Patients who came to see social worker Dorothy McCall in her Mt. Lebanon office started noticing a strange effect when they arrived for appointments.

The scents from McCall's perfumery next door permeated the second-story Washington Road office and began to calm them as soon as they walked in the door.

McCall, who also owns Kingsbury Fragrances, a custom perfumery, is not surprised her two worlds mesh so well.

"I have so many people coming to me with stress," McCall said. "I think we need to have a culture of self-care."

On one side of the suite is McCall's social work office and on the other is a small, two-room area where she displays and assembles her perfumes, candles, hand-made soaps and pieces of art, including decanters and display boxes.

Four days a week, she sees patients. And whenever she's not doing that, she's experimenting with scent in her Oakland home or assembling gifts in the perfumery.

"When we inhale, it goes right to the limbic system of the brain, which is where we get feeling," she said. "Aroma can change a mood faster than anything."

McCall, 57, a seventh-generation Texan, has lived in Pittsburgh since 1981, when she came here to get her doctorate in social work at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her patients include people working through stress, depression and adjustment reaction, a condition that plagues people who've lost their support network after a move, divorce or other life-altering change.

She sees lots of patients who must be reminded to take care of themselves. Simple advice, such as getting to bed early, having family or communal dinners and eating right, are important for them to get balance.

But one of her biggest pieces of advice is to use creativity to rebalance their energy and reduce stress.

McCall's creativity comes out when she mixes fragrances, and it takes her back to soothing times spent with her grandmother, Dorothy Kingsbury. McCall would run to her grandmother's room to open her scarf drawer and smell the perfume or bathe with her Delagar Bath Oil Beads.

McCall named the boutique for her grandmother, who died when McCall was 12.

McCall's love of learning and of fragrance lead her to become a certified aroma therapist through the Australasian College of Health Sciences, based in Portland, Ore. Through her studies, she took a trip to Provence, France, in 2001, where she created the fragrance Tres Bon in four hours.

She considers it her signature, with top notes of rose de mai, citrus and bergamot.

"It's my workhorse. It can do anything," she said, noting the fragrance works well in soap, candles and lotions, even though some scents aren't that flexible.

In addition to the scents she creates from her own ideas, McCall will blend custom fragrances to the customer's liking, even taking such vague instructions as "Make it smell like roses and the wind" to make a scent.

And even though certain essential oils are credited with relaxation or rejuvenation, McCall said it only matters what the customer likes because some oils can have the opposite, or paradoxical, effect on people.

"Their noses choose. It's not me telling them," she said.

McCall, who opened the diminutive boutique in 2004, wants to keep it small so she can continue to do everything herself, by hand, including the packaging, which she said is just as important as what's inside.

"I don't like to buy fragrances that aren't beautiful," McCall said, pointing out handmade Russian boxes and hand-painted Indian eggs that hold soaps and small bottles.

Many of the items are $25 or less; the most expensive, 3.4 ounces of eau de parfum priced at $75.

The goal is to transport people into a world of heavenly smells.

"Aroma is beauty," she said. "I want to take care of people aromatically," she said.

Kingsbury Fragrances, 673 Washington Road, is open from 6 to 9 p.m. Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays.