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Making Cologne/Perfume

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Boom. So I decided that I'm not going to pay $50+ for a bottle of fragrance every few years. I decided that I'm going to make my own damn cologne. So after some hap-hazard research, I found out:

1) Perfume ingredients are 'ranked' based on how long they last. They're ranked into base, middle and top notes - with base lasting the longest. A scent will contain elements in all 3. Okay cool.

So I set about coming up with a scent. Here's what I ordered to play around with:

Base
Cinnamon
Frankincense

Middle
Elemi
Ylang-ylang

Top
Rosewood
Neroli fragrance oil (synthetic - the real stuff is way too dear :( )
Honeysuckle fragrance oil (no real stuff available)

So all I need to do, is basically get a couple of containers, get some pure ethanol, drip the oils (about 7~ drops total required from each layer) in, and then put that into the container, and then I smell nice.

Here's some rough methods (I'll probably combine them all into one mega-method that is best :P ):

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-perfume/

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/a/makeperfume.htm





ANYWAY, the reason I'm making the thread is because I'm fully interested to hear your comments about colognes, experiences, ideas, and if anyone has made colognes/perfumes before then please get typing! :)

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Wow I wish velvetsiren was still around. He was deep I to this. I miss that lovely gentleman.

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Woah woah, I'm not into it enough to need victims yet. But that movie looks kinda cool.

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That is a very good movie.

Perfume production has always interested me. Not the commercially available fake ones but ones made or pure essence and ingredients. I bought a small still with the intent of making my own essential oils but haven't had the time to do it yet.

edit: Very handy book :)http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16378/16378-h/16378-h.htm

Edited by PerthShaman
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If you manage to get some Trichocereus essential oil - you'll have a first customer. ;) Visit zelly and get a bucket of flowers or something. :P

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That is the hardest part, finding fresh organic flowers.

I also often walk the beach hoping to find some ambergris one day. There are a lot of whales down this way but I think I may be dreaming.

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I quite like solid perfumes (which use a wax/oil base a bit like lipbalm, instead of ethanol), because the release of the scented oils is then sensitive to your bodyheat. So unlike ethanol-based perfumes, which are relatively volatile, the solid perfumes don't really smell that much until you start to get hot & stinky. I tried to make these a few times, but could never get the oil/wax ratio to suit me. I think I was trying it with beeswax & almond oil - if I was to attempt it again I think I would use coconut oil as well, as it not only has a perfect melting point, but also a great scent which would go well with many others such as lemongrass or any citrusy-type smells.

Edited by Anodyne
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Ive been semi interested in the idea for some time. That being said i don't have any real idea of how id go about it.

Would you say the basic of producing "perfume" to be soaking a botanical in ethanol and then evaporating the ethanol?

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That is the hardest part, finding fresh organic flowers.

I also often walk the beach hoping to find some ambergris one day. There are a lot of whales down this way but I think I may be dreaming.

i suppose they wont be organic, but my partner works at a botanical gardens and they are always composting large quantities of herbs and flowers. if you could make a buddy at your local botanical gardens you could probably score all sorts of plant material.

i really wanna have a go producing my own essential oils too. a mate has a contraption i can use, just need to find a decent website or video explaining what to do.

CBL - good on ya mate :) sounds like it could be a fun (albeit addictive) hobby if you have a fine nose on ya.

i wonder if you have seen Mindperformers threads on essential oils and psychoactive essential oils? He had some decent lists which could be useful.

And Perfume is an amazing movie. Yeah yeah a bit twisted but very much worth a watch.

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My awesome girlfriend made a wonderful massage oil for me that's just like the solid perfume described above (by Anodyne). It smells better than any ethanol based perfume IMO.

The ingredients are Coconut oil, almond oil and then various amounts of things like bergamot, lavender and rose etc.

I'll find out the exact ratios, I absolutely love the stuff. I keep it in the fridge in a dark glass bottle because light is known to break down coconut oil.

Another thing you can do is soak certain flowers and spices in coconut oil and the essential oils are dissolved into the coconut oil. Like dissolves like and oils dissolve oils (the same principle as making canna-butter I presume).

Here's one that is widely used for making scented coconut oil. http://agroforestry.net/tti/Fagraea-puakenikeni.pdf

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If anyone ever wants to put together a group buy of some cannabis essential oils Im down.
(Indica or ruderalis only, not interested in Sativa)
They are expensive and obviously they would require the correct paper work as it smells like pure dankness but there are some very interesting applications for it that I want to try, perfume being one of them.

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Thanks bog frog. When I have some spare time I will get some details. I'm busy experimenting with other things at the moment aha.

Eatfoo: I don't see why that would not work but it is easier to make essential oils using a still. All you really need to do is chuck the plant material in cover it with water and what comes out will be a mix of water and the oil. All you have to do is let it separate and collect the oil. I have a commercially available Air still, 5ltr capacity I think, but if you don't plan on using it for alcohol they are generally straightforward to make.

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Eatfoo, there are a few methods of extracting fragrances, depending on the material and what resources you have. In the book Perfume he talks about 'enfleurage', which involved soaking jasmine flowers in a special mixture of oils/fats to extract the scent, which was too delicate to distill. Sounds similar to what HalcyonDaze mentioned with the coconut oil. I always thought it was an interesting method, especially if you're trying to capture delicate aromas, &/or don't have a distillation setup.

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I remember reading about the solid perfume idea ages ago - I'll give it a go once I get the hang of blending scents. Well the oils I'll be getting should last fairly long time (they only need to make 3-4 lots of cologne to break even) - so I might try it at a later date. I would try the massage oil, but unfortunately I only have myself to massage at this stage (and it's just a bit creepy to make a massage oil to massage yourself isn't it? :P ).

At the moment I'm using mostly essential oils, which are produced via steam distillation. This ensures that the oils are volatile and will actually waft around. You can get oils using cold pressing, and tinctures - but they're often full of waxes and stuff that you don't want in perfume (as they clog up the sprayer, and can oxidize and do other stuff).

Making essential oils is not hard. You need a steam distiller, which you basically fill with macerated (= munched up) plant material, and then you raise the temperature to the right amount to the steam, and the steam carries off essential oil components. This allows you to somewhat tailor the components of the distillate. You can for example sit your distiller at twenty or so degrees below your desired isolate for a couple of hours, which removes all the low-boiling-point things which you can then move out of the condensor, and then you raise it to a couple of degrees above what your isolate requires to vaporize, and then you get most of your isolate out, and then you raise it again to get the next fraction. That's more or less how they make petrol from crude oil too.

Why would you want to get cannabis scent? I'm legitimately curious. Do you want to get your vehicle searched every time you meet a coppa? :P

That 'entfleurage' sounds interesting too. It would be cool to get some unique scents that way.

Apparently my oils shipped today, so if I can source pure ethanol, then I'll start making it ASAP. :) I wonder if it's possible to just use isopropyl alcohol - it would be easy to get pure, and I don't need much at all.

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I feel that cannabis essential oils have quite powerful aromatherapy applications, in Indica's case it would be for relaxation, anxiety relief and stomach complaints and if its in a 'perfume' it could be worn in stressful situations.

I think it would be quite good in combination with other scents as well, for example the musky indicas like bigbud have a very pervasive, long lasting and almost tangible smell that could replace animal musks

I also really want to try it with various smoking mixes. of course.. lol.

Edited by AndyAmine.
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^haha of course. I strangely like the smell also, which is strange because I've probably done it five times in total in my life time. There's just something about

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It would be interesting to see if cannabis essential oils are stronger than other essential oils touted for relaxation. My hunch says yes - but it would be extremely hard to test this accurately (confirmation bias and placebo effect are very strong modifiers when effects are mild).

I've got a bottle of tea-tree essential oil I decided I'd use for the mix too. Now does anyone know if this essential oil is used in any medicinal products? I don't want to smell like I've rubbed medicine on myself. Like obviously Vicks smells of menthol - so menthol is mostly a no-no for cologne.

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It would be interesting to see if cannabis essential oils are stronger than other essential oils touted for relaxation. My hunch says yes - but it would be extremely hard to test this accurately (confirmation bias and placebo effect are very strong modifiers when effects are mild).

need some double blind tests or something with people who are oblivious to the smell of cannabis

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Hmmm.. Go easy on the tea tree oil CBL, it can be very overpowering and may outshine all the subtlety of the other ingredients.

I dunno of any medicines that have tea tree but its a very distinctive and recognisable smell, which is often used as deodorant or nit repellent (neither of which scream sexy lol)

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I second that - I mainly use teatree oil as an antiseptic. I think it'd be weird in a cologne, at least as a dominant smell - can't think of anything off-hand that'd blend well with it either...

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Exactly what I wanted to hear :P Thanks for the saves

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPnGLLdewQE

this film he killed ppl to make the best perfumes...

I just watched that movie last night, inspired me to make a scent also, not from dead virgins though lol,

One of the yummiest and calming scents ive smelled is Agua de Florida which the shamans of the Amazon use to cleanse the energy field , not sure what flower they use but the fragrance is so familiar.

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^

Sounds similar to paulo santo?

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