If you want to create a unique aroma, you should blend floral or herbal tinctures. While tincturing one should extract the scented essence of herbs and flowers. Besides this procedure can be performed at home, because it demands no special equipment. You can successfully use for the purpose some soda bottles made of plastic, some coffee filters and some dried herbs and a large amount of cheap vodka. You may buy herbs at your local healthfood or metaphysical store. There you can find patchouli, rose, lavender, and chamomile, orris’s root, lemongrass and vetiver. If you add a hint of cinnamon or clove, your perfume will receive a dark, rich scent.
It is quite easy to make a tincture:
You should take a determined by experimentation amount of herbs or dried flowers and put it into a clean, dry soda bottle. It is better to take at first the 20 ounce size or smaller and then you may use a liter bottle as soon as the proportions are had down. It is quite possible to grind the herb in your food processor to have small pieces used for tincture. If you buy herbs commercially, they are already chopped or ground. Wild-crafter herbs are the natural plants that demand more work.
NOTE: Be sure that your tinctures-in-progress are performed far from the children’s reach. If you take soda bottles, children may take them in order to try what is inside. It can be very dangerous, because even a small quantity of alcohol can make a great damage to very small children!
You should cover the herbs with vodka. You should buy the cheapest brand of vodka and fill the bottle but not to the top, because some herbs or resins such as benzoin will foam when tinctured. You should leave enough air at the top and shake the bottle. See if there is a label on your tincture-in-progress to avoid misleading herbs! It is good to write the date on the herbs as soon as the herbs are tinctured.
There are recommendations to keep the herbs in the expensive, dark-colored bottles in a cabinet. One should take the herbs out once a day and shake them well to have the herbs mixed with the alcohol. Shake the herbs with alcohol during a fortnight. Some herbs demand more time to tincture comparing with others. Tincture herbs and dried flowers for a fortnight. Some very fragile dried flowers or plants completely dissolve in the alcohol. Roots and woods demand more time for tincturing. The recommended time for the tincture of such kinds of wood as cedar or licorice is at least a month.
As soon as a fortnight or a month is over, you should filter your tinctures. At the end of two weeks (or a month) you should filter out the soggy plant material through a coffee filter into a pan. Some people apply the dry leftover plant mass as soon as all the alcohol evaporates for compost. Alcohol is flammable and a compost fire can be quite dangerous. Pour the filtered tincture in bottlesof dark brown or blue color for long-term storage. If you store the tincture for the short period of time, take uncoloured glass or plastic bottles for the storage in a dark place. You should dab some quantity of the tincture on your skin, as soon as the alcohol gets evaporated sniff it. You may also put more herbs into the tincture. All plants can be used for tincture, but only some of them will have a scent that is applied effectively in perfumery. Herbs used in perfumery are lavender (it produces a dark rich violet-colored tincture), patchouli, rose (it makes a wonderful deep red liquid), lemon balm, chamomile, vetiver, lemongrass, rosemary (you will have a lovely 'grassy' scent), cinnamon and clove. Rose petals produce a good scent. Each tincture by itself can be used as a single ingredient perfume. To have the scent of rose present with you, you may apply rose tincture on your pulse points or make a rose cologne spritzer by diluting your tincture with water and keeping in a spray bottle.
It is a great pleasure to know that the created perfume is only yours. You may mix florals with more woodsy or grassy scents. The sharp scent of citrus can be mixed with the sweetness of a spice.
You can prepare two blends:
RICH GIRL - A rich spicy scent used for evoking glamour and wealth:
• Four parts patchouli tincture
• Two parts rose tincture
• One part (or less, to suit) each of Clove and Cinnamon tinctures
SERENITY - A floral fragrance used for calming and soothing the senses
• Two parts lavender tincture
• Two parts chamomile tincture
• Two parts lemongrass or lemon tincture (Lemongrass soothes you too much; the lemony scent is used to avoid the soporific influence of the chamomile.)
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