here are some perfumes that are true to the flower jasmine: serge lutens a la nuit serge lutens sassasins demeter jasmine pikaki: child lily: serge lutens un lys tuberose: diptyque do son Il Profumo Eclair de Tubereuse Michael by Michael Kors (has a musky background scent, but the but the main note is tuberose & very true to the flower) Annick Goutal Gardenia Passion (smells like tuberose) Estee Lauder Tuberose-Gardenia gardenia: yves rocher desir de gardenia (smells EXACTLY like a fresh cut gardenia and inexpensive) kai perfume oil (smells exactly like a fresh cut gardenia, expensive and even better than yves rocher. get the perfume oil and not the edp spray) Perfumers cannot capture the gardenia scent from the gardenia so they have to create it. Many times they use tuberose plus other things to create a gardenia scent. @ cool plants: you said "a lot of fragrances (Essential Oils)are combinations of scents, an approximation of what a perfumier thinks it smells like." this is true of perfumes but not essential oils. essential oils are not created, but the oil is extracted or distilled from the actual plant, either from the stems, leaves and flowers depending on the purpose.

Suzy, To make a spritzer, the easiest thing to do is buy a small bottle of 'pure lavender essential oil'; (EO) from your health food store. Just make sure the label says that exactly. Some "fragrance oils" are actually carrier oils like canola or almond oil that has had a few drops of pure essential oil of lavender added to it - you can do that yourself with pure EO and much more. Plus carrier oils are oily to the touch, pure EOs are not oily to the touch, they absorb quickly into the skin. That's another way to tell but best bet is to look for proper label wording and read the ingredient list -- there should be only one ingredient: pure essential oil of lavender. With pure EO you can just put 10 drops in a 4oz spritzer with some distilled water, shake well and spritz your skin. Lavender is great for the face, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. I use this to set my pure minteral make up powders. Plus you'll have a whole bottle left for other things like: *Swirl 20 drops on top of your bath water before you step into the tub -- for relaxing and stress relief, lavender can help you sleep and the warm water helps it get further into your skin. *A few drops on a piece of cotton, tuck that into an old cotton sock and put that into your pillowcase for scent to sleep by, again helps w/relaxation *A few drops of the pure oil on a burn, immediately - yes it works to take the sting out and prevent blistering. This is an essential natural first aid in the kitchen and will NOT hurt the burn -- this oil absorbs almost immediately into your skin penentrating at the cellular level to heal. It is not like butter which Drs. wisely advise against as it seals in heat. Google Rene Gatefosse for the full story on lavender oil and burns... *A few drops on cotton balls stashed in pots and other out of the way spots in rooms you'd like to scent naturally *Mix about 4-6 drops per oz of unscented natural body lotion to make your own lavender lotion. I like Trader Joe's brand - just make sure there is no mineral oil or petrolatum/petroleum products in the lotion. *Mix about 4-6 drops per oz of pure canola oil to use as a massage oil. Great for sore feet. Add some pure EO of peppermint to make it really refreshing. *Mix a few drops into a mister filled with rose water or orange blossom water which you can purchase from a middle eastern grocery for a two note fragrance spritz instead of using distilled water. Obviously if you buy another EO that you like the fragrance of, you can mix some of that in too for a light spritzer of 3 notes. Mandarin and graprefruit are wonderful light oils for summer. Be careful, I ended up with over 40 EOs because I got hooked on mixing fragrance! Kept cool and in dark bottles/away from sun, they last forever though... On your questaions: Yes you can pull fragrance from plant materials using alcohol but don't use rubbing alcohol - it smells bad, just take a whiff and you'll see what I mean, very harsh. Vodka has no scent - it's the closet alcoholic's favorite for this reason - that's why it's used but the highest proof will be most effective. Yes you have need to strain out the plant materials and after you are finished with your extraction process you can add some distilled water (non-distilled might let bacteria grow). You will also need to add copious amounts of plant materials to the soaking jar (I'd use a mason with lid), crushing the flowers down into a small amount of liquid over a period of weeks to get some fragrance into the vodka. Placing on a warm windowsill will probably help speed the process. Rose is probably a better choice as you can gather a lot of petals if you grow a few bushes in your yard. With lavender, the scent comes from the flowers and you'll need a lot of them. I think it takes about 2000 lbs of lavender blossoms to steam distill out just a pound of pure essential oil. Obviously leaching the oils out in alcohol is not quite the same and will result in a much weaker fragrance than steam distillation done professionally. Go get some lavender essential oil and maybe a few others and begin playing!

I love Lolita Lempicka by Lolita Lempicka I also love cotton candy body spray, it smells so good and I love to put it on before I work out because there is something about body sprays that when you sweat it comes out and you can smell it. I one time wore the body spray cotton candy to a graduation and there was a little girl sitting behind me and she was saying mom cant you smell it can I please get some cotton candy. I had to turn around and tell her mom it was my perfume. I bought Demeter perfume cotton candy so I will have to see how I like it. You should check out all the perfumes they make. Popcorn,dirt, sex on the beach, almost anything its crazy.

Interesting Oakley that Wood Sage and Sea Salt had such a bad beginning for you. But glad it was pleasant in the end. I've had other things like that but can't remember what they were right now. And sometimes I've had the opposite too of something I thought I liked originally then after a bit it was terrible. Thank goodness for samples!!! For you 'bad dog smell', if they are rugs, I'd set them outside in the sun and fresh air a few hours and that always did it for my Mom when we had a dog. Of course if the rug is large, that's no easy task! I had great luck with bad smells from a healthcare worker that we had for my Dad not too long ago. Talk about perfume overload!! She used essential oils, smoked cigarettes and then tried to cover all that up with some sort of strong cleaner or laundry detergent and a strong mouthwash!! I could smell ALL the layers. Yuk!! I was gagging and could not get 10 feet from her. We had to cover the chair she sat in with a blanket so it wouldn't permeate the fabric. My Dad had lost most of his sense of smell and he smoked cigars so it did not bother him plus she was great with him so I just put up with it. But I couldn't stand it and by the 3rd evening we had gotten an Orek air purifier. It was a larger newer model that I had used before but worked fantastic. I could now be in the same room with her. And by the next day, it was the freshest smelling room in the house. And she was no longer ruining the furniture. Maybe this could work for you? No I don't work for Orek or anything, just reporting what worked well for us and saved us from having to fire an otherwise great worker. The new bigger one we used is called Orek DualMax Air Purifier and the smaller size we had before was called the XL Professional Air Purifier. I've since even used the big one to get cigarette smoke and mothball smells out of a few leather purses and after a few days they smelled like leather again. In fact, I'm doing this same thing as a favor for a few friends of mine. Hope you can find something that can help you.