Perfuming Basics

[DrSmellThis]

Liberty's great, but not the

absolute best. It's just a wholesale place, and you have to buy at least $50 worth.

SPOs are not essential

oils. They're synthetics.

[CptKipling]

I've just mixed up Himalaya and

Mr Randy Pants...

Himalaya smells great! It hasn't settled yet, I think it's the Jasmine and Neroli diluted in

jojoba that causes it to need a bit more time. I might need to add a drop more benz, rose geranium and pine, but as

I said it'll need a while before I'll really know.

Mr Randy Pants it a bit strange (probably because of the

diluted neroli again). The neroli is very strong in the bottle but on my skin it all blends very well.

[DrSmellThis]

Cool. You might see if you can

mix the original Randy, from close to the beginning of the thread. The best way is to dilute some cinnamon leaf in

jojoba and add it little by little.

There are far worse things than smelling too much like jasmine and neroli.

That's a good, safe place to be. From there it's easy to add a bit more of something else.

You are correct to

let it mature a bit. Things can change.

Out of the bottle smell is not what matters. Lots of great perfumes

smell weird right out of the bottle. Usually they fix the lid so you can't even smell it right from the bottle.

[CptKipling]

Yeah Randy Pants is fine, but I

think Himalaya needs some added.


Any ideas Doc? I have about 5 minutes experience at this and don't want to

spoil what I already have trying to make it pefect. It needs to be a bit fresher, prettier and girlier to suit her

age.

This is what I was thinking of adding:
1 Lemon
1 Pine
1 Neroli
1 Patchouli

But then, as I said,

what on earth do I know

[DrSmellThis]

You want to add more citrusy,

floral and sweet stuff to make it more girly. So what do you think?

[Silver]

DST,

Thanks for the reply! Ok

so spmo's are synthetics, but what do you think about them as scents? Are they fairly good, mediocre, or really

incomparable to real EO's for making perfumes? Also, how is their fragrance strength?

I'm thinking about

getting a supply of EO's as a Christmas present to myself. I compiled this list from the fragrances that appeal to

me the most and from what seems to be the most useful in many perfumes. Could you look it over for me and tell me

what you think? Thanks

Orange flower (3.69, .12 oz,

12.47)

Osmanthus (2.31, .08 oz, $13.50)

Jasmine sambac (3.69, .12 oz, $12.10)

Rose

Anatolian absolute (2.31, .08 oz, 8.75)





Sandlewood (3.69, .08 oz., $7.10)



Ylang Ylang (14.79, .5 oz,

$6.88)

Patchouli (14.79, .5 oz, $2.90)

Bergamot (14.79, .5 oz, $5.31)

Vetiver (14.79, .5

oz, $6.58)

Clary Sage (14.79, .5 oz,

$3.76)

Cinnamon Leaf (14.79, .5 oz,

$1.93)

Ginger Lily (14.79, .5 oz, $4.97)





myrrh somalia(2.31, .08 oz, $1.73)

anise Egypt (3.69,

.12 oz, $2.04)

valerian (3.69, .12,

$1.98)

orange sweet florida (29.57, 1 oz,

$1.82)

orange bitter (7.39, .25 oz,

$2.16)

Pink grapefruit (7.39, .25 oz,

$2.71)

Ginger china (7.39, .25 oz., $2.25)


What

thinkest thou?

~Silver

[DrSmellThis]

DST,

Thanks

for the reply! Ok so spmo's are synthetics, but what do you think about them as scents? Are they fairly good,

mediocre, or really incomparable to real EO's for making perfumes? Also, how is their fragrance strength?

I'm

thinking about getting a supply of EO's as a Christmas present to myself. I compiled this list from the fragrances

that appeal to me the most and from what seems to be the most useful in many perfumes. Could you look it over for me

and tell me what you think? Thanks

Orange flower (3.69, .12 oz,

12.47)

Osmanthus (2.31, .08 oz, $13.50)



Jasmine sambac (3.69, .12 oz, $12.10)

Rose Anatolian absolute (2.31, .08 oz, 8.75)



Sandlewood (3.69, .08 oz., $7.10)



Ylang Ylang

(14.79, .5 oz, $6.88)

Patchouli (14.79, .5 oz,

$2.90)

Bergamot (14.79, .5 oz, $5.31)

Vetiver (14.79, .5 oz, $6.58)

Clary Sage (14.79,

.5 oz, $3.76)

Cinnamon Leaf (14.79, .5 oz, $1.93)



Ginger Lily (14.79, .5 oz, $4.97)





myrrh somalia(2.31, .08 oz, $1.73)

anise Egypt (3.69,

.12 oz, $2.04)

valerian (3.69, .12, $1.98)



orange sweet florida (29.57, 1 oz, $1.82)

orange bitter (7.39, .25 oz, $2.16)

Pink grapefruit

(7.39, .25 oz, $2.71)

Ginger china (7.39, .25 oz.,

$2.25)


What thinkest thou?

~Silver

I've used SPMO, and jasmine SMO and juniper

SMO in small quantities in perfuming, but I would not look at them as primary ingredients. They would be useful

mainly to round out a note in a novel way in advanced application if you are interested in them as fragrance

chemicals. I do think those smell good for what they are.

But I would always advocate for pure EOs and I like

the list you posted. I'm glad you are using your own taste. That is how I initially approached it, before I learned

that many oils I'd never wear alone have important functions in perfuming. But it's good to get a core list of

things you really like and work with them. Is the ginger lily a pure EO, or a fragrance?

[Silver]

Is the

ginger lily a pure EO, or a fragrance?

Libterty says:
GINGER LILY INDIA


HYDICUM SPICATUM


Ingredient Type - ESSENTIAL

OIL
Extraction Method - STEAM DISTILLED
Safety

Guidelines - Not For Internal Use

I was kind of confused, too, because I had bought a gingerlily

scent before that I really liked, but I thought it was ginger and lily. Then I saw this and was like OOO!! MUST

HAVE!

It looks like a pure EO, right?

~Silver

[Silver]

Oh and, I had two other questions

(sorry, thanks)

Osmanthus - have you smelled this before? Nature's gift gave such a raving review of

theirs(http://www.naturesgift.com/essential

/descriptionm-o.htm#Osmanthus) that I felt I HAD to have some, but theirs was so ridiculously expensive that I

decided to try liberty's. What do you think of Osmanthus? Is it all they hyped it up to be? And do you think it

will vary by batch and supplier very much like liberty says?

Oh and, what is the difference between orange

flower and neroli? I have seen (orange blossom) next to neroli many times.

Thanks so much, it's amazing to have

an expert in the house.

~Silver

[CptKipling]

You want to

add more citrusy, floral and sweet stuff to make it more girly. So what do you think?

How about more:



Lemon
Bergamot
Jasmin
Benzoin

...but I don't know about the ratios, would it be safe to just add one drop

each and see what happens, or should I do it one at a time - if so, in what order?

[DrSmellThis]

Orange (which is sweeter than

lemon), bergamot, ylang (freshness), lavender (ditto), neroli, jasmine, anise, labdanum (sweetness), and benzoin

(mildness, sweetness) could all help you. Lemon would be OK too, but less quantity than the orange.

You could

use the ratios they are already in as a guide on how much of each to add.

You could also get some sugar free

bourbon vanilla alcohol extract from the supermarket and drip a little in at the end after maturation.

Have you

thought of 1 drop diluted EW? You could dilute some in everclear to make something that smells roughly as strong as

an EO.

Ultimately you just have to smell it carefully after each drop; try to remember the smells; and judge for

yourself. Add more of the ones you like in the pefume and less of the ones you don't. You might not use all the

ones I suggested.

Just go gradually; set a goal for the smell in your imagination before you begin; and

quit as soon as you've achieved what you want.

[DrSmellThis]

You

can prepare a very good carpet freshener according to the following recipe:

3/4 cup Borax
1 cup Baking soda
1/2

cup Cornstarch
For your essential oils mix in a 1/4oz bottle these real essential oils:

50 drops Lemon
30

Lavender
20 Cedar
10 rosemary
10 patchouli
10 Peppermint
10 Thyme
10 pine

Mix with the powder and sprinkle

from a sugar container. Vacuum after an hour.

[belgareth]

You

can prepare a very good carpet freshener according to the following recipe:

3/4 cup Borax
1 cup Baking

soda
1/2 cup Cornstarch
For your essential oils mix in a 1/4oz bottle these real essential oils:

50 drops

Lemon
30 Lavender
20 Cedar
10 rosemary
10 patchouli
10 Peppermint
10 Thyme
10 pine

Mix with the powder

and sprinkle from a sugar container. Vacuum after an hour.

Be careful to use seldom and vacuum

well. Borax is a crystal and has sharp edges. It will damage the carpet fibers and cut it's life by quite a bit.

[belgareth]

Could I get some feedback or

ideas here. Jessica, my SO loves the perfume Shalimar so I decided to look into getting her some for Christmas. That

stuff is expensive!!!! It's more expensive than gold. Retail is about $250 for a 1/2 oz bottle of the perfume. EDT

and EDP are both cheaper but I wanted to get her the real stuff. The best price I could find was about $100. Is that

a reasonable price? Is it really worth that?

[DrSmellThis]

My personal experience with

Shalimar was that it was very nice but not as amazing as I expected. It is a classic oriental perfume with a vanilla

note. I like that type of perfume in general. It is not all natural, and does have some synthetic ingredients. I

wouldn't spend that kind of money unless I liked it on her quite a bit, since you'd have to live in that

olfactory environment too. Get a sample first.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with getting an EDT or whatever

instead of the "perfume" version, as it's just a matter of concentration. It's even possible you could like a

weaker version of something better. It would help to try the different concentrations.

[belgareth]

She wears it pretty often and my

sense of smell is limited but it isn't bad. 6-8 months ago we were shopping and she commented on wanting to try the

perfume but never been able to afford it. I've already bought her a couple other things for Christmas but was

considering that because she likes it.

Thanks for the input.

[DrSmellThis]

Good luck. Christmas shopping

can be stressful.

[CptKipling]

Hi Doc, here's how Himalaya

ended up...

Unfortunately I ran out of Jasmine and Neroli just as I was modifying, but they are still very

prominant the blend.

The final drop ratios are like this:

7 Lemon
1

Pine
12 orange
13 Bergamot
5 (and a bit - a couple

of drops of 10%) Neroli
4 Rose Geranium
6

lavender
6 Ylang Ylang
7 (and a bit - a couple of drops of 10%)

Jasmine
3 Clary Sage
1 cinnamon
3

anise
8 benzoin
2 Labdanum
3

Sandalwood
2 Patchouli
2 Frankincense
1

myrrh
1 valerian

I think I might put another drop of benzion in, but it smells a

lot more like the scent I was aiming for now.

[DrSmellThis]

Another drop of benzoin won't

hurt, except that it would slightly "muffle the top note". That is the main down side or trade off of benzoin. Did

you add the alcohol and water? Did you let it mature?

Most importantly -- does your girlfriend like it, and do

you like it on her?

Lastly -- did you add mones?

[CptKipling]

It's still maturing But I

think it's just about ready now, I don't want to fiddle with it too much.

I don't have access to strong

enough alcohol, but I'm going to add jojoba. I could find some though (is Chem Set alc ok?). Would it even work to

use alcohol with jojoba diluted Jasmine and Neroli?

I'm going to add some EW, -nol and NPAw at the end.

[DrSmellThis]

Chem set alcohol is not

OK, as it's only 50%. Can't you get grain alcohol? Jojoba would be better, then.

I'd be extremely careful

with NPA/w, or avoid it altogether this time around. I found it harder to work with than even EW. You can ruin a

perfume quickly, and need some skill to work with it. However, one drop of diluted EW might even improve things. You

want to dilute the EW in jojoba and use your nose in a conservative manner.

[Can'tFocus]

Hey, could you give me a sexy

mix ratio for these oils:

Mix 1.
1.Indian Sandalwood
2.Mandarin
3.Anise

Mix 2:

1. Indian

Sandalwood
2. Burmese Oud (finnest quality)
3. Anise
4. Mandarin

cheers

[DrSmellThis]

Hey,

could you give me a sexy mix ratio for these oils:

Mix 1.
1.Indian Sandalwood
2.Mandarin
3.Anise

Mix

2:

1. Indian Sandalwood
2. Burmese Oud (finnest quality)
3. Anise
4. Mandarin

cheers

It depends on

what you're going for. You might try like 8 sandal, 1-2 anise, 15-25 mandarin, and go from there. For #1, you could

increase the sandal and decrease the mandarin if you want more of a woody note.

For #2, you would want the

sandal much stronger than oud, like 5-1 to start; the anise weak, and the mandarin plentiful by comparison; similar

to before.

It's best to experiment in pairs to get the best ratios. That's how they train perfumers.

[Can'tFocus]

DrSmellThis



Thanks!

[idesign]

Never mind the last post, my desk

is now full of bottles from different sources. Wow this is expensive.

[idesign]

Interesting comments by a noted

fragrance guy. He had a great blog until last year, very nicely written.

From

http://lucaturin.typepad.com/perfume_notes/
By courtesy of Luca Turin

NZZ Folio

4/06
Duftnote

Natural Perfumery

There are now officially four kinds of perfumery: normal, niche, vintage and

natural. Normal is what you find everywhere; niche is what you hope others won't find; vintage is what you find

only if you know what to look for. Where's the natural stuff ? In health stores, next to the rock-salt lamps. They

carry aromatherapy oils, so people have had access to a wide range of plant extracts previously accessible only to

perfumers. This happened at a time when this wonderful-smelling stuff has almost disappeared from the mainstream.

The big six perfumery firms are aromachemicals manufacturers, and it is in their interest to keep naturals, with

their attendant problems of price and quality fluctuations, to a bare minimum. Just how bare that minimum can be has

become clear in the last five years, during which the cost of a «fine fragrance» formulation has gone down

by half and the quality by nine tenths. Good perfumes have almost disappeared: there are 500 launches each year, but

only a dozen are worth smelling twice.
Capitalism hates a vacuum: by popular request, aromatherapists have started

composing fragrances. Unsurprisingly, their creations are supposed to be Good For You. This marketing strategy is no

worse than the usual «Wear this and every man/woman will lust after you», and just as easy to disprove

empirically. But never mind the therapy, how's the aroma? I recently received a sampler of the work of several

US-based natural perfumers. Some were inept. Some were imitations of well-worn themes, i.e. recipes lifted from a

book, competently executed with natural materials. Some were not natural at all, either knowingly (crooks are

uniformly distributed among the population) or unknowingly (including among fragrance suppliers).
But a tiny number

smelled good in a surprisingly new way. I've always believed perfumery is virtual cuisine, not pornography for the

nostril, and these fragrances confirmed this. Natural perfumery may be waiting for another Guerlain, armed not with

vanilla, but this time with a spice no-one outside Szechuan Province has yet heard of. But hasn't all this all been

done already before the invention of chemistry? Surprisingly, no. Serious natural perfumery was indigenous to only a

handful of countries, each using a small number of traditional ingredients. New extraction methods and global trade

now conspire to provide an unprecedented palette. Natural perfumers claim not to be bound by the aesthetic criteria

of classical perfumery: if it survives EU regulations and New Age nonsense, their art may yet deliver on this

promise.

Luca Turin

[idesign]

Interesting

thoughts and nice writing style. I like his final thought...

"And the point for me is not to expect perfumery to

take its place in some nice, reliable, rational world order, but to expect everything else to become like

perfume."

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/b.../detail92.html

[idesign]

Jasmine. There was no formula

posted, just suggestions, and this piqued my interest the most. Its grown beyond just a Jasmine scent as it keeps

getting more interesting. This is about the 10th formulation. I think I do have a nice Jasmine scent though, but

am still working on that too.

work still in progress

[jvkohl]

Interesting

comments by a noted fragrance guy. He had a great blog until last year, very nicely written.

Wish I

had known about his blog. I published a book review of a book written about him. And I would like to have the

opportunity to read more from him.

http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/burr.html

Luca then

contacted me with some pertinent comments about publishing in "Nature." He was very personable, and we even

discussed his more recent research endeavors. This, despite my criticism of him in the review:

"Publication

elicits almost no reaction, and Burr later learns that virtually no one even read the paper. Meanwhile, Turin is

left to wonder why he never was invited to attend an olfactory conference, where he could present his

theory.

To be invited to attend and present at a scientific conference, researchers typically must be fairly

well-known for their contributions to a particular discipline."

It's now easier for me to understand why

Luca Turin broke away from the traditional means to make his work better known. Fifteen years after my first

presentation, I've been invited to attend and present at a Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

conference. If I had not stayed active in other disciplines, 15-years might have been long enough for me to drop

out, like Luca did, from more traditional pursuits.

James V. Kohl
The Scent of Eros

[idesign]

I just realized that I posted a

gateway link above, here is the link directly to Luca Turin's blog, which is posted in PDF format should anyone

want to download or print it. Its quite long

though.

http://lucaturin.typepad.com/perfume_notes/

Nice review James. I've read Turin's writing

extensively and can understand his disinclination to follow the well-trodden path "within the system". He's a

maverick, and suffering fools lightly would not be one of his personal characteristics.

Not that his detractors

or stonewalling adversaries are fools, but it does seem somewhat foolish for anyone in any field to deny the

possibility of others having valid contributions and/or differences. I think its even more important to entertain

views that are opposed to your own.

My dad was a research Engineer, and I grew up hearing about "Vested interests

beat out new ideas. Egos smother creativity. Personalities clash". Its just too bad that self-interest (and ego)

trumps open discussion and progress at so many levels.

BTW, have you read Turin's book? If so what do you

think? Last I read he's working for a company that designs and manufactures chemical scents.

Close with a quote

from Turin's book that has as much to do with pheromones as it does with scent. "though we now know almost

everything there is to know about molecules, we don't know how our nose reads them." (emphasis his).

Take

care,
Greg

PS all quotes but the last from JVK's review.

PPS forgot to ask, what's your take on Turin's

vibrational theory?