When I was in 4th or 5th grade, the girl across the street (whom I shall call SC because her name is recognizable and I haven’t seen her in years so I’m not sure if she’d appreciate being identified as a participant in this fiasco) and I decided we wanted to make perfume. Why? Well, that’s obvious. I had about 4 zillion empty plastic film canisters and I needed something to put in them. Duh.
The first thing we did was walk around my parents’ yard looking for something that smelled great. Roses? Nah. Too pretty. Grass? Nah. Too earthy. Marigolds? YES! They were juuuuust right. So we picked the marigolds and took them into the kitchen. SC said (and I remember this statement as if it were yesterday), “The first ingredient in perfume is alcohol.” Therefore our next task was to go to the bathroom to find some rubbing alcohol. Only there wasn’t any. There was, however, lemon scented nail polish remover. We figured it would work. Plus, it had the added bonus of a fresh lemon scent.
Our next plan of action was to extract the scent from the marigolds. What better way to extract scent than by heating up our concoction?
Sooooo…we heated up one of my mother’s sauce pans and proceeded to pour the nail polish remover in it. The whole bottle.
On an unrelated note, did you know that nail polish remover is very very flammable? I would even go so far as to say “highly flammable”. As you can imagine, the heated nail polish remover sprang up into a geyser-like shower and then fell back in the pan.
SC and I shrugged our shoulders then added the marigolds. Ahhhh, the lovely scent of marigolds mixed with lemon nail polish remover. We really should have marketed the stuff.
Looking back on it, perhaps this failure could be classified as a success of some sort. After all, we managed to not burn down the house in our pursuit of olfactory greatness.
Mary,
I totally remember doing this! I don’t, however, remember almost starting a fire–but, wow–we were lucky! Not the best idea, but what else are you going to do during the summer in Windemere? Thanks for reminding me of this–it totally made my day!
LOL I love this story!!!!!!
You did it! I am glad you did accurately identify your cohort. I was afraid I seriously had memory issues. Such a funny story….I will be sure to consult you two if I ever need homemade perfume!