For my birthday this year, I wanted to do something a little different! Tired of bars and dinners, I told my friends I was signing up for a perfume making class, and they were welcome to join! With a few of my girlfriends on a Saturday afternoon in September, we went to The Perfumery Workshop, hosted by Nicole at Secret Garden Botanica in Nashville, Tennessee.
If you’re looking for a fun activity with friends or even a bachelorette party where you can learn something new and take home what you make, this is the workshop for you! Creating your own perfume is such a cool, unique experience, and I highly recommend this perfume making workshop if you’re in the Nashville area or visiting!
Signing Up
We went to The Perfumery Workshop, which is hosted by Nicole, who is the owner of Secret Garden Botanica in Nashville. To sign up, I just went to her website which makes it super easy to “save your seat” and choose a class she has coming up. I think she typically does a couple classes a month, with the classes on Saturday during the day. The classes are two hours long – but can go over based on how long it takes to mix, etc. Class size seems to be around 8-10, so sign up early!
Getting There
Since Nicole hosts her classes at her in-home studio, she doesn’t send out the exact location until 24 hours before. To respect her privacy, I won’t give more information, other than it’s in Nashville proper! She provides super helpful information about getting there and parking in her email communication!
The Class
The class teaches you about the art of French Perfumery – so it’s informational and fun. It’s two hours long with about 8-10 people. I’ll go into more details below, but the class goes through a personalized scent quiz to see what scents you might be interested in, and you create your personalized scent that you get to take home in a 2oz. crystal perfume bottle. You’re also given a little worksheet where you write down your perfume formula information and a velvet bag to store your perfume in!
The Process
Let’s get into the details about the class and process!
Quiz
The class starts off with a quiz to see what “notes” you might be interested in the most. The quiz asks questions like your favorite color palettes, aromas, activities, and music. But the questions and answer options are asked in a way that make you really think about what you like!
From there, you tally up your results and find out what notes you’re most attracted to and what scent family they belong to. Mine were Fresh & Wood Notes and Fresh & Oriental! Apparently, I don’t love floral, which doesn’t surprise me at all!
Smelling All the Scents
Now for the super fun part!
We smelled nearly 30 different scents! Each oil (scent) was put on a perfume testing strip paper, and then we were able to smell it. We had a wooden holder for the strips so we could go back and re-smell them later which was obviously super helpful. We numbered them on the strip and on our sheets, so we didn’t lose track of their names.
It was also important to make notes as we went. I tried to mark things like “love”, “like”, “nope”, “hate”, etc. I even made a note like “dirt” for one that smelled like fresh potting soil dirt in my opinion! It was also super interesting to go back through the ones I liked, and upon smelling later, I had no interest in at all anymore!!
Putting Scents Together
Apparently, perfumes have a structure – Nicole explains this all super well and it’s in the packet as well! But there are base notes, middle notes, and top notes. We started with putting together our base notes.
The base notes are supposed to be picked from the Oriental and Wood notes. So, I went to my list of scents and looked at what I liked. I found a Wood that I liked, and then I started adding other Woods and Orientals until I found a mix I liked – putting the testing strips together and fanning them under my nose to get the scents to mix. I went with mossy wood, ambrette, and Australian sandalwood.
Following this procedure, I added more and more together until I had enough scents for my formulation. For my middle notes (Floral and Oriental), I went with magnolia and tonka bean. For my top notes (Fresh), I went with black currant bud and raspberry.
Mixing Oils
Now, it’s time to mix! This part is so fun! It’s like being back in science class, but with a fun, usable outcome. One of my friend’s even said if this was how science class worked, she would have been more interested back in school.
We each had our own little beaker. We would grab a bottle of the oil we needed and use the dropper to drop the oil into our own beaker. Nicole helps you figure out how much of each oil to use based on her knowledge of formulas and the scents themselves! There’s also a stirrer so you’re mixing the oils as you go and making sure you like the scent.
The Finished Product – My Perfume!
When I was happy with my final scent, it was time to mix it with the alcohol base. This dilutes the oils and makes it sprayable! Nicole did this part, put it in my 2oz perfume spray bottle, and handed me the final result!
My first thought was “this looks like a witch’s poison” but everyone’s perfume came out looking differently based on what oils they used. Some were closer to a cream color, some were dark green, lime green, light green, and more. It was cool to see the differences! I think mine is fun!
I’m still not sure whether I totally love my scent – I’ll probably always be a Chanel perfume girly. But this was such a fun, cool, and different experience. I learned a lot and so did my friends! I think we were all happy with the workshop!
Farewell Thoughts
Let me know if you’ve made your own perfume before – in the comments or over on Instagram! If you liked this Nashville activity on making your own perfume, I’d love for you to share this post!
