Are you a fragrance lover? Do you enjoy layering perfumes and sampling new scents whenever you’re at Sephora or a department store? If so, you’re going to love the latest addition to Zaytoona in River Park.
Zaytoona (which means olive) is renowned for its wide variety of gourmet, locally sourced olive oils and vinegars. Their aesthetically beautiful boutique also offers low-waste home and body care products, imported teas, delicious pastas, children’s gifts, and more. Now, they are offering a brand-new customer experience: a fragrance bar!
Zaytoona’s fragrance bar is the first of its kind in the Fresno area. Shoppers can walk in anytime during business hours and, with direction from the store’s helpful staff, learn how to make their own custom fragrance. I took my mom for her birthday, and we both tried our hand at making our own perfumes.
When you’re creating your own fragrance, you can choose between making a perfume in a spray bottle or an oil-based roll-on perfume. My mom and I both chose the spray bottles, which offer a generous amount of product and were a very reasonable $35.
We worked with the store’s owner, Summer, who guided us through the process from start to finish. We began by smelling the wide selection of fragrance oils available for mixing and narrowed them down to our favorite three. (You can choose more than three, but three is recommended for the best results.)
Summer then helped us determine which of the fragrance oils would be best for the top notes (the initial scent you notice right away), the middle notes (the scent that lingers longer and complements the top note), and the base note (which lingers for hours and typically has a deeper, earthier, or richer fragrance).
Our next step was to measure out the appropriate amount of each fragrance oil to make our desired scents. We then combined the oils in a beaker before mixing them with the perfume base in the spray bottle and screwing the top on. The fragrance I made had bergamot as a top note, lemon as a middle note, and vanilla as a base. I love the way it smells – it’s like a fresh, sugary vanilla lemon scent.
It takes about three days for all of the fragrance oils to fully distill into the perfume base. Afterward, you may still see oil floating on top of the water base of the perfume. However, the fragrance molecules will have fully mixed with the base, and whether you shake your bottle with each use or not, you will still get a lovely scent with each spritz.
The whole experience of making our own fragrances was pleasant, relaxing, and fun. Summer is patient, kind, and a lovely host. She also offers specialty coffees and teas you can enjoy while you work on your creations. My mom and I each enjoyed a whipped coffee, which was a perfect afternoon pick-me-up.
Zaytoona is located in the River Park Shopping Center across from Tilley’s and a couple of doors down from Sephora. They are open daily from 11 am to 6 pm.
Leave a Reply