Making your own perfume is relatively straightforward.

This year, I’m making a few Christmas Gifts, as a way of making Christmas feel just a little bit more home spun and personal.

Having looked on several sites and researched the types of ingredients that goes into perfume making, there are just a few ingredients most of which you will find easily either in your cupboard or online.

To make the Perfume all you need to do is the following:

1. Decide on the strength of the perfume:

   This is determined by the amount of scent to alcohol. An Eau de toilette is around 10 percent. An Eau de parfum is around 15-20 percent and the strongest called Parfum is around 30 percent.

2. Decide on how you want to use the perfume:

   Solid (such as in a oil based waxy balm) or Rollerball (oil based) or in a Spray. The main ingredient in the perfume is the carrier, which can be alcohol or oil based. With Alcohol, the oils in the fragrance can be dispersed from a spray and is how most of the famous brands market their perfumes. Very high quality fragrance houses such as Chanel will offer the perfume in stronger variants, for instance Chanel No5 is available as a Parfum in a very tiny but exquisite bottle. The higher the alcohol content (proof) you can find the better in terms of dispersing the scent. You can of course go for perfumers alcohol, but since there’s likely to be chemicals, which is sometimes called Alcohol Denat – this means it’s been treated so you can’t drink it. Personally, I think it’s better if you can drink it, as it means, if it’s ok to drink, it’s going to be suitable to put onto your skin. I’m choosing Vodka as this has no scent and is as pure a form of alcohol as you can get easily. Smirnoff or Grey Goose will do.

3. Decide on the fragrance or Scent:

   Perfumes tend to be made up of top notes, the scent you can smell immediately. The middle note, the heart of the fragrance and the base note which is the final scent that lingers long after the others have dissipated, all three notes combine give the perfume the harmonics that make defines it’s unique character which when mixed with the chemicals that make up your skin, makes the experience of the perfume unique.

I love experimenting and mixing scents together. It makes the process so much fun and it also means it’s one of a kind, unique as no one else will have the scent that you’ve made.

Since Jasmine is my favourite scent of all time, I’m going to use this as the “middle note” for the heart and distinctive character of the perfume. And as I prefer things to be as natural as possible, all the oils I have chosen to make this perfume are essential oils.

Jasmine Officinale or Jasmine Absolute is known as the King of flowers. It has a very sweet floral scent. The scent has been central in perfumes for centuries, in China it represents the sweetness of women, in Persia it was known as the perfume of love.

It is also amongst the most expensive pure fragrances, the version I am using is 10% diluted in Jojoba oil. Since the fragrance is very strong, a little goes a long way.

I’m combining this with citrus notes of Sweet Orange and Bergamot essential oils.

Finally, for the base note, just a hint of Cedar wood essential oil, which not only has therapeutic benefits, is also a “fixative” which will slow down the evaporation of the perfume and slows down the overall scent of the perfume from fading. It is sweet and woody at the same time and combines well with both the citrus notes as well as the floral scent of Jasmine.

To make the perfume couldn’t be easier. In a small bottle which should be as opaque as possible to prevent sunlight from affecting the oils, I have combined the following:

Ingredients for hand blended Perfume:

50ml Vodka

20 drops of the Jasmine Absolute in Jojoba oil

10 drops of Sweet Orange

10 drops of Bergamot

2 drops of Cedar Wood essential oils.

With the spray stopper in place, shake the bottle until all the essential oils have been mixed together into the Vodka.

It will take about a week for the oils to come together to form the perfume. You can of course mix the oils first in a small mixing jar until you get the desired scent you prefer.

You can find more information about the different types of scents at Aromaweb’s section on Aromatic blending.

All that’s left is to find a pretty box and gift wrap to make this little personalised gift ready to give for Christmas.