You may remember at the end of January I had an incredible #FeelFresh experience in London, thanks to Lights by TENA. They pulled out all the stops to make sure we had a day “feeling fresh” and learning how to make our own fragrance. It was a really great day and I got to meet some lovely bloggers. It was nice to take a day out and try something new: with a glass of champagne in my hand most of the day.
The event was held at the Haymarket Hotel which was absolutely stunning, the staff were really friendly and the decor was inspiring. I loved the underground pool room – gold furniture and mood lighting made it open up the senses. Which was great as we needed them all open, in the creative frame of mind for our masterclass. After a yummy champagne breakfast and a little getting to know everyone, we started to learn about the new “feel fresh or its free!” campaign that Lights by TENA are running at the moment.
I have used Lights by TENA for the past 12 months because of the symptoms I had due to the deformed cells in my cervix. You can read about it in my cervical smear diary post. There are other reason that Lights by TENA come in handy – jumping about on the trampoline with the kids or twirling around in Zumba class. Yes I am talking about bladder weakness. Did you know it’s actually more popular than hay fever? The reason you probably don’t know that is because we never talk about it. How often do you say to your friends about that accident you had the other day? We are embarrassed about it and most of us suffer from it. Why? I am probably far to open and honest for my own good, not so shy to talk about the icky things (as you may have guessed if you are a regular reader of this blog).
The reason I like using these liners is because you do not realise they are there. They are so thin and work in such a way that you just do not feel them. I literally feel fresh all day. In fact Lights by TENA are so confident that you will feel fresh all day they are offering a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. The promotion is valid until the end of June 2017 and on the special packs, you will know as the #FeelFresh sticker will be on the packaging – so look out for it.
After we discussed the campaign, we met Emmanuelle from the Experimental Perfume Club and we had a blast! Emmanuelle took us through the steps to creating our very own perfume, we got to bottle it up and take it home too. I have outlined the steps below as I thought it was very interesting. I named my perfume “head in the clouds” as it smelt very much like that, to me.
Steps to making your own perfume
- Picture the scent you want to make and draw it.
- Understand what our nose tells us. We had 15 different scents and as a group we had to identify them. Some of them were easy to identify and some of them were really difficult. I got through that task by trying to work out how I felt about the smell. One particular smell made me picture an old library and it turned out the smell was leather! I found it quite fascinating.
- Choose a collection of tones to make up the perfume, we were advised to pick around 8 tones. Perfumes have a mixture of base, mid and top tones. The base tones are the smells that linger on your body and the top tones are the initial smells that only last 10 minutes or so.
- We then had to work out, mathematically, how the tones would come together. So 5% of one base note and 10% of a top note for example. We were advised to make up 90% of the perfume to begin with so we could add 10% if the smell didn’t quite work. It was great advice as I had to do just that.
- After we worked out what percentage of tones we needed, we had to weigh out the tones into our bottles. One by one, bit by bit.
- When we were happy with the smells, we could label the bottle and name our perfume.
My perfume reminded me of a home fragrance, something you would get in an oil burner. I love smelling it every now and again, it reminds me of a lovely day and definitely “feeling fresh”. You can find out more about the #FeelFresh campaign on the Lights by TENA website: www.lightsbytena.co.uk/about-feel-fresh.
