Extracting Fragrance from Fresh Herbs and flowers

I've been experimenting with my garden lavender attempting to find the best way to extract the fragrance for cologne, insect repellent, and room spray. In the past, I've tried soaking fresh herbs in vodka for a week, but the herbs smelled like they went bad. I tried it again with lavender for a shorter duration, just overnight, and the next day it smelled like it had turned. I could still smell a hint of lavender under a heavy grain smell. Instead of throwing it out, I added water and boiled it in the microwave for four minutes. Somehow this worked, and although it has a brown cast to it, the liquid smelled very good with a light to moderate lavender scent. The heavy brown scent went away.

I'll be using this lavender water as a base for my next batch of insect repellent spray.

Here is a recipe that I'd like to try for rose petal perfume using fresh rose petals. This involves soaking the petals overnight in oil.