What are you doing this weekend? How about creating your own signature scent? Kristen Schuhmann makes it easy with her new book All-Natural Perfume Making $ 19.99
Learn to make your own perfume with all-natural ingredients! All-Natural Perfume Making (publishing March 9) teaches you how to flex your creative muscles while also creating a useful and unique product in a sustainable way. Depending on which ingredients you use and your end goals, you can make perfumes that uplift your mood, relax you, or perk up your brain, and smell exactly as you want.
Get started with basic and easy-to-find ingredients – many of which you likely already have in your kitchen! Just like magic, turn botanical herbs, flowers, and essential oils into wonderful-smelling, healthy, and sustainable perfumes.
In All-Natural Perfume Making, author and herbalist Kristen Schuhmann guides beginning perfumers in the art and techniques of crafting oil-based, alcohol-based, and solid perfumes. Learn the history and traditional benefits of certain scents as you create your own unique blends from a variety of plant-based ingredients.
In addition to smelling good, natural scents can be a powerful self-care tool to benefit mental and emotional health. Feeling anxious? A blend of vanilla, lavender, cedarwood, and neroli can help relax frazzled nerves. Have a big test coming up? Boost your brainpower with rosemary, sweet orange, and peppermint. Once you’ve grasped the techniques in All-Natural Perfume Making, the possibilities are endless as you mix, layer, and experiment with natural scents.
Kristen was kind enough to send me a sample of a custom scent she’s calling Book Blend. It’s a mix of Sandalwood, Lavender, Sweet Orange, Ylang Ylang with a base of Vanilla Extract and Vodka.
Perfect for the beginner who wants to create their own signature scents without the use of harsh chemicals, this book provides a solid base on the philosophy and methods of crafting all-natural fragrances that not only smell fantastic but can add to your well-being.
The book begins with a short list of easy-to-find equipment before discussing scent. Using essential oils, waters, and extracts and playing with proportions, Schuhmann says, new scent profiles are born; mixed with unscented carriers like oils, alcohol, or beeswax, these can be tailored to individual needs.
Kristen explains describes basic fragrance profiles and what ‘notes’ are as well as shows how specific scents combine to create complex results. Because scent affects more than the nose, there are also recipes for blends that calm and relax, lift the spirits, relieve headaches, and promote health.
The book has gorgeous photography with lots of flowers and perfume bottles. Helpful tips for choosing oils to work with, and allowing blends to age, are also given.
This creative hobby is the perfect melding of health, beauty, and pure fun in every way! It will also make a great gift for a special friend, mother, aunt, sister, etc.
The author
Kristen Schuhmann is an herbalist, instructor, ESL teacher, and wellness blogger who has written for Mind, Body, Green; Basmati.com; and Herbs for Health. She lives in Kirkland, Washington, and teaches online courses through her business, Botanical Alchemy & Apothecary.
