Understanding Scent And Perfume - Tips To Create Your Own

Perfume is a mind altering substance. What's more it's a mind altering substance that isn't banned and for which you don't need a prescription.

What we call scent is made up of essential oils. These are volatile oils that evaporate in the air when they are warmed or exposed to sunlight. The tiny molecules of these essential oils fit into receptors in our nostrils. When they do that we smell fresh flowers, baking bread, pine trees, or whatever.

Essential oils like that make us feel good. They make us think if good things to eat or happy times on holiday. They lift our mood and make us think positive thoughts. This is the principle involved in aromatherapy and in perfume making.

Scents can also make us feel bad too. Some scents are intended to warn us that food has gone off and is not safe to eat. Other scents of which we are not aware, such as sex pheremones, have a powerful effect without us knowing anything about it. They attract us to our sexual partners. Babies recognize their mothers by their smell. There really is good chemistry between us and those we love.

Scent plays an enormous and usually unremarked part in our lives. Being surrounded all day by the scent of car fumes and chemicals, stressed and angry people can have a very negative effect on our psychological state. We need to consciously seek out good scents to lift out more and make us feel good. That is what perfume is all about.

In Medieval Europe people used to carry an orange stuck with garlic cloves or a pomander to counteract the bad smells that were all around them. We can do the same thing in a slightly more scientific way today.

You could just go to a store and buy some perfume. But making your own perfume out of natural scents will give you a greater understanding of how scents effect your mood and provide a lot of pleasure in the process. Scent has a powerful psychological effect. Using that effect is all part of the perfumier's art.

Take a few simple ingredients that you might already have at home - a vanilla pod for example. Cut it up and smell it. Your mood is lighter immediately. Vanilla is a seductive scent that is very attractive and yet warm and comforting at the same time. There is nothing dangerous in this scent.

How can we use the scent of our vanilla pod in perfume? The task in creating a perfume is to capture that fresh scent before it dissipates into the air. It seems almost impossible, but it is perfectly possible.

What you need to do is to put the cut up vanilla pod in a glass jar with a lid. Add some sugar. A third of a teaspoonful should be enought. Then cover it in vodka. Close the lid and shake it. Leave it for as long you like. A month would be about right. When you open the jar you will smell your fresh vanilla scent again. You can add a few drops of this vanilla scent to all kinds of perfumes.

You can do the same thing with lavender, rose petals or other scented flowers. Herbs and spices can also be treated in the same way. If you are gathering fresh vegetable material try to do it at mid day when they are dry and their volatile oils are most concentrated.

You can dilute the scented alcohol with water to use as a perfume or add it to a carrier oil to use as body rub. All you need are a few drops if you use it without dilution. It can be used to perfume a room as well as you. A few drops of lavender added to beeswax makes a wonderful scented furniture polish that doubles as a room freshner.