To Make a Perfume
Making designer smell-alikes is a great introduction to home perfuming. Perfumes are no exception. Historically, designer perfume duplications haven’t been that great. The air around the sample, which contains the scent, is sucked up and sorted into scent molecules. Anything is possible with enough time and trial-and-error power, but your time is better spent creating original blends.
The task of composing perfumes that will sell is to enhance an expert on perfume composition or known in the fragrance industry as the perfumer. A perfumer must have knowledge of a large variety of fragrance ingredients and smell. They must be able to distinguish each of the fragrance ingredients whether alone or in combination with other fragrances. As well, they must know how each ingredient reveals itself through time when mixed with other ingredients.
The composition of a perfume begins when the perfumer’s employer’s are given a brief which will contain the specifications for the desired perfume that the organisation is trying to achieve. Perfume oils usually contain tens to hundreds of ingredients. These ingredients can be roughly grouped into four groups: primary scents, modifiers, blenders and fixatives (refer notes below).
Instead of building a perfume from “ground up”, many modern perfumes and colognes are made using fragrance bases, which are essential oils and aromatic chemicals. The effort used in developing bases by fragrance companies or individual perfumers may equal that of a marketed perfume, since they are useful in that they are reusable.
The perfume’s fragrance oils are then blended with ethyl alcohol and water, aged in tanks for a minimum of 14 days and filtered through processing equipment to remove any sediment and particles before the solution can be filled into the perfume bottles.
Notes:
For instance, jasmine and rose scents are commonly blends for abstract floral fragrances. Cola flavourant is a good example of an abstract primary scent. 
Modifiers: These ingredients alter the primary scent to give the perfume a certain desired character: for instance, fruit esters may be included in a floral primary to create a fruity floral; ca lone and citrus scents can be added to create a “fresher” floral. Blenders: A large group of ingredients that smooth out the transitions of a perfume between different “layers” or bases. Common blending ingredients include linalool and hydroxycitronellol.
Fixatives: Used to support the primary scent by bolstering it. Many resins and wood scents, and amber bases are used for fixative purposes.
Perfumes have been around for centuries. People extract the oils from plants and animals the mix this with water and alcohol to create the right scent that people will want to wear.
The most important ingredient in creating your own perfume is the essential oils. The first step in perfume making is the combination of the oils. You should first mix a few drops each of the essential oils. After the essential oils have been mixed, it is the time to pour alcohol into the mixture. The final step in creating your perfume making is to add water. Perfume making is always a lot of fun.
By Chandra P.
