Make your own perfume

We use the same class of materials as the fragrances you'd buy at a department store counter — absolutes, CO₂ extracts and essential oils. Coming to one of our bars is closer to going perfume shopping than to doing a craft, except you're choosing rather than picking from a shelf. We're run by trained perfumers and formulate everything ourselves in our lab in New Lenox, Illinois.

The part you can measure is concentration: every perfume made at our bars is an eau de parfum at 50–60% fragrance material to perfumer's alcohol, which is why it's still with you at the end of the day. Alongside that — signature scents we've developed in house and you choose from in advance, six base styles to build on, signage suggesting blends, and blend recording at events where the pace allows.

Nothing meaningful — they're different names for the same activity. A perfume bar, a scent bar, a fragrance workshop, a perfume making class and a custom fragrance experience all describe blending a bespoke perfume from raw materials with guidance.

The real differences between providers are who guides you, how many materials you can choose from, and whether they're working from raw materials or pre-mixed bases. Ours is led by a trained perfumer with sixty-plus materials, formulated in our own lab.

That's a fragrance consultation, which is a lovely thing and a different service. A perfume bar is a hosted station for a group, so with a roomful of guests everyone's working at once rather than one at a time.

What you get instead is a scent library developed by a trained perfumer, laid out so you can explore it yourself, with signage suggesting blends that work and hosts on hand for questions. Most people find they need far less help than they expected, which is usually a nice surprise.

If you do want a scent built around you specifically, we offer that as a fragrance consultation — one to one, unhurried, at our Mokena studio or your home. Consultations start at $450.

Both are available, and you choose which. At the Mini and Full bars you create your own perfume from raw materials — pick a base style, then build on it. Nothing you make already exists, and nobody else will have it.

At the Signature Bar you choose from up to twelve finished scents we've developed in house and personalize from there. It's the better fit when there's less time at the table, or for guests who'd rather not start from scratch. The Full Bar offers both in the same room.

A base is the foundation your perfume is built on. You pick the style you want to work from — floral, masculine, fresh, musk, sophisticated or gourmand (sweet) — and then blend on top of it.

Six come as standard at the Mini and Full bars, and we can expand to eight or ten. Picking a base first is what makes blending from sixty or a hundred and twenty materials feel manageable — it gives you a direction before you start, rather than a blank page.

The size of the scent library, and how much blending guests do. The Signature Bar offers up to 12 finished signature scents developed in our lab — guests choose and personalise rather than blending from scratch. The Mini Bar has 60+ fragrance materials to blend from. The Full Bar has 120+, including a family of signatures for anyone who'd rather not start from raw materials.

Mini and Full both include 6 bases, expandable to 8 or 10. With the Signature Bar you also choose which scents we bring and whether the selection leans feminine, masculine or unisex — many of our signatures are unisex, which tends to matter at a mixed event.

Consultations start at $450, at our Mokena studio or at your home.

It's a different service to a perfume bar. A bar is a hosted station for a group; a consultation is one to one and unhurried, with time to work back and forth until the scent is right. People book them for a personal signature scent, a wedding fragrance, or a gift they want to get properly right. Email us and we'll talk it through before anything is booked.

Adult perfume bars start around $500, depending on your guest count and the style of bar you want.

We quote each event rather than publishing a fixed grid, because no two look the same. Tell us the occasion, the date and roughly how many people and we'll send an itemized quote. There are no travel fees, no service fees and no automatic gratuity.

Two other things are priced separately: children's parties, from $475 as a base for up to eight guests, and one-to-one fragrance consultations, from $450.

Most adult perfume bars run one to two hours, depending on the style you book. At a large reception the station runs continuously across the evening and each guest spends two to four minutes at the bar.

The blending itself takes roughly forty minutes. The rest is smelling the library, learning the structure, and bottling.

No — you don't need any experience to make your own perfume. Most people arrive saying they don't know how to describe what they like. That's the normal starting point, and smelling your way through the library sorts it out faster than any explanation would.

The library is laid out by family, everything is labelled, and there's signage at the bar suggesting blends and combinations that work — so if you'd rather not make every decision yourself, you don't have to. Our hosts are there throughout if you want to ask what something is. Nothing assumes you know what a chypre is or can name a base note.

Much closer to buying perfume. When you make your own perfume here, the materials on our table are the same class used in the fragrances sold at a department store counter, and what you leave with is a genuine eau de parfum at 50–60% concentration — stronger than a lot of what's on those counters.

The experience is like a fragrance hall in the sense that you're smelling real perfumery materials and deciding between them. The difference is that instead of choosing which bottle to buy, you're deciding what goes in it.

Absolutes, CO₂ extracts and essential oils — the same class of materials used in the fragrances you'd buy at a department store counter. All skin-safe and compliant with IFRA standards, sourced from US suppliers, and formulated in our own New Lenox, Illinois lab.

Ingredient information is available on request, always and in advance. If you have sensitivities, tell us when you book and we'll plan around them.

Not automatically — at a standard perfume bar we don't record individual recipes. A bar moves along at a good clip with guests coming and going, and pausing to write down every blend would hold up the table.

If keeping the recipe matters to you, do mention it when you book. At slower-paced events we can build it in, and it's much easier to plan for than to add later. A fragrance consultation includes it as standard.

15 ml or 20 ml, and it's an eau de parfum spray at 50–60% fragrance material to perfumer's alcohol. That's a genuine fragrance concentration, not a scented water or a body mist.

Everything we make is an EDP. We don't do lotions, oils or room scents — one product, made properly. Larger and additional bottles can be added at any booking; ask when you book.

You can make your own perfume anywhere in Chicagoland, greater Milwaukee or the Indianapolis metro — with no travel fee in any of those markets. Our studio is in Mokena, Illinois and our lab is in New Lenox.

That includes the city of Chicago, the North Shore, the western and northwest suburbs, the Fox Valley, Northwest Indiana and the southwest suburbs.

Adults of any age can make your own perfume with us — the bar on this page is built for grown-ups, for bridal showers, girls nights, corporate events, milestone birthdays. It's our signature offering and the majority of what we do.

We also run a separate children's version for ages 7 and up, packaged and priced differently. See our kids and teens party pages for that — it uses a different scent library chosen for younger noses.

No. Perfume blending is a dry, contained activity — pipettes, small beakers and testing strips on a covered surface. It's the tidiest thing we do.

At a mobile event we bring our own linens and coverings, set up completely, and pack out with the table as we found it. Cleanup is included in the price.

Six to eight weeks for most Saturdays. If you want to make your own perfume in May or December, book further out — those are our busiest months and often go two to three months ahead.

Weekday and Sunday dates are usually available with much shorter notice than Saturdays. If your date is close, ask anyway — we can often make it work.

Yes, as an add-on — custom labels carry a name, a date, a monogram or a full logo, and are quoted by quantity and design. They're printed in advance, so they need ordering when you book rather than on the day.

If you'd rather not, bottles come with our own Glitters & Grace label, which people tend to like. We print in the lab rather than at the bar, so custom labels just need deciding early. They're our most popular add-on for weddings, corporate events, mitzvahs and quinceañeras, where the bottle doubles as the favor.

Yes. They're a common gift for birthdays, Mother's Day and Christmas.

Email perfume@glittersandgrace.com and we'll arrange one, including a version you can print if it's a last-minute gift.