Now you can smell like pumpkin spice all the time with this easy DIY pumpkin spice perfume made with essential oils.

If you've been visiting the blog over the last two weeks, then you know that's pumpkin spice season. My pumpkin spice posts from last year and this year and getting a lot of shares and views, so I'm assuming that you're loving them.

If for some reason pumpkin spice isn't your thing, then give me a few weeks to get back to regular programming.

Today, we're learning how to make a DIY pumpkin spice perfume with essential oils. Again, you can adapt this to any type of recipe by using different oils.

I like wearing perfumes, but they bother my husband's asthma. I've found that I can wear perfumes made with essential oils, and they don't bother him. The alcohol in the perfume does bother him, so I use cyclomethicone for the base.

I'm going to give you two ways to make this DIY pumpkin spice perfume, so you can choose the way that's best for you.

DIY PUMPKIN SPICE PERFUME WITH ESSENTIAL OILS (WITH AND WITHOUT ALCOHOL)

These are both base recipes, which means that you'll have to play with them to get them right for the ingredients that you are using.

I'm using Essence of Pumpkin Pie essential oil blend. It smells just like pumpkin spice, but it doesn't have a heavy throw. That's fine with me because I like a light scent.

Essence of Pumpkin Pie is a blend of:

Cinnamon
Clove
Vanilla
Nutmeg
Ginger

Pumpkin Spice is part of the Right Note Holiday Favorites essential oil set. You can also make your own pumpkin spice essential oil blend.

If you are using essential oils with a heavier throw or like more fragrance, I'll tell you how to adjust for that too. It's best to start with the lowest amount of essential oils and add more as needed.

Don't forget to check your essential oils for photosensitivity. Citrus essential oils like lemon and orange can make you more sensitive to the sun, so be careful using them in a perfume if you'll be outside.

I'm using a cute little 10 ml spray bottle from SKS-Bottle. These are great for perfumes because they are small. You only use a spray or two of perfume a day, so this little bottle will last quite a while.

You can also find a similar bottle on Amazon.

PUMPKIN SPICE PERFUME WITH ALCOHOL

The first way to make a perfume with essential oils is to use alcohol. The alcohol carries the essential oils to your skin and then evaporates, leaving the oils behind. You'll also use some water and glycerin to dilute the essential oils to make them safe to apply to your skin.

The pros of making it this way is that the ingredients are easy to find at the grocery store or health food store.

Cons are that it does smell like alcohol and that it separates. You'll need to shake this pretty much every time before you use it.

ALCOHOL

You can use either rubbing alcohol or vodka for this recipe. I find that the rubbing alcohol smells like, well, rubbing alcohol. I don't find it a pleasant scent at all. When I do use alcohol to make sprays, I use vodka.

I just use a mid to low grade vodka for making recipes. It's the same one I use for my vanilla extract. If you're not sure which one to use, ask the clerk for the best vodka to make vanilla extract.

You want use a low to mid grade vodka. There's no sense in spending a lot of money on it to use it this way because the more expensive kind won't give you better results when you're making perfume.

DISTILLED WATER

I only use distilled water in my recipes. Tap water can have germs in it. Vodka will kill germs, but I still prefer distilled water. I have well water, so there's iron and other sediments in my water. Distilled gives me purer water.

VEGETABLE GLYCERIN

Add glycerin to help the scent last longer. It kind of "sticks" to the essential oil and your skin, so it locks the scent on your skin.

You can omit the glycerin, but you may need to reapply the perfume more often.

ESSENTIAL OIL PERFUME INGREDIENTS WITH ALCOHOL

15 percent Essence of Pumpkin Pie essential oil blend
65 percent alcohol
15 percent distilled water
5 percent vegetable glycerin

DIRECTIONS

To make this recipe, you'll have to do some math. Since I'm working with a 10 ml perfume bottle, assuming that I want to make one bottle of perfume, I'll use:

1.5 ml essential oils
6.5 ml alcohol
1.5 ml distilled water
0.5 ml vegetable glycerin

If you use a different sized bottle or want to make this in batches, just calculate how much final product you'll need.

Then take each percent and move the decimal to the left two places. Multiply that number by the number of ounces or ml that you need.

So if I want to make 30 ounces of product, my equation for essential oils will be 0.15 x 30 = 4.5. I'd need 4.5 ounces of essential oils.

Just mix your ingredients in the bottle or in a container and pour into your bottle.

ESSENTIAL OIL PERFUME WITHOUT ALCOHOL

As I said, I do not like using alcohol in my perfumes because it bothers my husband's breathing. I also just don't like the alcohol smell. Instead, I use cyclomethicone.

CYCLOMETHICONE

Cyclomethicone is a silicone oil. It is a conditioning agent and solvent. It's main use is to carry other products and then evaporate. It's a light product, and it feels weightless on your skin.

The molecules of cyclomethicone are too big to penetrate the skin, so it sits on top of the skin. This helps the fragrances that you add to it stay on top of the skin.

While cyclomethicone isn't a natural product, it isn't considered harmful, mostly due to the fact that it sits on top of your skin and isn't absorbed. It's found in many hair and body products, so you've probably already used it.

ESSENTIAL OIL PERFUME INGREDIENTS WITHOUT ALCOHOL

DIRECTIONS

Use cyclomethicone mixed with essential oils in a 1:5 ratio at the highest ratio.

So for my 10 ml sprayer bottle, use at most 2 ml essential oils.

You can use less than 20 percent essential oils. It depends on how strong the smell is from your oils and how strong you want your DIY perfume. I like a lighter perfume, so I use more like 1 ml to 9 ml cyclomethicone.

The easiest way to make just a few bottles is to fill the bottle with the essential oil first and then fill with cyclomethicone.

I used a dropper to get the cyclomethicone in the small bottle.

You can also make a bigger batch by calculating how much total perfume you need and multiplying by 20 percent to see how much essential oil you need. Then subtract that from the total to see how much cyclomethicone you need.

I hope this helps you make your own DIY pumpkin spice perfume with essential oils.

Personally, I like making perfume without alcohol just because I don't like the alcohol smell. Cyclomethicone is fairly inexpensive, so I just keep that on hand and use it for perfumes and body sprays.

If you make this with cyclomethicone, it also makes a great hair perfume. If your hair needs a little freshening up, spray a little bit of this. The cyclomethicone works to decrease frizz, so it makes your hair look and smell better.