DIY Perfumed Ink

Here's a really simple recipe for making your own perfumed inks. Said to be very popular during the romantic obsessed Victorian era, it's something a little unexpected, especially when used on gift enclosure cards or the addresses of holiday cards, that I've had a lot of fun with over the years.

What You Will Need:
- Ink
- Neat essential oils (meaning it is pure essential oil with no carrier oils added such as sweet almond or jojoba) or certain flavor extracts such as peppermint or very strong herbal tea, again peppermint or of rose petals

How To Do It:
After picking a scent to use, a few drops is added into the bottle of ink and swirled around until the desired level of scent is achieved. For strong scents such as peppermint is will probably only be 2 or 3 drops. Rose, a bit more. Just enough to create an essence but not enough to dilute and weaken the ink too much.

J Herbin also creates and sells these inks created in Italy where they coordinate scents to colors (purple ink is violet scented, red ink is rose and so on). Find them here.

Image: mam for Gave That