time to make and use it.)
In the end, I never tried using them- and they are still sitting unopened in my cupboard. They are mostly made up of silicones, which some people may not have a problem with, but I just wasn’t 100% onboard with making a product with them.
So, long story short, no, I’ve never used the fixatives (despite having them), and I haven’t really found a great solution to increasing the longevity I’m afraid. I hadn’t read that about vetiver- definitely something to look into.
Mita
Hii, I just read your comment, and I was wondering, do you mean ‘liquid perfume’ as in the sort that is blended with a carrier oil and essential oils in a glass bottle? I have an Etsy store where I sell these (Svcoleccion). Basically, with vodka, you use the oils (they have to be a base scent, a middle note, and top note) and leave the bottle in a cool, dark place for about 24-48 hours, and shake the bottle for a few seconds everyday. The perfume I made for myself has become stronger over time! I have organic vetiver oil, and the roots we got from India, and because the oil is on a thicker side, it’ll take longer to blend. If you are using sweet almond oil as a carrier, or jojoba, use more essential oils. The roll-on blends I’ve made for my fam still have a strong scent! (Some oils can’t be used in huge amounts, so check for the dilution ratio). Hope this helps!
Kate
This looks like an ideal solution to my leaking perfume problem when traveling. What temp does this usually start to sweat and melt? Will it hold up in tropical climates without melting all over your stuff in bag?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Kate,
Beeswax has a melting point around 145ºF, so the perfume should hold up pretty well to whatever heat you can stand. If you leave it in a hot enough car, perhaps it could eventually melt. I’m not sure how hot it can get in a closed car on a hot day. For taking with you, though, you shouldn’t have any problems. I’ve never had any melt in my purse, not even in the summer.
If you’re in a tropical climate, I am jealous. I’m freezing today. 😉
Georgia
Hi Tracy, thank you so much for sharing this.
I’m vegan so I wouldn’t want to use beeswax, is there any other items you would suggest? I saw someone else mentioned Shea Butter?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Georgia,
Candelilla wax is the wax that is normally used as a vegan substitute for beeswax! I’ve used it before and have found that it works as a great substitution for all of the recipes I’ve tried it with!
Shea butter probably wouldn’t work very well. It’s not hard enough, and if you use unrefined, it has a strong scent of its own that would interfere with your perfume. You could maybe use only refined shea butter mixed with essential oils (not using any other oil with them), but the texture would be different from this recipe.
Penny
How many tins does this fill?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Penny,
The recipe makes around 1 fluid ounce, so depending upon the size of your tin, that should give you an idea.
Elizabeth
Hello!
Do you add water to boil the beeswax pellets?
Whats the measurement of the water and pellets?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Elizabeth,
Don’t add water to the pellets. The water is just boiled underneath it to melt the wax in a double boiler system. You don’t want any water in the wax/oil mixture. You just need equal parts of wax and oil which you melt together in a container over the wáter.
Leslie
Love this recipe. If you don’t mind me asking, what oils and drop amount do you use for the more woodsy perfume??
Tracy Ariza
Hi Leslie,
I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember what I used. Most of the time I go by trial and error, and I’m not very organized with my notes, unfortunately.
If I find my notes, I’ll try to update here with more ideas for different combinations that I’ve enjoyed.
I’ve seen tutorials online for different combinations of perfumes made with essential oils. They are geared towards making liquid perfumes, but you can apply the same combinations of oils here. You may be able to find some good combinations there.