dennisanthony

You can relax,  I haven´t been in prison for the last year...

I know that I have been really bad updating this blog, but for some reason life came between me and my bloging...

I have moved house, but you already knew that.
Didn´t I call you up telling you this like almost a year ago?
I am quite sure that I did.

Lately I have been busy building some stonewalls outside and also laying down tiles (or whatever you call that) for my very cool car (hmmmmm).

Both the tiles and the parts of the stonewall are heavy and bruises the arms a lot, so my arms look like I have been in a fight, with a quite nasty scar too.

Of course I tell people that I got that 4 cm scar on my left underarm, when I saved an old lady from being mugged.

"...You mean this scar? Well, you should have seen the other guy!..."

In reality I got it helping my neighbour taking some trees down, but that sounds almost lame compared to the old lady and the mugger story so I´m sticking with that.

I haven´t had to go to the gym for some weeks, since this is quite heavy work.
It is funny, I come home as a whitecollar worker, goes in, change the clothes and then I am bluecollar for the rest of the evening.

"But the perfumes Dennis, the perfumes!"

Yeah, I know that I haven´t been that active, but I am working on it.
I need to replace some of the lighter topnote oils, e.g. the Bergamot, since it has probably oxidized by know and is not that healthy anymore anyway, but the oils aren´t that expensive so it is quite easily done.

I gave up the idea to clean out the test-tubes too and will scrap them all and buy new ones instead.

So far so good...

Btw, do you use Spotify?
http://www.spotify.com/en/

If not, you really should check this one out....free streaming of music and you can find almost anything there.

I have actually used it to listen to album before i buy them.

This is some of the albums I have been listening to lately:

Fat Joe: The Elephant in the Room
http://open.spotify.com/album/166qxs3KsfUaemHNLpxMxt

Sheek Louch: Silverback Gorilla
http://open.spotify.com/album/29twOodumxrUj1qDS41OLG

Flo Rida: R.O.O.T.S.
http://open.spotify.com/album/315T9HtENm6sUXEE7vhgjS

I finally found my text-notes for my infamous mix...

Maybe I should call it "Dennis Anthony: Run like hell" or something...

Btw, this is the last time I will refer to my mixes in "drops", since different oils have way different dropsizes so this is not particular exact.

I will be out travelling this week - to the town Utrecht in Holland of all places! - but after that I will order some measuring cups to be able to make it all more exact.

I will order a batch of new test-tubes too, since it was way to much work cleaning them out properly...and the oil isnt that good to the drain either...

Having said that here is "Run like hell" (as inferred by the name, you should probably not test this mix out)

Everything is in drops for now:

15 Benzoine
15 Bergapten-free Bergamott
15 Sandalwood
6 Patchouli
3 Jasmin
3 Ylang-Ylang
3 Cedar (3 drops of Cedar ruined the whole mix! Damn you Cedar, damn you!)
3 Olibanum

I would guess (and I will try that later) that if you take away the Cedar, the mix will be quite good...

I have come to the conclusion that I really like Benzoine and Sandalwood...maybe I should do this supermix with these as the only notes?

Person 1: "What was that?? I smelled Vanilla and Sandalwood? And ONLY Vanilla and Sandalwood? WTH??"
Person 2: "Dont mind that, it´s only Dennis testing his supermix"

Well, there went the top-heart-base notes idea right out the window, didnt it?

The fun part with this is that I dont pretend to be a professional nose (these guys probably havent trained Martial Arts and screwed up their nose anyway and I probably have a greater hairstyle too!) and I dont really care about how traditional scents should be composed (not everytime anyway!), so if I do a mix that I like and it is not top-heart.base, well, screw that!

That´s all for now.
If more comes to my mind, I´ll call you at home.

What can I say?
I havent been able to write for a while now as it has been quite turbulent in my life.

I was in the US (as you can see from my other postings) and as soon as I got home we started to move house:

We are finally installed at the new place, which feels good (we went from 98 m2 to 134 m2)
One of the better part of moving house btw is that my nose feels better. I think there must have been something in the air or air circulation at the old place that fucked up my nose.

Moving together with a quite turbulent time at the office (where upper management was replaced) and me travelling like crazy doing presentations all over Scandinavia made this blog and my perfume blending not my highest priorities.

Things are calming down now - thank God - so I will probably start updating this blog and blending mixes again.

So now you know that I am still alive and will be back quite soon with more mixes and stuff.

Until then....

So here I am sitting, in a rainy Sunnyvale (whoever moron came up with that name to begin with?) at my hotelroom at the Grand Hotel listening to Itunes and a "new" CD in with 2Pac (All Eyes on Me) I bought at the Virgin Store in SFO. The guy was shot some 10 years ago, but the record-companies still releases remixes and what-not with the guy. But he knew how to make songs 2Pac, he really did.

Soon I will join my friends going out to a Chinese restaurant, but for know I update my blog.

Ok, so I have tested my sampler I brought with me and sure enough the drydown is kinda cool, but for Gods sake Dennis! why did you add Cedar to it?? Why? Why? WHY??

As you can probably infer the Cedar did ruin the scent a little, at least until the Benzoine, Sandalwood and Patchouli take over. So Cedar gotta go in the next batch.

Otherwise Dennis? Everything ok?

Sure, I have been to SFO for a week, living at the Fairmont up at Nob Hill.

Man, what steep streets they are.
Going up to the hotel is like exercising and leaves you completely hot and uncomfortable.

But I dont complain, no way sir.
Well, I actually do right here, but pay no attention to it....

I went to the Apple Store since I found out that my Ipod nano 8 Gb that I bought in Sweden has a freaking volume cap on it, limiting the volume. And why is this, pray?

Well, some stupid French law stipulates this and so Apple send in these crippled Ipods into the whole EU.

Damn you French lawmakers!
I am Swedish and I wish to screw  up my hearing by playing 2Pac on my Ipod really, really loud, ok?

Of course there are utilities out there that can lift this volume cap, but they dont work on the newest Ipod Nanos...so I was basically screwed..

Enter the the Apple Store in SFO....

They helped me for free to re-flash my Ipod with a US firmware.
Good-bye Volume Capper!
Good-bye stupid French laws.
Thank you Apple Store in SFO and the great guys and girls working there.
You have a supporter in me now....this I wont forget.

Ah, and so it ends for this time...the time is soon 18.00 (or 6 PM for you Military Time challanged) and I will soon leave for dinner.

Until next time, Homies, words up!

(For the love of God Dennis!, cut the gangsta-rap bullshit right now...you hear me??)

Im going to the US for a couple of weeks and naturally wont be able to blend stuff during this time...

I did however blend a mix last night after packing all my stuff that was a major improvement on the mix below, that - between you and me - was a *liitle* heavy on the Patchouli side...

Unfortunately I didnt bring the recipe with me as I update my blogg from the lounge at the airport so you have to wait until I come home to find it out....but I did mix it with carrier-oil to 44% to bring with me as a beta-test. I will update you with how it turns out later....

I know, I know, you should let the mix blend for a while, but I didnt have the time for that this time...I woke up at 05.00 AM in the morning to get to the airport early to be the first in line to check-in so I could upgrade my Economy ticket to Business Class and use the lounge while waiting (writing this btw...) and not feel like Quasimodo after a 9 hour flight. Now I hopefully can get some decent sleep on the flight over.

I have decided that I really need small tube-like thingies that is graded in "ml", since counting drops isnt the best way to do this...great, another insight from me, so you dont do the same mistake! ....dropsize varies somewhat depending on the EO used (but you already knew that) so I will get this gear as soon as I come home again.

Until we talk again, take care guys...

As the tradition demands (!) I went into the Old Town again to purchase some more oils.
I had asked the reseller to get Patchouli and Vetiver, but only got the Patchouli since Vetiver for some reason hadnt arrived.

As before I also went to the Sci-Fi bookstore and had a double expresso at the nearby cafe...
I assume that I am a cretaure of habit...or perhaps badly addicted to caffeine...

I actually dont have much time on my hands now for blending.
I work as a technical account manager and I have this glorious lifestyle, which manifest as I have to go up 04.00 tomorrow morning  to fly to Finland for a day full of seminars..

.Wednesday I have to go up 05.00 to go to Åland (which is an island in the Baltic Sea) to meet customers and within a week I will be going to the US for a period of 2 weeks.

I dont know if this happens to you as well, but often when I fly, the air - which is circulated for the duration of the flight - is so dry that my nose just clogs up for a day or two after I land so I have to limit my blending between flights now...

Anyway, here is my latest bledning attempts....you may notice that this time I dont blend the basenotes first, then the heart and last the top-note, but everything at once...

Everything is measured in drops below, but when I get back from the US, I will purchase some measuring thingys I have seen (dont know what they are called...) so I can do "ml" instead of drops.

I have this nagging feeling that 1 drop of Benzoine maybe isnt exactly like 1 drop of Sandalwood etc., but when i can measure it to "ml" I will have it more exactly....


18 patchouli
15 Bergamot (bergapten free)
10 Benzoin
8 Sandalwood
2 Lavandin
2 Ylang-Ylang
1 Jasmine

As I wanted to try this at once - even though a mix should mature I was kinda curious - I took 8 drops of the blend above with 12 drops of Jojoba oil = 40% dillution and put it on my wrist...and I am happy with the scent...

When I am writing this I am waiting for the drydown to see how it turns out as well...stay tuned...

The new mix have now been mixing and maturing approx 18 hours and I just opened the testtube to smell it.

Actually it smells really good.
Yeah, I am as surprised as you are... *LoL*

But frankly, I will dillute it at 25 or 30% in Jojoba and test it on myself later this week.
I will let the mix mature one more day I think.

One thing that annoys me is that in Sweden it is right now snowy (started snowing in Stockholm last night) and cold outside, which makes the air inside the houses very dry due to heating.

This dryness wreak havoc on my nose, so right now my scent isnt top-performing, if it ever was...

I also need to name my scents I think.
It can be quite confusing with all this T1, H1, B2 acronyms, but maybe I should stick to this anyway so it is easier to write down the blends and also mix them all again?

Yeah, I think I stick with the T#, H# and B# for Top-, Heart- respective Basenote for now and let the # stand for the mixnumber.

This way it is easier for you to try the blends yourself as well.

First of all a Happy New year to you all! I havent had the time to update my blog, nor blending notes during the Christmas holiday.

I dont know about you guys, but my Christmas Holiday is a lot of driving around...
We usually celebrate Christmas on 24th of December with my family and my mother and grandmother. The day after we celebrate with my mother-in-law and finally on the 26th of December my grandmother has her birthday.

To top it off I also got some sort of flu, which very effectively stopped me from blending since I couldnt smell a thing for a while...

But the man is back!

Last week I went into the Old Town of Stockholm (which was build in the 13th Century and is the oldest part of Stockholm) to add some oils to my collection for my blendning.

I know that this sounds like I buy my oil from some sort of mysterious shadowy shop in some old back-alley, and it would be a nice touch if it were like this, but the truth is just that in the Old Town there happens to be a reseller for the oil-distributor Crearome that I use. The actually company Crearome is in the south of Sweden and if I buy online from them they have this minimum amount you must purchase and I didnt want to do that this time.

I also managed to visit the Science Fiction bookstore which is also located in the Old Town (www.sfbok.se) and took a double espresso at the Espresso House nearby.

 I mainly bought top and heartnote-oils this time, eg. Bergamott (free of Bergapten), Ylang-Ylang, Jasmine, Petitgrain, Geranium and Lavandin.

And so I began....

First I wanted a topnote which I called T1 :

10 drops Bergamott
10 drops Petitigrain
3 drops Ylang-Ylang
1 drop Jasmine

Then I did a heartnote, which I called H1, which IMHO was a failure...

4 drops Lavandin
4 drops Benzoine
4 drops Rosewood
4 drops Geranium

Frankly, I could have lived without that much  Geranium, since I think that it spoiled the heartnote.
So let the H1 above act as a warning to you... *LoL*

Now I took out the testtube with my old Basenote mix 2 a.k.a. B2 (which I mention below) which was:

6 drops Benzoine
4 drops Sandalwood
2 drops Olibanum
2 drops Cedar

and smelled it along-side T1 and H1 above.

With only T1 it smelled real good, adding  H1 and it was awful, so the H1 had to go....

Finally I made a test-mix with

10 drops of T1
5 drops of B2

which smelled really good, but then again I am biased.

The mix is as I write this resting for a couple of days and then I will try to blend it in 25-30% dillution in Jojoba carrier-oil to test it out.

Stay tuned...

I have made some preliminary testing and creation of a basenote.

As you know a perfume consists of 3 different notes, a basenote, a middle-note (sometimes called a heartnote) and a topnote.

The topnotes have the lightest molecular weight and thus leaves the scent faster than the middle note, that in turn leaves faster than the basenote.

This means that a perfume that you can buy in a store - which has alcohol as the carrier - will "show off " the topnotes when you try the scent out at the store. After a while another feature in the scent will emerge, which is the middle and basenotes.

After some hours you can usually only smell the basenotes, which lingers the longest, due to it heavy moelcular weight.

Why is molecular weight even important?
Well, the scent you smell is actually tiny bits (in reality molecules) of the perfume. So in order to smell the scents you actually get molcules into your nose and to your olfactory organ. The lighter the molecule, eg. in top-notes, the faster you get the moelcules up your nose...which makes the top-notes the scents you smell at first.

Actually Wikipedia explains this way better than me so check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume

OSS basenote 1 & 2:

I have played around with two mixes, wheras the first mix was too influenced by Sandalwood.
The "relative strength" - which is a measure of the strength of an oil relative to other oils - of Sandalwood seems to be quite high. Although not a very-much smelling oil, it lingers and "outlives" other components in the perfume.

So in this first mix, the Sandalwood scent was after a while all that I could smell:

6 drops of Sandalwood
4 drops of Benzoine
2 drops of Olibanum

so I discarded this mix and did this instead.

6 drops of Benzoine
4 drops of Sandalwood
2 drops of Olibanum
2 drops of Cedarwood

which was much better.
The Cedarwood and Olibanum gave this note a burnt scent, while the Benzoine and Sandalwood gave it a very mellow woody/vanilla scent.

I will keep the latter mix as a first try for a base-note and will now get working on a heart-note and top-note.

When both these notes are ready, I will mix and match to see how much of respective note I will blend together to get a good scent.

As you may know, using undiluted essential oils on you skin can be bad for you, so in my tries I have diluted this in Jojoba oil as a carrier.

If you use essential oils for aromatherapy, ie. massaging this in larger areas on the body, the dilution percentage should not exceed 5%, ie. in 100 drops of oil, 95 drops should be the carrier oil and 5 drops the essesntial oil mix.

However, in perfumery I found that 5% is way too little so I have done tests on 20% and 25% dilution, where the 25% was best.

I used myself as a guinea pig and applied the diluted mix on the inside of my wrists to see how long it would stay and that I didnt react badly to it.

For a perfumer your nose is your most valuable tool.

Hmmm, I am soo screwed then!

Let me tell you why:

When I was a little bit younger I trained a lot of Martial arts.

I started out quite young in my pre-teens and trained 4 years of Judo.
In my teens I started out Kyokushinkai Karate but had to stop after approx. 2 years since I hurt a rib and couldnt train for quite some time.

When I was 20 or so I took up Martial Arts again, this time Shotokan Karate which I trained for 6 years and came up the second blue belt which would be 4th Kyu if I remember correctly. During the last years with Karate I competed a couple of time just for the fun of it and came 2nd place as my best.

During this time I went to university to pursue a Master of Science and to get by, I worked as a bouncer at clubs.
To the dismay of my nose I started training Kickboxing during this time since this was good to know when you were working the doors.

When fighting in Kickboxing my nose got quite a lot of beating and it was only later on that i discovered that the partition inside the nose (whatever that is in English) was damaged by this.
 
After a couple of years of Kickboxing I also started to train Krav Maga for a brief time.

All this fighting made a lasting impression, in the way I couldnt breathe from one of my nostrils. During a period of a couple of years I did 2 minor surgeries to see if it was possible to fix the damage and it actually got better for a brief period.

When the breathing problem came back I decided to do some major surgery on my nose to try to restore it one time for all and went under the knife.

Unfortunately for me the operation succeeeded, but I got an infection a week later that almost killed me off and I wound up at the ER, where they pumped me full of antibiotics in IV and heavy-duty  painkillers.
I can tell you that the techno-songs I had with me on my MP3-player at the hospital never has sounded so good as when I was high on the painkillers! Go figure...

Almost 6 months now after that latest surgery I can breathe very good certain days, and other days I have to revert to unblocking nosesprays for my left nostril.

Since one of my hobbies is perfumery this sounds like a no-win situation when i write this down, but even those days when I have trouble breathing through one nostril I still have a quite decent ability to pick up scents with my other nostril, so I get by.

It´s a little bit underdog situation here, but I will turn this around to something good.
If I can do this with the limitations that martial arts imposed on me, then probably you can do it too....

If life gives you a lemon...kick some ass...
 

Someone told me that in order to be interesting for people a blogger should update his/her blogg a couple of times a day. Yeah, I really can see that happen...

Tell you what, as soon as I update I call you at home.

Better yet, check back regularely instead so my phonebill doesnt rack up.

That said, let´s get down to business...

This blogg is going to mainly focus on my feeble tries on making my own perfumes.

I will not hold anything back so you will be able to follow both my successes and failures.

Why? Easy, if I do the mistakes and tell you about it, then you dont have to do them yourself.

I also will introduce a term that is often used in the IT-industry, namely Open Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) but applied to perfumery instead.

For a lack of a better name I will call this Open Source Scents (OSS). With OSS I will - as far as I can - publish the recepies of the scents I make so you can duplicate them if you wish.

If you decide to try this yourself, be advised that is is at your own peril:
Undiluted essential oils are not toys and can do quite a lot of harm to you if swallowed or if you it get into your eyes etc.

DIluted essential oils can - depending on the dilution percentage - also be quite harmful.

If you decide to try out yourself it is your own responsibility to treat your oils etc. with sufficient care and keep them away from children.

Consider yourself  officially warned.