OSS - basenote mix 1 and 2
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.
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.
My nose vs. Martial Arts - I am so screwed
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...
Let´s get started!
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.
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.
