Intuition

Sometimes your first intuition is the best. I'm working for years on the same perfume, it's a perfume that I wanted to smell delicate, floral, smooth, gentle, soft and feminine. This perfume is inspired by the blossom of magnolia and I created it for my sister in law, who loves delicate flowery perfumes. It's not a soliflor perfume but contains a bouquet of many other white flowers, like freesia, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, Lilly of the valley, lilac and the leading part; magnolia. The top notes has citrus notes while the heart is floral and the base is woody sweet powdery. It's a floral fantasy perfume.

I created this perfume years ago for my sister in law and she loved it. But I was not yet satisfied, it needed more staying power, and I wanted the perfume to linger more. Now that I have a choice out of so many more perfume materials, and gained much more knowledge about perfumery, I finally can go on with this perfume and hope to finish it. In the mean time I created many, many variations of this perfume, but when I look back at the original creation, I see that this one was the best idea outof all. At the time that I created this perfume for the first time, I didn't know the things I do now, but when I look at the formula I wrote in that time, I can see based on the knowledge that I have now, that my intuition was right.

For example, I used some wintergreen oil, an oil that contains methyl saliclyate, I didn't know why I used it but thought it would be nice to use just a tiny bit of it in the formula. Now I know that it sweetens the top note of a perfume when you use just a little, so I was correct using wintergreen. In that time I didn't know what kind of aroma chemicals magnolia contains, now that I do know I can see that I used the right aroma chemicals, at least the ones that I had access to at that moment. Now I do have so much more choices of aroma chemicals, this way I could created a magnolia base, a base that I created separately from the perfume. I searched for gas chromatography analysis of magnolia on the web, and created a magnolia base the way I wanted my magnolia to smell like. One of the materials I used is Magnolan which has a typical magnolia, grapefruit scent, it smells a bit similar like Hedione but more fresh and more citrus like.

When I first created this perfume, I had a hard time to keep the perfume smell 'transparent' and give it fixation at the same time, instead of adding enough fixation, I only used a small amount of fixative materials. Now I know what kind of materials I can use to give enough fixation without making the perfume smell too heavy. Creativity and intuition is important in perfume making, but you need knowledge as well.

Waiting patiently

The concentration of my perfume inspired by the painting 'The Kiss' is patiently waiting to mature. The fragrant materials need to 'pare' with each other to become a new whole, I put it in a dark and cool place to mature. I made the concentration last Monday so it's already maturing for a couple of days. I didn't added the alcohol yet, I will add it next weekend. First the concentration need to mature for a while without the alcohol.

I like the color of the concentration, it's nice brown red. I didn't change the notes that I used last time, only added some small amounts of different notes to compliment the other notes, like just a tiny bit of cumin and a little bit of orange blossom absolute. Orange blossom absolute is something I like to use in almost every creation it seems, it's nice with the tolu balsam in this case and it combines wonderful with the bergamot and lead the citrus notes into the heart notes, giving it a more flowery note.

Now I have to wait patiently and will work on my perfume based on magnolia a bit more. The other perfume I sent in for the first 'Perfume Swap' needs to wait for tweaking, because I need to wait for the materials that I ordered for this perfume. So that comes later, while waiting for the materials I will work on my perfume based on magnolia, a perfume that I already worked on a couple of years ago, but that is still not finished, although it's coming close now.

Crazy diamond

Smell is a powerful thing to trigger an emotion. It's amazing how a scent can bring back memories, how it can change the state of your mind. Some perfumes just smell nice, but some of them are so powerful and intriguing, you want to smell these perfumes over and over again. You can't stop smelling your wrist, to bring back this emotion or memory, or to find out what it is that gives you this thrill. But somehow I never found a perfume that gave me the same emotions as music can give to me. Music can take me trough all kinds of emotions with only one song. It takes me up and down, from left to right. I'm not sure that it's more powerful than scent but it has more levels of emotions. I can loose myself when hearing a good song and even can start to cry because of it, without knowing why, I never had this with a perfume.

When you smell something it's direct, music on the other hand takes you slowly on a journey, it's not as direct as scent. Slowly the emotions are coming forward and getting stronger while the part is playing on. It can pass away a bit and can come back even stronger. There is a song by Pink Floyd called 'Shine on you crazy diamond', which gives me very strong emotions. Sometimes I don't want to listen to it because it is too powerful. It's a song with many different levels of emotions inside of it, but all very strong. I want to create a perfume that gives me the same emotions, with all these different levels of emotions. I discussed this on my 'Perfume making' group and one member said to me that I could try it, and that is what I'm going to do. It will not be a 'happy' perfume but a very powerful emotional perfume. It would be a difficult project, but I love to try it.

Some more hope for 'The Kiss'

It's one week ago that I started to panic about my Swap perfume inspired by 'The Kiss'. In the mean time I tried many different versions of this perfume. I added more bergamot the last time and I like it, but I used a bit less this time and added some lemon as well. I decided that I wanted to use more Labdanum absolute and no Iso E Super because I find the Iso E Super too linear for this fragrance, I also used some ciste oil. There was some dark sweetness missing in this fragrance, I already used benzoin and tolu, which gives the fragrance wonderful balsamic warm notes.

But I wanted to deepen these notes, so I added some cinnamon, that was just what it needed. I used cinnamon cassia which gives not only a spicy but also a warm note. I also added coumarin to give it more warm sweetness. I wanted to give this fragrance a warm glow of amber, because of the golden colors of this painting. The sandalwood represents the embracing and the iris represents the pale skin of the woman on the painting. The combination of iris and sandalwood is lovely, I decided to use a bit more iris. I used some different musks and civet to give it a warm animalic note. To give the whole fragrance a mysterious glow I added a dash of aldehyde. I'm glad I'm going in the right direction again with this perfume. The last time my husband didn't like it, and he is always very honest, but this time he loved it, so that gives me hope again. I'm only a bit sad that I'm a bit late with my fragrance, it's not finished yet and it also has to mature for a couple of weeks. I have to send it in before 15 August.

Panic!!!

I'm still working on the 'swap perfume' that I will send in for the swap that we're doing on my Yahoo group: 'Perfume making', I posted about my other attempts before. We are going to create a perfume based on the painting The Kiss. I want to create a perfume based on ambery notes like Labdanum absolute, and Iso E Super, woody notes like Sandalwood, a powdery Iris note, Rose and spicy Carnation notes and sweet musky notes. I wanted to ad a fresh top note to my creation. So I added a huge amount of Bergamot, what works real fine with the ambery woody notes of this perfume. But it's still not right, it's just not it. I added other notes as well but ruined the whole composition. I'm a bit frustrated right now, because I have to hurry to have the perfume done on time, but somehow it doesn't work. It's nice to create a perfume, but you have to have a strong confidence in yourself to not let you down by creations like this. I'm happy I don't work for a large perfume company and have to deal with deadlines all the time. It's time to start all over again........sigh.