Live and learn...!

[Guest guest]

Last week, here in San Francisco, in an elegant little store in the

Castro, I purchased a small glass bottle at a fairly reasonable price

which was sold to me as 'a perfume bottle'. It was topped by a

silver-colored metal flange which had a screw cap topped by a faceted

glass ball. I'm not sure where it was manufactured or by whom. I

brought it home, and filled this pretty little flacon with an

alcohol-based perfume I had made a couple of months ago - what a

wonderful visual effect as well, with the golden-colored perfume

shining through the thick clear glass.

Well, it's been sitting on a shelf here all week. This morning, I went

to pick it up to look at it and enjoy it, when the entire metal flange

top came off the glass. I realized that the metal flange top had been

attached to the glass bottle with an adhesive, and I believe that the

alcohol in the perfume had dissolved the glue - in fact the glue had

become liquid again. Probably if I had put one of the jojoba-based

perfumes in it this might not have happened, but the positive aspect of

having put alcohol-based perfume in it is that I have learned that I

must be much more careful of how I bottle perfumes, since alcohol is a

very effective solvent! Luckily, I'm not in the business and this was

not destined for a customer, only as a present for a friend who likes

the particular perfume I had made. I was going to bring it over to her

tomorrow when we have lunch together.

As the perfume did not spill, I decided to try to take an eyedropper

and return it to the storage bottle. I did so, and then immediately

realized that I had made a terrible mistake and that quite a lot of the

glue had dissolved into the perfume that had been sitting in the little

flacon. And now I have returned it to its original storage bottle, and

now the perfume, which had been quite wonderful, smells like paint

thinner; clearly it has been adulterated by the dissolved adhesive.

Feh!!

I am returning the flacon to the store where I purchased it and will

advise them to make sure that they tell customers that these little

containers are not appropriate for alcohol-based perfumes. And the

previously-lovely perfume is going to have to go down the toilet, I'm

afraid...

Alfred,

wiser in san francisco this morning