Make Your Own Solid Perfume

If you love to carry around with you your favourite perfume to respray during the day but hate the fact that it's a glass bottle and prone to breakages, then have I got a treat for you! 

You can easily turn any of your favourite scents into a solid form by making your own solid perfumes with this simple DIY project! Seriously, if you can make 2-minute noodles, you can make this. 

Solid perfume Benefits 

• portability - a small solid perfume jar is easier to take around that full sized perfume bottles
• no need to decant your perfume into purse size sprays to use it on the go
• no leaks, spills or potential breakages of glass!

how cute is this jar for solid perfume?

Tools/Ingredients required:

• 1 tablespoon Beeswax or vaseline (vaseline will give lighter and softer setting solid perfumes)
• 1 tablespoon Almond Oil (or Jojoba Oil)
• 8 - 15 drops Essential Oils or 5-10 spritz from your favourite perfume
• Lip balm jars to hold your finished products- clean out old ones or buy new ones from craft shops  but any container with a tight fitting lid would work. You can even try the cute designed ones. 
• Microwave-safe container (eg. glass bowl)
•  stirrer - toothpicks, or paddle pop sticks

1. Melt together the wax or petroleum jelly with the jojoba or sweet almond oil. You can either microwave the ingredients for a few seconds in a microwave-safe container to soften the mixture or heat it up over a double boiler - I am lazy and prefer the use of the microwave. Microwave for 5 seconds each time and mix the mixture to ensure even melting of the ingredients. 
2. Once mixture has liquefied, add the essential oils if you're using that. If you are using perfume, spritz enough into the melted product until it reaches the desired strength of fragrance. 
3. Use the stirrer to mixing the fragrance and melted mixture. You can use anything as the stirrer but expect your perfume to coat it, so either use something disposable or else something you can wash (so don't using your wooden spoon, unless you want it to smell pretty forever).
4. Pour the liquid into your final container and give it a few hours to set.

Viola - your solid perfume is done and you can start to use it to any part of your skin and best of all, pop it into your hand bag so you can take it with you everywhere you go!

Easy and rewarding to make - you can even get creative by mixing different scents to create your very own customised ones - what scents would you make? Mine would be Rose and Vanilla. 

Tackling dandruff

I never had any dandruff at all as a teen but in the past few years, those pesky flakes have been plaguing my head and causing me endless grief. The tell tale flakes are a constant annoyance and an embarrassing feature on my favourite black tops.

I've tried different anti-dandruff shampoos and conditioners - Head and Shoulders, Garnier anti-dandruff, T-Gel and Selsun Blue. All of these products reduced the dandruff but after a few weeks, they seem to stop working and I am left with dry brittle hair still mingled with large snow flakes. Maybe my scalp got used to the active ingredients, maybe I was producing more dandruff but I wanted to find something that treated and provided a semi permanent relief rather than temporary band-aid solutions.

And finally I found my saviour. Something that is so good, I'm almost willing to call it a cure too all my flakey situation - and all this using natural ingredients that is not harsh on hair at all.

Presenting...

Apple cider vinegar, or the humble AVC for short. That's right folks, no need for a cupboard full of medicated shampoos; vinegar is all you need and your flakes will be gone within a few good washes.

How I use it:  apply small amounts of AVC onto dry hair and massage into scalp. Do this to all areas where dandruff is active. Leave in hair for 5 minutes. If you have wounds or sores on your head, this will sting, so best not to do this if you have any cuts in your head.

Mix 1/3 cup of AVC with my usual shampoo (Clairols Herbal Essence with rosehip and jojoba) and use that to wash you hair as normal. I sometimes have to do extra rinses to remove the sour smell from my hair/head. Condition with my favourite conditioner.

AVC is also fabulous as a final rinse to add shine and softness to hair. You will need to do extra rinsing to remove the smell though.

Cons:
I found the smell of AVC difficult to deal with. I needed an extra round of shampoo on its own and an extra rinse  to removes the last traces of the sour scent.


Other Info: 
When treating flakes, I wash my hair every 2nd day (it is harder to do during winter) and by the end of the week, my flakes are usually non-existent. I then do a maintenance shampoo with AVC once a week after my flakes are under control. My hair is silkier, softer and flake free since I've been following this regime.

I've been told that AVC may strip colour from hair so may not be suitable for those with colour treated hair. I haven't dyed my hair in years so haven't had any problem personally but do be mindful of this when testing it out yourself.

I've also tried this with normal vinegar. The results are the same but the sour scent is much stronger than AVC and takes more effort to wash out.

If you have any dandruff problems that you find hard to control, give this a go. I'm sure most of us already have AVC handy in our kitchen cupboard.

So will you be giving this a try? Let me know how you go if you do.