I've made three bottles so far. I used recipes I saw here. I made EM sweetener, strawberry, and "snake oil" clone.

A few things I now know:

1. When you buy 12 nic, 100% vg, you're getting 6 nic if you want 50/50 pg/vg. This was a huge der der der moment for me... I ordered the nicotine a few months ago "just because," but I didn't give it much thought when I did.

2. If you store your nicotine in the freezer, let it come to room temperature before you try to suck it up with a syringe.

3. You need more syringes than you think you do (I have some here because we build rockets and use them for epoxy - they are sterile and packaged individually. 1 ml and 3 ml).

4. Pouring ethyl maltol crystals is trickier than you think it will be. They also don't want to dissolve very easily, even if you plunk the bottle into hot water for awhile.

5. All of those ideas you had for "recipes" before: When you are staring at the collection, your mind goes blank and you start to worry about which % you should use of each one even if you do come up with an idea for a recipe. I guess you have to just go for it and expect failure - this is hard for a control freak to do.

6. Bottles: You also need more of these than you think you'll need...

:) So anyway, those are the things that I noticed FOR ME, and maybe someone else who is also starting out, can benefit from it.

Thank you, you guys, for the encouragement to try it. I like projects, and learning new things, so this was pretty fun.

Edit: Whomever made the snake oil clone recipe: It's friggin' YUM-MEE! I've never tried the real one, but this is great! :)