It’s a bit sad (if not predictable)—after I moved over to all homemade, natural body products, my modest collection of perfumes (all three of them) lost the majority of their appeal to me. They’re just so strong and artificial smelling, which is rather sad as I liked them all so much when I got them. One in particular is from a trip to New Zealand with my friend Sarah, and it will always smell like “down under” to me.
Anyhow, it was about time I started to make my own perfume—I feel like I’ve dabbled in most everything else by now anyways. When I discovered Saffire Blue I noticed they stocked perfumery alcohol, but I didn’t feel any particular desire to order some until my first bottle of labdanum essential oil arrived from New Directions Aromatics.
You see, up until I’d encountered labdanum essential oil, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to create a scent that was sufficiently mysterious for my tastes. Call me ridiculous if you like, but I don’t want my perfumes to be easily interpreted. That’s something I’ve always loved about any of the perfumes I’ve ever bought—they’re a sensory symphony of memories and emotions, not a buffet of familiar scents. Perfume should be exotic and beguiling—deep and mysterious, with notes of this and that, that tug at the memory. Perfume should be a mystery.
That is where labdanum comes in. Everyone who smells it can grasp at a note or two, but nobody can nail it down, and that is why I love it. I’m not sure if I feel that it is a sensory version of myself, or if I just really, really like it, but that wee bottle immediately had me thinking perfume.
I started by rubbing a drop between my wrists, and another behind my ears, and just reveling in the scent of it over the day. Mmmm. Then, I started thinking about what it might blend well with. I’d try adding a drop of lime, or rose, and seeing what I thought of it as the scent matured over the day. No matter what I tried, or added to it, though, I was always drawn to that labdanum base note. It is downright addictive.
So, that’s where this first perfume came from. I whipped it up one morning before work in a small little roller bottle, and brought it into the office. I know you’re supposed to wait at least three weeks, but I just couldn’t. I had all the women try it (well, I pretty much just said “give me your wrist” and rolled some on, but whatever), and they all loved it. We all monitored its development over the course of the day, meaning we were all somewhat suspiciously smelling ourselves and commenting on it all day long. The consensus was positive. And, since it was a large enough amount, I’ve been able to monitor it as it has aged as well. I like it. Deep and mysterious, with bright citrus notes from the bergamot, and hints of floral rose and deep benzoin. I’m in love.
I’m calling it “Beguiling Embrace”. I thought about this for quite a long time, sitting at my desk, sniffing myself and perusing the thesaurus and dictionary (there’s a mental image for you). “Beguiling” (bee-guy-ling) means charming and enchanting, with deceptive & mysterious undertones. “Embrace”, of course, is to hold somebody or something close, with affection. I feel like this is the perfect name for a scent that is warm, yet mysterious, and never fails to stir feelings of contentment and mystery in me.
Beguiling Embrace: a perfume
50% perfumery alcohol
30% labdanum essential oil
15% benzoin essential oil
4.5% bergamot essential oil
0.5% rose absoluteCombine everything in a 5mL roller bottle. Seal and gently turn to combine—any sediment from the essential oils will dissolve in an hour or two. Leave to age for at least three weeks, though it is really quite lovely straight away.
I LOVE labdanum, too! What exactly is in perfumery alcohol, chemical-wise? I didn’t get many hits on U.S. sites when I did a quick Google search. I’m thinking that it might be sold under another name in the States (either that or alcohol laws prohibit online sales).
Amazon sells perfumery alcohol. 🙂
Hmmm. Thanks. I’ll try looking there again. When I searched Amazon before, all I got were results for propylene glycol, and I wasn’t sure if that counted as actual “perfumery alcohol.”
I got mine from Saffire Blue. Don’t get propylene glycol, it’s definitely not the same thing 🙂
I was looking at SaffireBlue, and sadly for US residents there is a 50 dollar hazmat fee! Does anyone know another avenue to get Perfumers Alcohol that is in the US, or will ship there without the fee?
Yikes! That’s a recent addition as that notice wasn’t there when I bought my bottle. I did some googling and I’m not having a lot of luck. I found these guys, based out of California. Most US perfumery forums are recommending using high-proof Everclear as it is easier to get. It looks like your US liquor regulations on this one are fairly tight, which is sort of funny since you sell alcohol in your grocery stores and that’s illegal up here 😛
Thanks Marie! I got the same information from my search… So crazy that denatured alcohol would be so hard to get! I also found some on Etsy.com, but it says it is perfumer’s alcohol and also that it is 190 proof, so I assume it is actually alcohol and does not have the other ingredients in perfumer’s alcohol.
From my reading that should do the trick… you should also be able to use a low-scent carrier oil if you really can’t get a hold of the perfumery alcohol easily, though I can’t speak for the “mingling”/aging of the scent over time with an oil base :/ Damn people out there who use useful substances to do stupid things!
Thanks so much! I will definitely have to try a carrier oil, if I cant get my hands on some Everclear!
Let me know how the carrier oil works out if you do, I haven’t had a chance to try it yet 🙂
🙂
I just wanted to update this conversation about the alcohol. I used super cheap American vodka and it took a bit, but it dissolved the resins really nicely. I decided after looking for Perfumery Alcohol that I would rather use vodka instead because it has fewer chemicals. I would highly recommend vodka of a high proof (mine is not Everclear because CA doesn’t sell it). Basically, if you don’t have perfumery alcohol then just use vodka!
Thanks for the update, Lauren Ann! It’s great to know the vodka alternative will eventually work 🙂
This site has a good explanation of what perfumery alcohol is 🙂
Thanks, Marie!
Speaking of fees, did you see that on the NDA site, they’re going to start charging a $20 surcharge for orders less than $100!!! (Or maybe that’s just in the U.S. site; didn’t check Canada.) Could be a justification for getting more weird essential oils when I need carrier oils/clays, I suppose…
I did, and I get it. It sort of stinks, but the shipping is generally at least $20 up here, so that’s been functioning as that $20 surcharge for me ever since I started ordering from them. I generally try to keep shipping as less than 10% of the cost of the order (since it’s usually $20 no matter what you order, it takes a BIG order of heavy stuff to get that to budge in my experience), so I’ve never placed an order under $100 with them. I work in e-comm, too, so I get it. Judging by the discount codes they provide, their margins must be tiny, so every little bit helps. And hey, any excuse to try out that fancy new carrier oil, right?! 😛
I know it’s not the same thing, but when I try this I think I am just going to use straight unflavoured vodka 🙂
That should work out just fine 🙂 Just be aware that the essential oils might take a wee bit longer to dissolve in the vodka. Let me know how you like the perfume!
Thank you for sharing this. I love fragrances! Finding fragrances that don’t irritate my senses is a challenge. Finding natural fragrances that suit me even more challenging. I think like you I ,too, prefer more complex “mysterious” combinations. Until I read your post I didn’t have the confidence to experiment with perfumery. You may have changed my mind with labdanum.
Hi Angelique! I, too, love fragrances, but my synthetic ones are just too much for me now that I don’t have any artificial fragrances in my life anymore. When I bought my perfumery alcohol I also bought a bunch of tiny vials (1mL or) and caps so I can experiment with tons of different scent blends. I still haven’t gotten around to doing that, lol, but it sounds like something you might like to do as well. Be sure to check out benzoin as well—it has a nice, complex scent that’s reminiscent of vanilla, but somehow not. Those are my two favourite perfume jumping-off points 🙂 Have fun & thanks for reading!
Is Linalool something that could be used for the perfumery alcohol? I checked with New Directions and that is what they have
Nope 🙂 Linalool is a natural fragrance chemical derived from lavender EO, so it’s actually something that could be used to make perfume. I got my perfumery alcohol from Saffire Blue.
How do you measure out essential oil blends like this accurately? Would you do 30 drops labdanum, 15 drops benzoin, etc? I’ve also noticed that some of your recipes call for 1/2 a drop of a given EO… confused how that works 🙂 thanks!
In blends this small (that’s a 5mL tube) I wouldn’t be tooooooo concerned with precise accuracy. Otherwise, I’d get a scale that’s accurate to 0.1g. Drops won’t work particularly well here since the different EOs have different viscosity levels, which effects drop size. I basically just eyeballed it up the side of the tube since it’s straight sided. I mean, perfume is art, not science, right?
To measure “half” drops I’ll dip a toothpick in the EO bottle, and then swirl it in the concoction 🙂
How do you measure in percentages — 50%, 30%, 15%, etc.
I’m pretty sure it’s just like measuring in parts. Personally, I convert it grams, but sometimes that’s too big/small so you can cut it down. For recipes with essential oils/perfume I use drops, which aren’t super accurate though. Percentages are just proportion wise. So technically you can just set up a proportion to calculate your amounts. It’s easier to write recipes in percentages because you can make a large or small batch.
Exactly! Thanks for this great explanation, Sophia 🙂
It’s nice and easy 🙂 You simply decide on your desired total volume, work out what 1% of that is, and then work out your measurements from there. For example, if you wanted 100mL of perfume in the end (which would be quite a lot of perfume!), 1% would = 1g. So, 50%=50g, 30%=30g, and so on. For a very small quantity (less than 10mL), I’d recommend eyeballing it, assuming your container/tube is similar to the one pictured, with straight sides. The essential oils add up to 50% of the tube, and the rest is the perfumery alcohol.
Got it! I thought so. Thank you.
🙂
Hi Marie,
I can’t wait to try this. I just recently purchased several “making your own perfume” books. I bet your formula/ recipe for Beguiling Embrace will top all of them. I love your FB page, website and your blog. Thank you so much!
A devoted follower,
Carolyn Moreland, RN
Thanks so much, Carolyn—I look forward to hearing how your perfumes turn out 🙂
Sounds wonderful. I can see I have to put in a large ND order for all the oils & alcohol. I am also sad I don’t like to use my artificial perfume DK NY anymore which smell I still really love. I use doterra EO’s and a blend called “Balance” smells amazing on its own. Unfortunately they are reformulating it due to rosewood becoming unavailable 🙁
Can you please try to describe what Labdanum smells like? Thanks
It is a bit of a bummer to slowly ruin all the products you used to love, eh? Especially perfumes, since those specific scents are so tied to our memories. I tried my best to describe the scent of labdanum in this entry, but I think the thing I notice most about it is that it smells warm… like sunshine in a forest on a hot summer day. And so much more. Really, just get a bottle, I can’t imagine anybody not loving it, lol 😛
This sounds amazing! I can’t wait to try it out!
Thanks! Let me know how it goes 🙂
I can only find benzoin resin on ND australia, is this what you use or is it in EO form?
Mine is in a thick, goopy liquid form, and it comes in a bottle. Is there any solubility info on the resin? Could you potentially dissolve it in the perfumery alcohol after pulverizing it (assuming it’s solid)?
Thanks for your reply, I love your site btw!! It comes in a hard resin, tincture, gum and a macerated oil. The gum looks quite thick and gloopy so maybe that is the go ?
Yup, sounds like the gum is your go, definitely not the tincture, and the hard resin hardly sounds liquid. Have fun with it!
I’ve only just found your site and I can’t wait to sit down tonight and scroll through it.
I have been making lots of different natural things as well. One of my attempts has been perfume. Every time I wear various ones (that I make) my son in law says that I smell like a herb shop…
I want to try it but need to purchase more ingredients so do you think this blend smells “herby?”
Hi Debbie! This blend doesn’t smell “herby” at all, which was something I was really trying to avoid. It definitely has a sort of “perfume” scent, where you can’t really pin down and identify the individual notes, which is probably my favourite thing about it. It’s really the labdanum that does it 🙂 Have fun & thanks for reading!
I’m excited to try this blend! I purchased the EOs a couple days ago (could only find the labdanum from New Directions, so I took the opportunity to make a few good purchases from them for the first time at your suggestion!) I forgot to order perfumery alcohol, even though I did remember little dispensing bottles! So I may try to get an airplane bottle of some type of grain alcohol at the liquor store. My second thought was to formulate this as a solid perfume like your lavender-lemon solid perfume. What do you think?
Anyway, thanks so much for all these ideas. I made a bunch of your lip balm recipes for Christmas gifts and I’m getting good feedback so far. Thanks for all the experiments you do!
You bring up a good point—I should do a side-by-side comparison of the scent blends in solid vs. liquid perfume. In the liquid perfume everything dissolves together and intermingles, and part of the process is aging to allow the scent to develop… I am tempted to say this doesn’t really happen with solid perfumes as I’ve never noticed the scent of my body butters or lip balms developing/changing over the months. It would be a very interesting experiment, though! Thanks so much for reading & DIYing with me 🙂
I love your website and this is one of the products that I’m dying to make. I love trying out new scents. I’m allergic to alcohol, though, and I was wondering if I could use an oil blend with the essential oils instead? Could you recommend what type of carrier oil for a long lasting scent and an approximate amount for this combination of essential oils? Thanks so much for any help you can give! 😀
From my reading it sounds like any low-scent carrier oil will do the trick—jojoba and camellia seed come to mind, even moreso because they both absorb into the skin nicely. If you have sensitive skin I would keep the EO percentages the same in relation to one another, but use 2–3x the amount of carrier oil 🙂 Have fun & let me know how it goes!
Made this a few weeks ago and I had to tell you that I just love it. I don;t have the rose absolute because I just can’t justify the price:( It’s still amazing without it. The best thing is how long lasting it is! I love the solid perfumes and recently made your lavender lemon but find that I can’t smell it after an hour. Do you think there would be a carrier oil that would help the scent last longer?
I’m so thrilled to hear it, Lynn 🙂 When I posted this I wasn’t sure if anybody would actually make it since the ingredients are a bit odd, so I’m super glad to hear you did.
As for the strength, I think that’s probably mostly in the quantity of essential oil used. This perfume is 50% essential oils, while the solid perfumes are about 6%. I still find that to be very strong for me, but you could definitely try increasing the amount to see what you think 🙂
Could I use geranium instead of the rose absolute for this? 🙂
You can if you like geranium 😉 Perfume is pretty forgiving, but you might want to try a wee batch of it first to see what you think.
I do like geranium. It smells like roses to me, anyway. I might give it a go. 🙂 Thanks!
I can’t wait to hear how it turns out 🙂
Hi Marie, I adore your site and following all of your delightful adventures. I’m having an issue with my Benzoin and I am wondering it it is me, or particular to the oil itself. I can’t seem to get it to come through the dropper and it has quite a thick viscosity. Have you found this to be typical of Benzoin?
Thanks!
Hi Rachel! Yes, benzoin is super thick and sticky and gloppy. I tossed the dropper top for mine immediately, and tend to call for “blobs” of it in recipes rather than drops 😛 Setting the tightly sealed bottle in a hot water bath for 10 minutes before you need it will help as well 🙂
Hi
I too used the 100 proof vodka. I absolutely love the fragrance but my product is sticky. Is this as it ought to be or did I do something incorrectly? Please advise as I REALLY want to use this fragrance. 🙂
Hmm. I wonder if this is the combo of the 100 proof vodka and the labdanum. Perfumery alcohol contains some extra solvents to help dissolve gummy essential oils like labdanum, but the vodka wouldn’t. Does it improve over time? Perhaps the alcohol just needs more time to dissolve the labdanum?
Hi Marie,
I have recently purchased a bottle of laudanum essential oil and was wondering what your description of the fragrance and physical appearance of the oil would be? To me it smells heavily of benzoin with a touch of peru balsam in it. As I don’t know what ambergris smells like I can’t compare it to that although I understand that it what labdanum EO is used as a replacement for nowadays. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for your wonderful recipes. I so look forward to them!
Puja
Hi Puja! I usually say labdanum is deep, warm, spicy, mysterious, a little cinnamon-y, and slightly addictive. It’s definitely thick and resinous, but to me it has none of the sticky-sweet vanilla-y notes of benzoin 🙂 Thanks for reading & DIYing with me!
Hi,
i don’t want to use alcohol for making this. can i use carrier oil instead? Iwill the labdanum mix with the carrier oil? thanks
From my reading that should do the trick… you should also be able to use a low-scent carrier oil if you really can’t get a hold of the perfumery alcohol easily, though I can’t speak for the “mingling”/aging of the scent over time with an oil base.
Would u be so kind to provide the measurements in drops.. percents are too hard to figure out.. thank you…
Hi Jane! Read this 🙂