Perfume making

Update

2008-06-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

A lot of things happened while I wasn't posting on this blog. One thing is that my hubby Mo is operated on his back for the second time. He had a double hernia in his lower back, they were huge. Two years ago he was operated as well, but it didn't work, and the hernia's came back. He was a bit afraid to do a second operation, but he simply had to, the pain was too much. He's now back at home, and he is doing pretty well. He already can walk quit a long bit, but has to lay down every time. The operation was only one and a half hour, and he could go home the next day. Now we are hoping that it will not come back and that his back will get better.

Here a photo of us when his back was a bit better:

Basmati rice and Jasmine

2008-05-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted something on my blog. I was very busy with doing other stuff, which I enjoyed very much so though. Well, I'm back!

I'm working on a new perfume, based on Egyptian Jasmine absolute combined with the scent of Indian Basmati rice. This idea was playing a long time in my head and I finally started with it. I'm recreating the scent of basmati rice myself with different materials. One of the materials I use for the basmati rice is 3-METHYL-2-CYCLOHEXENONE which gives a nutty scent. I also used Hexanal (aldehyde C6) and Hexanol (alcohol c6) among others. I want to see if carrot seed oil will work in this fragrance, I guess it only would need just a little. A key odorant in fragrant rice is 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, I still have to get my hands on this material.

I combine the jasmine and basmati rice with musks and woods. I used a lot of sandalwood which combines so wonderful with Jasmine, it makes the scent of jasmine more warm and intense. It's a very interesting experiment at least.

I love you Ida

2008-04-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Ida (Chaya) is a remarcable lady. I met her through this blog where she comment often. She is a warm loving person, so easy to love, she always know how to use the right words, how to encourage people. It gives her pleasure to make other people happy and let them feel good. There is something about her that touch me deeply, and I'm not the only one who has this experience.....

Read a post about Ida at Perfumesmellingthings

The M. factor

2008-03-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

Andy always talk about the W. factor, so this time I will talk about the M. factor. The perfume for the new perfume swap of our perfume group is ready, it's a men's fragrance this time. I needed the M. factor to test it, and I listened to his suggestions. M. once was a professional soccer player, and he loves the smell of fresh cut grass, it reminds him of the soccerfield, so I put in a lot of this scent. A material which smells like fresh cut grass is 'leaf alcohol', I combined this scent with the scent of violet leaf and other green notes. Some of you know that I love the green scent of galbanum, but I didn't use it in this fragrance, it didn't combine well with the other notes.

In the heart-notes I used carnation and clove. The base-notes contains a lot of sandalwood which I combined with the sandalwood materials; Javanol, Bangalol and Aldron. I used the ambernote of Ambrox DL, which to me smells very masculine and finished it with different sorts of musk.

I'm excited because tonight we have a big party from work, there will be something like 1500 to 2000 people. I will go with my friend, it will be so much fun. My camera is broke, but if I can get some photos of the party from my colleagues I will post some of them.

Have a great weekend!

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T04:42:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter everyone! In the meantime, I'm working on the perfume I will send in for our new 'Perfume Swap' at our Yahoo group. I will send in a men's perfume this time. It's a perfume based on green notes with a lot of fresh green grass notes, a heart of carnation and a base of amber, musk and sandalwood. More about that later....

Beethoven

2008-03-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

Finally I had a long weekend, I had 4 days off! I looked forward to it the whole week, but when it finally was there, I got sick...... I had a terrible cold and was so sleepy that I could sleep for hours, I only watched some TV or sat behind my PC a bit. Not very exciting is it? But today I feel a bit better and even worked on a perfume again. I worked on my perfume that I sent in for the first 'Perfume Swap' that we did on my Perfume making group at Yahoo. It is a perfume based on animalic notes, with oudh and other woods, honey, rose and jasmine. I added less cedarwood and a lot more sandalwood. I can't smell a lot right now because of the cold I have, but I will leave it like it is and smell it when I have a 'better' nose.

That makes me think......

What if a perfumer can't smell anymore? Is it possible to create perfumes anyway? I think so, if I recall correctly, there was a perfumer who couldn't smell anymore, but still created perfumes, I don't remember who it was. Well, if you think of the fact that Beethoven was deaf when he composed music, a perfumer could only by remembering the smell and the combination of materials, compose a perfume too. Without actually smelling the result, the composing would be done in his memory, in his mind.

Far away, yet so close

2008-02-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

This morning I was reading the post on Andy Tauer's blog. He wrote about how the Internet brings so many people close to each other. And I can't agree more, it's amazing how many wonderful, beautiful, interesting, inspiring, creative, lovely, sweet, caring people I've met through Internet. Internet gives us the chance to meet people with the same interest from all over the world. How would it be if the little 'home perfumers' were living in a time when there was no Internet? We would probably be sitting in our home creating perfume and could only share it with a few people who would live close to us. Now thanks to the Internet, we can share it with people from far away places, far away but yet so close. I was surprised to read my own name in his post, Andy wrote: "The world villagers are waiting for yours, Jenny!" I'm working on it dear Andy, I'm working on it.......

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

Scent and memory

2008-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

It's strange that sometimes when we smell something, we can't find the right words to describe what it is. We have the feeling that we should know what it is, because it smells familiar, but if we search in our brain to find the answer the answer comes slowly or not at all. I guess we all have experienced this once, I experience this a lot of times, because I work with a lot of scents. Sometimes I smell a material and the only thing that my mind tells me about it is that it smells earthy, floral or fruity. But it takes more time to search in my mind for a memory where I smelled this scent before to finally get the 'aha' moment. I once had this experience when I smelled the fragrance material: Butyl Quinoline Secondary, I recognized the smell of soil and earth, but I knew that I smelled a more specific scent. It took a while before I recognized the smell of red beets which also smells like soil and earth but was a more specific description of what the materials smells like.

Smell for the most part aggravates the lymbic system and the right side of our brain, where Episodic connections are received. Our right hemisphere is associated with memory of events, times, places and emotions. It looks at wholes not at parts of certain things. It's subjective, uses feeling and it's creative.

We use our left hemisphere of our brain to recognize and rationalize things Here are the Semantic connections received. We use it for meaning, analyzing, understanding, knowledge and language. It sub-divides and reconnect things. It looks at parts and it's objective. It uses logic.

Of course it's not as simple as this, there are grey areas in this field, but it's a rough explanation of how our right and left side of the brain works.

These two parts of our brains communicate with each other. Our right hemisphere send information to our left hemisphere, where the received information will be 'labeled', 'packaged' and analyzed. If we mostly use our right hemisphere if we smell something, then it's logical that it's hard to describe in words what it is, we need our left hemisphere to help us with it.

For example, if we are in traffic. Our right side of the brain tells us that an object which is going fast, that it is coming close to us. It doesn't tell us what exactly is coming close to us, but it's something that is going fast. Our left side of the brain however, recognize the object and tells us that it's a car and explains to us that we have to be careful. The same with scent, our right side of the brain 'looks' at things as a whole. So it will provide us with rough information such as; it smells floral, earthy, fruity. The left side of our brain will look at it as in parts such as; it smells like jasmine or it smells like peach.

A perfumer needs to recognize scents and needs to train his or her brain to do so. Using words to give a name to a certain scent is very useful. If something is named, it will be more recognizable. If people have to distinguish different nuances of colors for example, it will help if they know the names of the colors, to concentrate more on these colors, to distinguish them from the other colors. If they are confronted with these color nuances and their names a couple of times, their recognition of these nuances are getting better and better over time. The same with scents. It helps the brain to receive more than one 'code', in this case smell. The trick is to give your memory more than one way of remembering. You can do this by using more than one sense, (touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell).

Perfumers do not only have to recognize the scent of one single component, they sometimes need to recognize this single component in a blend as well. Some perfumers can, if they smell a perfume, recognize many of the components of this fragrance. A trick to recognize some of the components is called 'smelling in patterns'. Let me first give another example to explain it a bit more:

Most people can only remember 7 numbers in a random order, for example the numbers:

1261941

It's getting more difficult to remember 14 numbers in a random order like:

12619417211969

But if we would group the numbers in meaningful groups like important dates of events like:

12.6.1941 (bombing on Pearl Harbor) or
7.21.1969 (the first landing on the moon)

We remember the numbers a lot easier. The same with recognizing components in fragrances. If the perfumer can group some single components and recognize these groups, it will be much easier to recognize the different components. The perfumer can group these components if he or she knows how certain combinations of single components do smell. For example, if the perfumer recognize a Fougere note (perfume family) in the fragrance, he or she knows that the Fougere has to have Amyl Salicylate, Coumarin, Lavender and Oakmoss. Once this group of components is recognized, the perfumer can put this group 'aside' in his mind, and smell around this group.

It's said that the right side of the brain is dominant with creative people, here is a test to find how creative you are.

I found something incredible at YouTube. Some people see the girl turn clockwise and some see her turn counter-clockwise, some people even don't see her turn but see her swing from left to right. I had to try it a couple of times before I could 'make' the girl turn every way around and let her swing from left to right. They say that if you see the girl turn counter-clockwise you use more of your left brain(analytical) and if you see her turn clockwise you use more of your right brain(creative). The first time I watched the video, I saw the girl turn counter-clockwise and at the end of the video I saw her turn clockwise. Strange that I see her turn counter-clockwise what means that I use more of my left side of the brain, while I always am creative. I should have seen her turn clockwise, but I didn't. I wonder if it's because I watched it as an analytical experience and forced my left brain to give attention. I don't know how much this test proofs. Which direction do you see the girl move? If you like to know how to let her move all kinds of directions I will let you know.

Chypre, indolic flowers, fruit and spices

2008-01-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

It's wonderful that I have more time for the creation of my perfumes again. The whole weekend I was busy with experimenting. I took a closer look at my new friends, some materials I didn't study yet. I mixed unexpectedly combinations of materials, some of these mixes turned out stinky combinations, and some of them were surprisingly nice. I smelled my Velvet Blossom again, and I love the result very much. A very satisfying feeling to have accomplish exactly what I had in mind for this fragrance. A tender, fresh, but oh so velvety floral fragrance, based on Magnolia and Lilly of the Valley. I also worked on my fruity/chypre again. A perfume based on a Chypre accord made of oakmoss, labdanum, pathouli, vetiver, cedar and a little bit of castoreum. I combined this accord with fruity notes of bergamot, lemon and lychee.

I added a herbal green note of basil, a material I love very much, it gives a fresh green and a bit minty note to the fragrance. I also used watercress which gives a wonderful green leafy and very fresh note. The perfume so far smelled of course like Chypre, but also fruity green and floral. One of the flowers I think I always will use in my fragrances is jasmine, so also in this fragrance....

I used a jasmine absolute from Egypt, a very high quality absolute which smells wonderful. I also used may rose and gardenia. There is no such thing as a gardenia absolute so I had to reconstruct the scent of this flower. The floral notes are real nice, but I wanted them to smell even more indolic, so I added some more indole, and after testing the fragrance, I added even more of it. I just love indolic perfumes. The perfume smelled very nice, but I wanted to add some spicy notes to give more character to the fragrance.

So I added coriander seed, which works real fine. But I wanted the fragrance to smell even more spicy. I started with adding a tiny bit of cumin, a note that overpowers a fragrance real easy. So I had to be careful. But it was safe, I could use more of it, so I did. I wanted the fragrance to have a more dry spicy note, so I added some black pepper as well. Yes, that was a good idea. The black pepper is really nice in combination with the lychee. I also added some cardamom to give an effect to the citrus notes. It gives a very fresh spicy dry citrusy and even a bit bitter green note to the bergamot and lemon. And finally I added a tiny bit of clove. So the list of spices that I added is rather long: coriander seed, cumin, black pepper, cardamom and clove, but a nice combination of spices, which works really nice with the fruity notes. I have to remember this combination of spices when I want to cook......

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

It's New Year's eve and I make myself ready for the party tonight with our family. It's dark and smokey in Wolvega right now, the air is filled with smoke and it smells like sulfur. I hear bang's of fire work outside, something I will not play with, but we will have a wonderful show of fire work this evening which is organized by some people. Something I always find very romantic to watch in the arms of my DH, calling out ooohs and aaahs together while watching these miracles in the dark sky. I will wear Gucci no3 tonight, I think it will fit for this joyful evening. Looking back at 2007 I can say it was a great year. At new year's eve we always ask each other if we have plans for the next year or wants to quit bad behaviors etc. My plan is to spend more time with friends and family and finish some of my perfumes I'm working on. I will spend more time on creating perfumes than I did last year. Last year I had many other things to do as well, I spent time on creating perfumes but not enough, that will change next year.

I wish you all the best for 2008, may it be a happy, peaceful, healthy, loving, joyful and fragrant year for all of you.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Which perfume are you going to wear this Christmas?

I will wear Gala by Loewe the first day and Chanel no 19 the second day I think

What I love to do most

2007-12-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

I finally have some more time to work on my perfumes again. Last months I spent a lot of my time working on my Yahoo group, I love doing that and I love to help people, but there was no time left to work on my perfumes anymore. I decided to slow down a bit with the work on the group and spend time on what I love to do most; perfume making.

I worked on my perfume Velvet Blossom, a perfume based on delicate white flowers with Magnolia and Lily of the Valley combined with Mai rose and Sambac Jasmine. A perfume inspired by my sister in law, who loves delicate white flowers. I wanted the perfume to smell delicate white floral, with a bright fresh opening and a velvet smooth end. The result was really close to what I had in mind, but I want to soften the top notes a bit more and accentuate the white petal like floral notes and bring the lily of the valley a bit more towards the top notes. I added some Cyclamen aldehyde to bring out the lilly of the valley a bit more, also a bit more Mayol added to the perfume gave a more petal like result. To smooth the top notes, I added a bit more Ambrettolide, a wonderful warm smelling musk with a touch of fruitiness, which appears in the base notes but also smooth the top notes at the same time. I didn't change much, only adding a bit more or less of the materials that I've used already. The only new thing that I added is a touch of Cyclamen aldehyde, which works real nice in this fragrance. I'm really happy with the result. Now I have to mature it for a while to see if it's really better than the last one. In the mean time I will work some more on my 'fruity/chypre' fragrance, more about that later....

A+B+C+D=???

2007-11-25T09:48:00.000-08:00

Why is it that if you mix the colors blue and yellow you will get a green color? We know it, but why is it? I can't give a logical explanation for it (maybe someone likes to explain), I only know that it is. I love to read the blog of Octavian 1000 Fragrances, and read the post where he asks a very interesting question. He asks why it is that certain combinations of perfume materials smell a certain way, if there are 'rules' for it and how to control it.

I don't know why some combinations of materials smell a certain way, I just know that it is. If we smell a rose or jasmine we smell a combination of different aromatic chemicals, we recognize the combination of these chemicals as a rose or jasmine scent. If we smell a combination of Benzyl Acetate and Indole, we recognize some sort of jasmine scent, and if we smell a combination of Phenylethyl Alcohol and Geraniol we recognize some sort of rose scent. If I would combine these four materials of the rose and jasmine; Benzyl Acetate, Indole, Phenylethyl Alcohol and Geraniol, and add for example Ionones, such as Methyl Ionone Alpha and Beta Ionone, the result would smell a bit like raspberry. But if I would combine the four materials(Benzyl Acetate, Indole, Phenylethyl Alcohol and Geraniol) with Linalool, Methyl Anthranilate and Linalyl Acetate, the result would smell like orange blossoms. Why this is? I don't know, it's how the combinations are recognized. This is what a perfumer calls 'smelling in patterns', we smell different aromatic materials, but we recognize them as something familiar, because we know the smell of the combination of these chemicals. That's why we can recognize a perfume in an instant, even though it contains hundreds of different chemicals.

If I'm creating a perfume, I don't build it from base towards top notes. I start with a combination of materials, an accord. I don't see the materials as were it single notes, I use them in combination with other materials. I want to know the general impression the perfume will have before I go further. It's not that if you combine fruity, floral, woody and musky notes, the perfume will smell like that; fruity, floral, woody and musky. The combinations of these notes will turn into something complete new, sometimes in a way you didn't expect. That's why I can't build a perfume from base to top notes, how would I know how the combination of these notes would smell like in the end? It would be like I'm creating a perfume, but I have no idea, or control over how it will smell like, I can't 'see' (read smell) the total picture of the perfume if I start from the base and build it up towards the top. I have to find out, beforehand, how the combination of the most important materials of the perfume will smell like.

That's why I'm always 'playing' with materials, I always try to find new accords, nice combinations of materials. I put the materials on scent strips and hold them to my nose, to smell the combination of these materials. The combinations of these materials sometimes smell totally different than expected, a green note can turn into a fruity note, a material that appears as very weak can unexpectedly change the overall picture of the perfume tremendous, a material that appears as very strong on the other hand, can become very weak in combination with other materials, materials which smell like they wouldn't combine together, could become a wonderful combination etc. I know that some combinations smell a certain way because I read about it, but a lot of combinations I have to find out by myself. If I found a nice combination of materials which work real well together, I use these accords as my starting point for a perfume. This gives some control, but it's impossible to know the result of adding more materials. It's an endless way of experimentation's and experience. That's why I love to make perfumes, it always surprises me, I never know the result some combinations will give. Even though I learned and experimented a lot, it is and it will always be a mystery to me. A mystery I love.

Read here more about accords

Preference

2007-11-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

I'm reading the book: Fragrance The story of perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel written by Edwin T. Morris, for the second time now. It's a very interesting book which discusses the history of fragrance and fragrance materials. An intersesting part is where he talks about the scent of flowers. We are not the only ones who are attracted to the scent of flowers, insects are attracted to their scent as well. Some flowers mimic the insect pheromones, and some of them the scent of their food sources. The moth for example, is attracted to the white night blooming heavy indolic scented flowers such as jasmine and honeysuckle. Among the white flowers we find the greatest number of aromatic blooms. Second place for the odorous flowers are the reds and pinks. These flowers are favored by the day-flying butterflies. The bees however prefer yellow, lavender and blue flowers.

We humans have our preferences as well. Although there is no standard in our preferences. We all have our own unique scent preferences, mostly created by our scent memorie. If we have a nice memorie of the scent of vanilla, we probibly will like the scent. But if we have had a bad experience while smelling vanilla, we could have created a bad vanilla scent memorie and the scent can be associated with this experience.

That's why it's simply impossible to create a perfume that will be liked by everyone. I sent samples of my perfume Velvet Blossom to people from all over the world to get some feedback. Most people who smelled the perfume said they would leave it like it is, and don't mess with it too much, they liked it. Other people liked it too, but gave me some tips on how to improve it. The tips I received were all so different, here are some:
it would be nice if it smelled a bit greener, another told me to make it smell less greener, again another one told me to make it more spicy with cumin notes, another more ambery, yet another asked me to use more indolic jasmine notes, another to use more woody notes etc etc.

It's difficult to make a decision on what kind of advice to follow. I personally want to make the top notes a bit softer, another option to ad to the others. I decided to try some of the tips and created different batches, and will see if it makes a difference.

Passion

2007-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

I want to share this amazing video with you which I found at YouTube. This woman of 84 years old plays Liebesleid by Fritz Kreisler on the piano. She plays this beatiful piece of music with such a passion and soul, I just had to share it with you. It's beautiful.

Illusion

2007-10-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

Not everything we see, hear, or smell is what it seems like. Sometimes we need more information to get to the bottom of something to understand what it is that we see, hear or smell. The information provided to us is not always accurate and can even be misleading. Think of a situation whereby someone purposely wants you to believe something and therefor provides you false information to create a misconception of the truth. We are easy being fooled, and it's hard to get this misconception out of our head once it has settled there. Some people use this tool to create for example a war, they use the tool fear for this purpose. Fear is a very powerful tool to create a misconception in our mind about the truth. The idea that there are people who are purposely creating a misconception of the truth among the people to get what they want, is too much to believe for some people. And yes, it's something that is going beyond our mind, that's why it such a powerful tool, no one will doubt the information provided, why should they, right?

Well, things have changed since there is Internet and information from around the world which is easy to access. But at the same time, not everyone uses this chance to get to the bottom of the provided information to check if it's true. That's scary, people are even being killed because of this. This is something that is playing in my mind a lot of times. It's scary that some people are being fooled this easy and not even trying to find out what is really going on in the world, but make up their mind by information only provided by the same people who wants to have power and money, and not looking any further, but yet making important decisions based on the provided information. Of course it's not realistic that everyone will search for all information, a lot of people are not interested in doing that. But sometimes I wish more people would try before they judge, because even though they don't have the time or feeling to search for more information, they do judge anyway, or even give their own lives or the lives of others.

Bring this subject back to perfumery, right now we are giving feedback about some perfumes made by members of my group. We call this a 'Perfume Swap', I talked about this before. Some of our members including me 'swapped' their own perfumes. We even share our formulas with the participants of the swap. We start the discussion about a perfume with a 'guessing round', that means that before we had the chance to see the formula, we have to guess which notes or accords the perfume contains. This is real fun to do. Sometimes we smell things that aren't even there, and we get crazy because of this, because we really smell these notes. This can be caused because of the fact that some combinations of notes create a whole other new note, or just because of a misconception of what we smell. We learn a lot by guessing the notes of a perfume, we also learn how to recognize combinations of notes. Next week my perfume will be discussed, I'm curious what will be said about it, maybe I can learn something from it and adjust the formula of my perfume.

Not everything you see at first sight is what it is, sometimes you have to take a closer look at things to understand things better.

New packaging for fragrances by Michael Storer

2007-10-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

My friend Michael Storer has recently changed all of his fragrances to eau de parfum strength and put them in brand new beautiful packaging. Monk is now darker, more incense-y and richer, while Djin and Il Giardino have been adjusted to meet the requests of his customers. I urge you to visit his website and see his great new lineup.

http://www.michaelstorer.com/

How I create perfume

2007-10-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people ask me, what it is that I do, how I make perfume. If I tell them that perfume is alcohol with aromatic materials, a lot of times I hear the same story. They tell me that when they were little they put roses in water trying to create perfume. They tried to create rose water, something I did when I was little as well. Although the product that is sold by the name 'rose water' is not made by soaking roses in water, but a side product of the distillation of roses. The picture that some people have of what I do is that I work with plants like roses, lavender, clove etc and soak them in oil or alcohol to create perfume. Of course sometimes I did things like that, but this is not the same as creating a perfume, this is making tinctures or macerates. I sometimes used a tincture, but mostly they are not stable enough. When I tell them I use essential oils and absolutes, I see that it's sometimes confused by some people with plants macerated in an oil like almond oil. An essential oil is a concentrated oil which is distilled from the plant, many kilos are necessary to obtain a little bit of this concentrated oil, these oils are volatile, not the same as almond oil, jojoba or coconut oil etc. I've seen many times when I show a bottle of an essential oil that they want to put the oil straight on their skin, as it was a perfume based on an oil like almond oil. While many essential oils can't be worn pure on the skin, they are so concentrated that it can irritate the skin. I also explain that these oils and absolutes have all kinds of different molecules all having different smells. That a rose doesn't contain one molecule that smells like rose, but has a combination of hundreds of different molecules, all having their own specific odor, which all combined create the scent of rose. I explain that I not only work with these combined molecules like an essential oil or absolute, but with single molecules as well. These are from natural sources or man made. Which I for example can use to build my own rose, jasmine or other scents.

Of course there are a lot of people who do know a lot about perfume, especially the perfumistas on the Internet. I'm amazed how much they know about it. For example I love to read the blog Bois de Jasmin by Victoria she writes wonderful interesting posts about perfume materials. She loves perfumes, but she is also interested in how it's made, and wants to know more about the materials that is used in perfume. But a lot more people only buy perfumes and never thought about how it's actually made, it's fun to hear from them how they think perfume is made. Mostly they are surprised when they hear how it's made.

On the left you can see my 'perfume organ'. I created a special room to create my perfumes and to store my materials. On the photo you see cabinets that I hang on the wall containing bottles with droppers which are filled with diluted materials. I keep the bigger bottles of the pure materials in a closet protected from the sun. For me it's always a bit hard to describe in only a few words what it is that I do. It's not the same as blending some oils together and the perfume is ready. I don't line up a rose, jasmine, sandal, lemon oil and mix them, and my perfume is finished. It's more complicated than that. Rose, Jasmine or lemon oil all have their own mix of molecules, basically they are a complete perfume on their own, where molecules are combined in a certain way. Some of the molecules of the rose could be found in the lemon as well and some of the molecules of the lemon can be found in the jasmine as well etc. I work with these oils which are combinations of molecules, but I also work with single molecules which I can use to bring out a certain element of a scent. With these single molecules I can create bridges between some stages of the perfume, I can hide some unwanted harsh or other unpleasant molecules. I can use these single molecules to add a similar smelling molecule that normally only occurs in the base notes to bring out to the top notes as well and of course the other way around. I can create a rose that smells more fresh, dewy or more honey like etc, by adding one or more materials made of one single molecule. Basically I work on the different single pieces of the perfume, the molecules, I put some single molecules apart and work on those to bring them out more, to smooth them, to hide some of them or to modify them. I'm not only working with molecules that are grouped/combined in a certain scent, like rose, jasmine etc but I also divide or break down these groups of molecules into single molecules. That means I have to concentrate on hundreds of single molecules. All having their own character. Below is an example of a perfume, I wrote the notes down in a pyramid. In the top of the pyramid you can see which top notes are used, in the middle the heart notes and at the bottom you can see the base notes.

This perfume above seems only based on some oils, which all are compositions of different molecules, which are combined to create a perfume. This phase of creating is the most fun and easy part, but it's only a rough basic of the perfume, it's not finished yet. I still have to work on the different materials to create a perfume that is well structured. The perfume below is an example on how these notes are combined with single molecules to create a nice structure.

I know it looks a bit messy and I didn't have enough space to add more notes. But this is a rough idea of what I do. I try to blend notes in a way that they all combine well together, I 'glue' some notes together, create more silage, bring out some elements that I like by adding more of these single molecules etc. This phase of creating perfumes is the hardest but the most interesting phase, it's interesting and feels satisfying to finish the perfume and try to make it perfect. I have to find out the evaporation rates of the molecules and combine them with elements that has similar evaporation rates to create a logical way of evaporation. I have to study the perfume to find out if there is not an element that is too dominant, which I maybe have to smooth or hide with other molecules. Or maybe I like to bring out an element and will add more of this molecule etc.

The most fun part is to find out what kind of effect some materials have upon each other. It's amazing how one material can change if I add other materials. It's not so that I'm always sitting behind my desk and blend, mostly I'm studying the materials on scent strips or on my skin, I combine these strips and try to find out how they combine with each other. The ideas of my perfumes are starting in my head, I'm always dreaming about perfumes, I think about it most part of the day, it's something I do automatically and mostly I'm unaware of the fact that I'm analyzing everything that I smell. I imagine how I can translate some feelings or wonderful experiences into a perfume. I'm always paying attention on things that I smell around me, I store all these information in my head and compare these with the materials and combinations that I've studied. It's a dreamy fantasy world, I try to recreate a fantasy and translate it into a perfume.

I have a deep respect for perfumers that really studied their profession, perfumers that work for popular perfume houses studied perfumery for 10 years!!! Now that I've learned so much about perfumery I understand that these perfumers had to study a lot of things before they became a perfumer. Things I didn't think of before, simply because I didn't know or realized what perfumery really meant. I always say, 'the more you know, the more you realize that you basically know nothing at all'. If you don't know enough about something, you can underestimate the whole thing, and compare yourself to someone who really knows everything about it. You put yourself on the same level of someone who studied this, I would call that arrogant and ignorant. I would like the people who put themselves on the same level as professional perfumers to take a real perfumery exam and see if they will pass. I know I will never reach that level, I can't compare myself to these perfumers. I create perfumes for 8 years or so now, I've learned from books, the Internet, by communicating with the members of my Perfume making group at Yahoo and by experimenting and again more experimenting, that's not the same as to study the profession at a high level. There was no teacher that forced me to learn things that I didn't feel like, but had to know to become a perfumer. I'm sure I skipped some parts of perfumery that I still have to learn, but I do my best and try to learn.

Féminité du Bois

2007-09-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

I love this fragrance from Shiseido. This fragrance is based on woods, especially cedar wood. Other notes are not used to round off the accord, like it's done in many classical fragrances, but they are used to deepen the main accord. I can't find it in the descriptions of this fragrance, but when I apply it to my skin, I can smell a very dominant cumin note, besides the notes of cedar wood. The cedar wood can be smelled from the top trough bottom, what makes me wonder what materials are used in this fragrance. Somehow if you create fragrances yourself, you smell and judge fragrances differently, you 'feel' the emotion of the fragrance like any other, but you also want to recognize some materials that are used, it's more analytical smelling. Because I know the smell of many materials, and how combinations of these materials do smell like, it's easier to recognize them, otherwise I can only guess what's used. I think there is some Vertenex used, which smells like wood but appears in the top notes as well. Another note that I recognize is Iso E Super, this material smells woody, but warm and amber like at the same time. It makes this woody accord more warm. I can smell a honey note as well, which I think is wonderful in combination with cedar. I think besides the cedar notes a sandal note is used as well.

So in my opinion the following woody notes are used; Vertenex, to create a woody top note, Cedar with Cedryl acetate and Cedrol, maybe some Cedramber as well, Iso E Super to create a warm woody note, Sandal wood to add warmth, and some Ionones for violet and woody notes, which creates a bridge between the heart and the base notes. Besides the Cumin there are other spices used as well, like clove and cinnamon. There is some sort of animalic scent in the base notes that could be Civet or Castoreum, together with soft Vanilla, but not too much though. Some fruity notes of plum and some floral notes are used as well, but in a modest way, not disturbing the all over woody aura of this fragrance.

Féminité du Bois is created by Pierre Bourdon (photo on your right) and Christopher Sheldrake and launched in 1992 by Shiseido. The bottle was designed by Serge Lutens and he was the one that looked over the shoulder of the perfumers. It's a very mysterious fragrance, I think it can be worn by both men and women. It definitely makes a statement, it's emotional and very unique. Although.... I read a review by Luca Turin where he tells that the perfumer Pierre Bourdon used the idea of Féminité du Bois in another context for the perfume Dolce Vita by Dior. Of course I got curious about it and put Féminité du Bois on one wrist and Dolce Vita on the other. It's true, you can recognize Féminité du Bois in Dolce Vita, I would never come up with this myself. The bottles and the presentation of both fragrances looks so different that I never would have found the link between the two. Dolce Vita is not build up with notes to deepen the cedar wood notes like in Féminité du Bois, but is more dimensional. It has more citrus top notes and instead of plum it has peach as the fruity note. The floral heart is more deepened with 'lighter' floral notes like lilly of the valley. Dolce Vita is more crisp juicy and floral than Féminité du Bois, but the cedar wood and again the cumin note are recognized real easy.

Monclin

2007-09-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

I heard about the Monclin before, it sounded fascinating, but wasn't doing much with the information. The first time that I read about it was on Luca Turin's blog. You can see two Monclin's on the photo above, they look like two wine glasses putting upside down with a little hole in it, where a scent strip is pushed through. It was invented by the perfume house Jean Patou.

A couple of days ago, I was studying some of my materials that I put on scent strips, I was searching for a nice combination of these materials to find a new accord. I grabbed a Bordeaux wine glass and put a couple of these scent strips in it, and smelled...... Wow, this was an unbelievable experience. This experience is so totally different than smelling just straight from the scent strips. The smell is much more concentrated, more lively and full, it's like you smell in 3D. I play with my own 'Monclin' all the time now. I start with one scent strip dipped in a material and than add another one to it, and smell the combination of these two. I can add as many scent strips as I like. I like to do the whole procedure backwards as well, by taking away a scent strip and smell how much difference this makes, I can smell the difference in an instant now, I keep smelling while I take the strip away.

Here you can read how you can create your own Monclin.

Oudh

2007-09-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Mmm the scent of Oudh sometimes called Agarwood or Eaglewood is so incredible wonderful. It has all kinds of shades, it's smokey, deep woody, a bit sweet in an intriguing way. It even has some green notes and some kind of mouldy notes. It's hard to describe the scent. It reminds me of a blend of vetiver, birch tar, sandalwood, guiacwood, vetiveryl acetate, patchouli and some spicy notes like the note of clove. But this all can't create the scent of Oudh, it's way too complex for it.

I used Oudh in my first 'swap' perfume, which I worked on some more. I studied the feedback that I've got from the members of my group and used this information to alter the creation.

Some of the feedback I received about this fragrance is that the top notes are too overwhelming, I agree with this, this is not because I used too much top notes, but because I used strong smelling woody and ambery notes, which pushes themselves towards the top notes. I started to reduce the amount of patchouli, birch tar and cedar, and added a creamy warm sandalwood to round the fragrance out and smooth it a bit. To give the woody notes a fresh woody boost I used a bit more vetiveryl acetate, which smells like the fresh smelling part of vetiver oil. I also added less amber, instead I used more rose and jasmine to create a stronger heart note.

The fragrance has a sweet honey note which is wonderful in combination with Oudh, I want to keep that note, but it was too sweet, so I also reduced the amount of honey and added a bit more bergamot to create a more sparkling top note. After reducing some of the base notes and adding some sandalwood and more vetiveryl acetate, it still needed a warm note, I decided to use Aldron a material from Symrise with an animalic scent, which create a warm aura. I'll let the creation mature and will see if these alterations worked.

Something totally different:

Yesterday I visited the blog of Andy, when I started to read the first line of his post, I got goosebumps and knew what he was about to tell us, the following sentences I had to read trough the tears in my eyes. It's heartbreaking to hear that his mother past away last Friday. My heart goes out to him, his partner W. and his family and friends. It's so hard to loose one of your parents. I hope they all will find strength and consolation among each other. Of course Andy shut off the comments on the post and asked not to send emails. I just have to say something, that's why I will do it this way.

Velvet Blossom

2007-09-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

Can you recall the experience of touching the petals of a blossom? Doesn't it feel soft like velvet? I thought of which name I could give to the fragrance I worked on based on the soft fresh scented magnolia combined with other white flowers like lily of the valley, white lily, orange blossom, Mai rose, freesia and jasmine. The fragrance smells tender, romantic, fresh and sweet at the same time. When I smell this fragrance, words like tender, romantic, petals, blossom and velvet comes in mind. Then I thought, why not call it 'Velvet Blossom'? I think it's a nice name, I also thought of 'Velvet Petals'. I'm not sure which name is best yet, but I think it will be 'Velvet Blossom'. Now I'm dreaming of how it will look like in a beautiful bottle and how the fragrance description would sound, maybe something like:

Velvet Blossom

A fragrance for the romantic soul, tender like a fresh blossom.

Top notes: Lemon, Orange, Grapefruit, Rose wood and green leaves

Heart notes: Magnolia, Lily of the Valley, Orange blossom, Freesia, Mai Rose, White Lily and Jasmine Sambac

Base notes: Vetiver, Vanilla, Oak moss and musk

Interview with Michael Storer

2007-09-02T02:21:00.000-07:00

I'm very glad that I got to know Michael Storer almost two years ago. We never met in person yet, but we talk a lot by email. Michael is also a very active member of my group 'Perfume making'. Always willing to share his knowledge of perfume making with the members of the group, he likes to help other perfumers to grow as well, something that is admirable. Michael is a very kind man, who is very modest about his own success. He launched six fragrances, three men's fragrances; Monk, Djin and Il Giardino and three fragrances for women; Stephanie, Yvette and Genviève. I did an interview with Michael Storer before, we talked about his men's fragrances and he told us how his passion for the creation of fragrances started. In that time he already started to talk about his idea to create fragrances for women as well. Now that he finally launched his three women's fragrances it's time the world should hear about these wonderful fragrances. In this interview we talk about his three 'sister' fragrances for women:

Can you share with us what the inspiration was behind all three perfumes?

Well, the whole idea for three sisters started out with one fragrance I wanted to do. Genviève, named after my mother. I wanted to design a perfume... not a cologne... that was very "upper class" and quintessentially soft and feminine and that had a floral base with just a bit of fruitiness for modernity. I wanted something that was refined and tasteful, not gaudy or loud. Something that reeked of good breeding and understated old money. I guess I wanted to do this because I had been working so long on masculine or actually unisex scents, my Monk, Il Giardino and Djin. Rose as a theme was a natural for this and I wanted to use some aldehydic notes to give it a Chanel No. 5 sort of luxury feel. I wanted the wearer or anyone who smelled it to think of diamonds and platinum. Anyway, I was browsing the Internet and hit upon some vintage Vogue magazine covers. I found the January, 1950 issue and thought... 'Oh, there's my girl in this classic gown and there's my ideal image for this perfume.' It featured a classy young woman in a chiffon opera gown. Strapless but in impeccable taste. The only thing that could date the picture is the long black gloves she wears. But I maintain that even now this look can be very with-it. Her look and her gown are totally timeless and refined femininity to my thinking. I even came up with an ad idea for the picture. It would feature my crystal perfume bottle and read: Timeless. Like you.

Well, after really quite a bit of real goal-oriented experimenting over several months, which of course is the joy of doing perfumery, I hit upon just the right thing and I knew I had what I wanted as soon as I whiffed it. It was just suddenly done. Just like that. It's an odd feeling when you finish an art project in whatever medium. Once it's done, it becomes this construction, this 'thing' that exists but that feels like it's no longer yours. You simply gave birth to something that exists on its own now. That's how it's been with all the fragrances I no longer have floating around in limbo in bottles still left with ideas to try this or that on. These as yet unborn ones are still yours. The finishing cuts the umbilical cord so to speak.

Soon after, I found a source for these beautiful heavy crystal bottles that were just perfect for the image I wanted for Genviève. Suddenly it became clear that I had enjoyed designing Genviève so thoroughly and the bottles were so nice, I wanted to give her 'sisters'. Three is a nice number, so I thought, 'Good. I get to design two more very womanly and equally classic perfumes.'

Next came Stephanie, my full-out gardenia perfume. I had been doing some experiments with single flower perfumes and I felt I had made quite a bit of headway on a gardenia. It just seemed a natural to me to have a heavier floral scent as many women's personalities are attracted to that rather than a lighter scent. I worked for a couple of months on that one. I smelled all the gardenia fragrances I could find and even asked women on the beauty and perfume boards to send me samples of ones I couldn't locate. These ladies really came through for me! In the end, there was something about each of them that just didn't capture the real flower for me. I have two gardenia plants growing in my back garden and was lucky that they were prolifically in bloom at the time. I said to myself, 'I can do better than any of these.' Well, tell me I have a big ego, but in the end I think that I surpassed all of them and a lot of users think so, too.

I had an epiphany of sorts making Stephanie. I got to the point where I thought it was finished so I set the little brown bottle aside for a few days to do its own magic. When I revisited it and put a dash on my arm, I thought that something was disappointing about it... Although it was quite good, it seemed to lack a certain crisp green pungency at the top. It just didn't have a certain sparkle I wanted. I had a sudden flash of what to try adding. It was a certain almost radishy-green chrysanthemum note.. very potent. I put just a drop of that into the mix and like a miracle the whole fragrance sprang to life. It's just funny to me that it was so after-the-fact. Almost serendipity. At that point, Stephanie flew the coop just as Genviève had and belonged no longer to me.

Yvette came to me with a lot of effort. I first tried a carnation fragrance, which I still really like, but after submitting it for our "group swap," Jenny, I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't exciting enough. People in our group liked it ok, but there were no big raves. So I thought, 'Why bottle this?' Next I experimented with another single flower note I'd been working on, a violet. I developed a very nice violet perfume, but I don't know... somehow I grew tired of smelling it and thought I'd rather create a fantasy perfume as the third sister.. something a bit more risky, not a solo flower and perhaps a bit gourmand. Something that wasn't so easy to categorize.

The final product was born out of curiosity about a few basic notes, one of them being genet, also called broom absolute. I built an accord around this and slowly Yvette began to take form. The somewhat buttery and bakery notes came later and the tarragon was a sudden bold stoke that just happened to work right. It's the fragrance that I fretted the most over. With a pure fantasy fragrance one has no real flower or any other kind of map to follow. Creating this kind of scent is the most exciting of all, but you really feel alone doing it because you're completely in uncharted waters with nothing to tell you if you're hot or if you're cold. It's all about trusting yourself. That's exhilarating but scary for anyone. I admit I had a lot of trepidation sending a sample vial to you, Jenny. I honestly had no idea what kind of reaction you'd have and I regard your nose very highly. My jaw practically dropped open when you told me it was your personal favorite 'sister' because I knew that the other two were very good.

I like all three of your fragrances, but Yvette is my personal favorite, I like fragrances that are complex, and Yvette is a very nice complex fragrance. I have to say that Stephanie comes close behind Yvette, it depends on what mood I'm in. If you would compare your three sister fragrances with music, which music would you compare to which fragrance?

Ummm.... That takes some thought. I'd say Genviève might be the ensemble of silver flutes that play Tsjaikovski ballet Danse des Merlitons in the Nutcracker Suite. That's silvery, light, classic and very feminine. Yeah, that could be a match.
Ummm... Stephanie.... Oh, this is hard! I get a very cool and sexy tenor saxophone. Yeah, and trombones, trumpets... It's the blues. That's what fits for me. What would Yvette be musically?? I think again jazz. But not so bluesy. More upbeat. Or in a totally different and romantic direction... "Stardust Memories" by Hogie Carmichael even though it's pretty old now, it's still one of the most beautiful melodies ever written. I think I'm telling you more about myself here than about my perfumes. [laughs].

Ohh I love the music of Tsjaikovski, when I was a little girl I always danced to it in my tutu. Can we expect a new women's fragrance soon? Are you working on one and will there be a fourth sister?

Will there be a fourth sister? I don't have anything planned. I want to work on a dark perfume next. Something for men and women. But I'd like it to be a perfume. Woody, musky.... I'm working on a few ideas, but I don't know yet how to package it. Should it be packaged like the three sisters? I don't know at all yet.

So a unisex fragrance? I think you need bottles that are 'unisex' as well then.

Yes, that is exactly the problem. Bottles. I will perhaps unify all of my bottles in the future, using just one bottle for everything I make. It would solve a myriad of problems. I'm not sure about that yet. But it may be coming.

Are you ever planning to start your own boutique?

Well, I guess one should never say 'never', but I can't see myself doing that in the near future. I'm currently more interested in wholesaling to boutiques, etc. I don't know how I'd like standing in a shop all day waiting for someone to walk in. I'm much more comfortable at my perfumery bench surrounded by raw materials.

I guess you right, but I think it's a nice experience for you and the buyers of your fragrances to be able to talk to each other. Is there a material you have only started exploring in your work recently?

Yes, I'm intrigued completely by Karanal. You know it Jenny, but I don't know if you've worked with it or not. It's fascinating, but at the same time I find it challenging to dose correctly.

Yes, I know how it smells, it smells a bit like amber, but have not worked with it yet, I think it's a difficult material to work with. What is the most unusual perfume you have ever created?

Oh my god! I've made a lot.. I mean a lot... of stink bombs. Way too many of them to count. They were certainly the most unusual. I've made things that ended up smelling like gasoline, farts, dirty feet, you name it. All in the name of discovery... [laughs] ... You should ask my partner. He'll tell you!

I know what you mean, I have the same discoveries.LOL What profession would you have gone into had you taken an alternate route in life?

Well, I was an actor in television for many years and I traveled the world as a photo model. I started with perfumery when I was in high school, but laid it aside for many years. For a long time I was a visual artist and I did some music composing. I can't imagine having taken a different path. It seems I was cut out for just what I'm doing. I'm fascinated with astronomy and also paleoanthropology, but I really can't image what kind of life I'd have had without art. I know I was destined to be an artist.

I would love to see a photo of you at work as a model, do you have a photo that I can add to this interview?

Here is one:

What do you think women are wanting from fragrance in today’s world?

I don't think much changes in this respect. They want romance above all. They want some perfumes to make them feel like they're being taken seriously and they want others to make them feel playful and sexually attractive. They want novelty. Women and of course men, too, tire of the same fragrances. It's just like shoes, actually. Styles will just go back and forth like a pendulum. And we'll be lucky when science brings us new aroma materials to work with and sad when others are made off limits to perfumers.

What do you hope women will take from your three 'sister' fragrances?

I frequently get e-mails from women ...as well as men... who have bought my fragrances. One woman recently wrote that Stephanie is the is most beautiful scent she has ever smelled and that it almost brings tears to her eyes when she wears it because it's such a beautiful work of art. Wow! Now that's potent and really touches me deeply. To think that I can make someone that happy... even just one stranger... It truly is sublime.

A final question, uhm... are you ever planning to create a perfume called Jenny? Just kidding. Thank you so much for this interview, I enjoyed it very much.

The main problem with that would be getting people who speak English to say the name Jenny correctly. Everyone would pronounce it Genny and not Yenny... Then it would sound like a nick name for Genviève.
Jenny, I don't think it will be long at all before your name is all tied up with your own fragrances! I enjoyed this interview too, it was fun, thank you so much!

Michael Storer's three 'sisters' and his men's fragrances and samples are available at the website of MICHAEL STORER Fine Fragrances: http://www.michaelstorer.com/as well as at Lucky Scent online and at their trendy Scent Bar in Los Angeles: http://www.luckyscent.com/

Genviève by Michael Storer

2007-09-01T03:06:00.000-07:00

The last but not least star of the three 'sister' fragrances by Michael Storer is Genviève. A classic fragrance with a modern twist, build around the scent of roses from Damascus and Bulgaria, with their ultra feminine scent. Combined with the fresh but tender scent of Mimosa absolute, the intense tropical scent of Ylang ylang and the sensual notes of Jasmine absolute. Cool green notes of Violet leaf absolute calms the rose notes. The muguet makes it sparkling fresh. All these lovely flowers are bedded in a dream of a gentle peach note, which gives this fragrance a golden glow. The green tea gives this classic fragrance a modern twist. Sensual notes of civet, ambergris and musk preventing Genviève to become innocent.

Genviève is a fruity floral fragrance, intense feminine, timeless and rich. If I had to equate this fragrance with a Hollywood star it would be Grace Kelly. An actress seen as a standard of beauty, grace, and style, as timeless and feminine as the fragrance Genviève.

Genviève and her two 'sisters' are available as eau de parfum strength.
Michael Storer's three 'sisters' and his men's fragrances and samples are available at the website of MICHAEL STORER Fine Fragrances: http://www.michaelstorer.com/
as well as at Lucky Scent online and at their trendy Scent Bar in Los Angeles: http://www.luckyscent.com/

Tomorrow an interview with Michael Storer!

Yvette by Michael Storer

2007-08-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

If the fragrance Stephanie can be equated to the Hollywood star Ava Gardner, the fragrance Yvette could be equated to another movie star, the full-brass redhead Rita Hayworth. This strikingly beautiful femme fatale was as much of a powerhouse as she was a demurely sensitive feline. That's exactly what the fragrance of Yvette brings to mind. It stands very strong on its own two legs but at the same time it is purringly gentle, sensitive and oh so persuasive. When I smell Yvette it's like suddenly donning a pair of 3-D glasses, for I detect multiple layers ...but at the same time I can smell through the total sum of them all, almost like peering into a wondrous hologram. One gets the feeling there is no end to its depth. You simply want more... An extraordinary experience.

The overlying note of Yvette is a rich plumminess through which a white floral accord sparkles. This floral accord is dominated by an exquisitely delicate lily of a warm, soft and creamy fragrance supported by warm spices, rose, ylang ylang, carnation and jasmine. Through it all weaves a trace of tarragon to lend it a subtle green twist. One of the first things I noticed when smelling Yvette was that it has such a wonderful sweet note going on in the background, not an overpowering sweetness, but a remarkably rich yet gentle and tender, almost dessert-like creaminess. It's the broom absolute which adds a creamy, honey floral character with slight fruitiness to this wonderful composition. I just love that note.

The overall effect is quite complex in the best possible of ways. A perfume you really have to experience to understand. With this fragrance you wont go unnoticed!

Yvette and her two 'sisters' are available as eau de parfum strength. Bottled by Mr. Storer himself.

Michael Storer's three 'sisters' and his men's fragrances are available at the website of MICHAEL STORER Fine Fragrances: http://www.michaelstorer.com/

as well as at Lucky Scent online and at their trendy Scent Bar in Los Angeles: http://www.luckyscent.com/

Stephanie by Michael Storer

2007-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you one of Michael Storer's three "sisters"...... Stephanie. This is no shy lady, she pulsates like a shining star, and a star is exactly what she is. This fragrance is highly addictive, so consider yourself well warned. It's a fragrance inspired by the headspace of the luscious white blooming Gardenia, sultry, voluptuous and so unbelievably sensual. Have you ever put on a perfume and found that you couldn't stop smelling your wrist? Well, this is such a perfume. Once you apply it, you keep sneaking a whiff because you just can't get enough of it; you want to inhale deep breaths of this seductive elixir.

One day I let my older brother smell Stephanie. Now he loves to talk, and I've noticed numerous times when I ask him to try a perfume, he whiffs it cursively and promptly goes right on with what he had been jabbering about, meanwhile keeping me waiting for his thoughts on the scent he had just put on. With Stephanie it was different. I put it on his wrist, and he actually stopped talking! He smelled, he looked up like he was searching for something in his mind, smelled again, and finally started to speak, exclaiming to me that he really loved this fragrance. I had to laugh to myself, because I caught him smelling his wrist the rest of the evening.

I have exactly the same experience with Stephanie, there is something definitely beguiling about this fragrance. The notes are truly sublime. There is a fresh green crispy top that makes this gardenia come alive and bloom. it's as if you were wafting this incredible white flower "au natural" together with the green leaves that surround it. I have smelled a lot of different gardenia fragrances, but they are nothing at all compared to this bejeweled star. For example the perfume Kai; it's so different. Kai smells nice but a bit "chemical," a bit too sharp and edgy, and it's more in the direction of Jasmine. Stephanie is the real deal. A classic Hollywood star.

Besides the scent of gardenia this perfume contains the notes of:

Pink pepper, black pepper, galbanum resin, angelica root oil, sambac jasmine absolute, tuberose, and a slight touch of chrysanthemum for crispness. Gentle sandalwood notes and vetiver anchor the bottom of this perfume, but as if by magic, they don't push their way into the flower scent but simply offer subtle support and longevity. A real tribute to Mr. Storer's ingenuity as a perfumer.

Arhianrad (Juvy Santos) wrote in her blog winterstorming, a beautiful review about Stephanie, one of the things she said was:

"A White Floral to End All White Florals. Gardenia's answer to Tuberose's Fracas. This belongs to the vamps and the starlets of yesteryear, the curvaceous and the bold. It is unrelentingly sexy--a fragrance with decolletage, and garters, red lips and lacquered nails. Ava Gardner, sultry eyes and everything."

I couldn't have said it better!

Stephanie is available at the website of MICHAEL STORER Fine Fragrances: http://www.michaelstorer.com/
as well as at Lucky Scent online and at their trendy Scent Bar in Los Angeles: http://www.luckyscent.com/

Michael Storer and his three sisters

2007-08-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

This week is dedicated to the three 'sister' perfumes created by Michael Storer. The following days I will review all three sisters; Yvette, Genviève and Stephanie, three wonderful fragrances created by my dear friend Michael Storer. At the end of the week I will have an interview with this remarkable perfumer. I had a wonderful interview with the perfumer Michael Storer before about his men's fragrances, he already talked in this interview about launching women's fragrances as well in the future. Well, he finally did and made many ladies very happy. Tomorrow my first review about the fragrance Stephanie. The fragrances created by Michael Storer can be found at his own website:
http://www.michaelstorer.com/
and
http://www.luckyscent.com/

For reading more reviews about the perfumes made by Michael Storer please visit:
Sniffapalooza
Noteworthyfragrances
Arhianrad

Sperm attracted to the scent of Lily of the Valley???

2007-08-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

Can human sperm cells smell? Well that is what I just read, never knew this before. There is found that human sperm cells have an odorant receptor which triggers a series of physiological events that may result in the directed movement of human sperm. The sperm-attracting odorant is named 'Bourgeonal' this is an aroma chemical used in perfumes and soap for it's Lily of the Valley scent. So where is this Bourgeonal/Lily of the Valley scent come from, does the egg of the woman produce this scent or is it produced somewhere else? They don't have an answer to that question yet. Another interesting thing is that the aroma chemical 'Undecanal' (Aldehyde C-11 undecylenic, waxy/fatty/rose/citrus odor) appears to block the effect of Bourgeonal and inhibits the chemo sensory response in sperm cells. Maybe in the future Undecanal will be used to prevent undesired pregnancies, instead of hormones, and Bourgeonal to help people to get pregnant. Who knows, and who knows they maybe will find more odorant receptors.

If you like to read more about this subject, here are some links:
NY Times
Health 24
And in German language:
3Sat

Vanille Exquise by Annick Goutal

2007-08-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

I love the sweet scent of vanilla, the scent makes me calm and it's comforting, I love the taste of vanilla as well, I like vanilla desserts and candy's with vanilla. But to wear a vanilla perfume is a complete
different story. Most vanilla scents are too sweet and girly girly for me and since I'm not a teenager anymore, I feel that it doesn't suit me. The different perfumes by Annick Goutal are very lovely, so I was curious about the Vanilla Exquise as well.

This perfume was created in 2004 by perfumer Isabelle Doyen. She and Camille Goutal (the daughter of Annick Goutal) dreamt of a unique vanilla which could take us away to far away islands and Cleopatra's ancient milk baths of vanilla scented almond.

The notes are described as:

Vanilla from the Marquises Islands, angelica, almond, benzoin, white musk, sandalwood and Gaïac wood.

It's some sort of a woody vanilla, it's creamy but also a bit dry woody. It doesn't smell like a very complex perfume, it smells rather simple and recognizable, that doesn't mean that it's not a very well done composition though. The scent stays close to my skin, like most perfumes of Annick Goutal do, it's a calm and quiet perfume. It's a bit too quiet for my taste, it doesn't excite me.

At the opening I smell the soft floral woody note of Linalool, I guess there is used quite a bit of this material. There is a bit of a smokey note, I guess that is because of the Gaïac wood, I would have liked a bit more of this smokey note. I smell a sweet note that reminds me of sugared almonds, this could be benzaldehyde (which smells like almond) and maltol(which smells like sugar, caramel), but the angelica sure helps to add some wonderful green sweetness as well. I think besides the natural vanilla, there is also used some Veratraldehyde, which has a more woody vanilla scent and some ethyl vanillin, which is more creamier than normal vanillin. Not a bad composition, but too simple and too sweet and flat for my taste.

Available at http://www.annickgoutal.com/ a beautiful but slow site.

Apple formula

2007-08-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

We went to Germany today, which is really close to where we life. It was real fun there, we went shopping and had a lovely walk in the local park and of course we ate 'pflaumenkuchen' a cake made with plums, I love that cake.

Yesterday I was experimenting with an apple formula, just for fun, and I like to share with you what I came up with so far, here it is:

Ethyl heptanoate 30
iso Amyl acetate 30
Ethyl butyrate 11
Ethyl-2-methyl butyrate 3
Orange oil 3
Linalyl acetate 2
Geraniol 1
Hexyl acetate 1
Geranyl acetate 1
Cyclohexyl butyrate 10% 6
Neroli 10% 3
Vertelione 3% 2
Benzaldehyde 1% 2

Your partner's choice

2007-08-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

We all have our own favorite perfumes, but which one does your partner likes you to wear?

I just asked my DH (Mo) which perfume he likes me to wear, he answered Chanel no.5, I have to say that I like Chanel no.19 better, which was a present from him as well, I'm happy that he likes that one too. We also have a perfume we share, I talked about this before, it's Must de Cartier, it smells good on both of us. It's fun to wear the same perfume at the same time, it blends wonderful together..........

I have to make a confession

2007-08-18T15:01:00.001-07:00

I have done it, yes I did! I have to admit. After the concentration of my perfume inspired by the painting 'The Kiss' matured and after I added the alcohol and let it stand for a while, I changed it a bit. I was not satisfied about it. O, by the way, we moved the date to 15 September instead of 15 August. Because more members of the Perfume making group wanted to participate but didn't have something ready yet, they needed some more time. I find this swap really difficult because it's so different than creating a perfume spontaneously, it had to be based or better to say inspired by the painting. I find it difficult to create something on demand. If I create a perfume, it's created it in my head first, and then it slowly develops in my head. When I start with the creation itself, I sometimes change it a bit, but the overall composition and idea remains.

While creating this perfume I changed a couple of my initial ideas. For example I used much more bergamot oil than I initial had in mind. By this I created an 'ambrein' accord.

An 'ambrein' accord is an accord based on bergamot, balsamic notes like labdanum, benzoe, tolu etc, vanilla, civet and coumarin. I combined this accord with woody notes; with the accent on sandalwood, and completed it with notes of Iris and rose. It became a very complex formula, I used over 70 different materials. And still after it was matured and all ........... I added another material; mimosa absolute. I just had to do it, it makes the top notes so nicely smooth but fresh, it combines perfectly with the bergamot, petit grain oil and the orange blossom absolute. I love this tender sweet lively note of mimosa. Well, don't think this is the best perfume I ever created, but it was a nice but tough learning experience. I hope the members of the group can give me some useful advice to make it better. We will exchange the formulas, this way the help can be more specific, and it will be a great way to see how others create their perfume, much different than only smelling the perfume and not knowing the formula. I'm really exited to smell all the perfumes of the other members, I can't wait, but at the same time I'm a bit nervous about my own contribution.

Ending with a beautiful quote from Jacques Guerlain:

"I felt something so intense, I could only express it in a perfume."

Vetiver, Vanilla and Angel

2007-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Right now it's raining here in Wolvega, in spite of the rain that is falling down at the moment, we had a lovely sunny weekend. I spent most part of the weekend on sniffing some of my new fragrance materials, and working on my fragrance with magnolia. I tried some different versions and compared them with each other. In one trial I added some more vetiver to the base notes and I like it, it's nice in combination with the cedar that I used. Vetiver is also interesting with the vanilla, it makes the vanilla less sweet. I like vanilla to be a bit smokey and woody.

Because of the nice weather I took some smelling strips that were dipped in the new materials with me outside to evaluate their smell. I took some smelling strips dipped in my older materials with me as well, to see if they would combine with these new materials. Sometimes I take different smelling strips in my hand and waft with it under my nose like a Spanish fan, to analyse the smell of the combination of these different materials.

I read somewhere the basic notes of the perfume Angel by Thierry Mugler and just for fun tried a combination of different smelling strips with these notes: Helional (ozonic, melon, sweet), Cashmeran ( musky, sweet), Maltol ( sugar, caramel), Isobutavan (chocolate, vanilla) and Patchouli oil. I held these smelling strips in one hand and waft it under my nose, and yes, it does smell like a simple version of Angel. It's an accord for sure, the combination of these notes do create a complete new scent. This is a great way to find out which notes do create an accord. Here is a video with perfumer Arthur Burnham where you can see what I mean with using the scent strips as a Spanish fan.

Greetings from the Netherlands

2007-08-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

Today was a beautiful sunny day. My husband and I like cycling, especially if the weather is sunny as it was today. We decided to pay a visit to my mom. She, my stepfather and my little (but tall) brother are living 11 kilometers (about 7 miles) away from us. They life in a romantic little white house, which you can see on top of this post. Before we lived in another village, but we moved to this house when I was eight. I love that romantic little house with such a beautiful garden. My mother and my stepfather loves gardening and they have beautiful flowers in their garden, but also all kinds of vegetables. I like it when my mother makes vegetable soup and goes into her garden to get all the ingredients for her soup, every ingredient for her soup is freshly picked from the garden.

My husband and I life in an area with beautiful nature, we can jump on our bikes and in 10 minutes we are surrounded by breathtaking beautiful nature, we have forests but a lot of water as well. We took the route where you can bike trough an area with wild nature where you see no cars, with the river called 'Linde' alongside you. I took some photos to share this beautiful day with you.

Above a photo of my mother and me, below are some photos of the

route that we took today

Intuition

2007-07-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

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'

2007-07-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2007-07-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Follow my nose

2007-06-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday me, my husband and a friend of us, went to an orchid farm. It's an orchid farm but also a tropical garden that you can visit it has waterfalls, little houses, bridges etc, and of course lots of orchids. I was curious to find fragrant orchids. So the first thing I did when we came into the tropical garden, was sticking my nose into an orchid. A bit of a disappointment because I couldn't smell a thing. I wanted to smell all the flowers, so I followed my nose. I saw people looking in a funny way at me, but they started all to smell the flowers as well. The first orchid I found that had a scent had a faint odor. A bit sweet, soft not real spectacular. The photo I made of this orchid failed. It had a lot of real tiny yellow/orange flowers on the same branch, hanging down from a tree.

But the most fragrant I could find was an orchid that had the appearance of a big violet, and that was the common name of it as well, it's called 'Violet orchid'. The official name is Miltonia named after Lord Milton. I smelled the white version of this orchid first, because they were the first I found. The smell was fresh floral a bit lemony and a bit spicy, not at all like the smell of violet. When we walked a bit further I found more Miltonia's the white version but also Miltonia's in other colors. This time the white version didn't smell so strong as the flowers that I found before. I think it depends on where they stand.

Next to these white flowers there were also Miltonia's with a deep dark purple color, these had a faint scent like chocolate. Maybe if they were standing in another spot or when I smelled them at another time of the day they would smell stronger, I don't know. I know that many orchids are fragrant in the night. It was great to see and smell so many different orchids, there are so many of them, also many hybrids. When you like to see how a 'new born' orchid would look like if two different species would 'mate' click here

A palette of scents

2007-06-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

A mistake I made when I first wanted to create perfume, that was in 1998 or 1999 I think, was that I used too many materials, all in small and about the same amount. So too much of everything basically. None of the materials were standing out, it was more like 1 to 3 drops of all the materials and than maybe 10 materials at once. When you think about how many compounds essential oils or absolutes have; for example a rose absolute, has at least about 350 aromatic molecules, you will understand that when you use all kinds of essential oils or absolutes you will end up with something like 1000 or more aromatic molecules in your creation. Of course some of them will share some of the same aromatic molecules, but all together it's too much of all these smelly molecules at once, it doesn't make sense to your nose anymore. I compare it with painting, when you use too many colors on one little spot you get a brown dull color. Let me visualise it:

I used a small frame and painted with a big brush a big spot of red paint that almost fill the whole frame. Not bad.

Than I added a yellow spot on top of the red spot I painted before. Hmm still not bad.

Now I used the color blue on top of the red and yellow spot. And the color changed into something purple. Not bad either. But this is not what I had in mind, where is the red and yellow color?

But I don't stop here and add a green color on top of all the other colors. The color turns brown and dull. Imagine what kind of color it will turn out to be when I use more colors, all at the same amount and all at the same spot. You don't see any of the other colors anymore.

In perfumery you have to avoid to add too many things in the same amounts. You have to create the basic scent, the skeleton so to say, you could also say the background maybe, the scent that will go trough the whole fragrance. You will smell different notes as well but still will recognize the basic smell. It's something that will guide you trough the whole fragrance experiment of the perfume.

So this time I will use a bigger frame to start with:

Than I add the basic colors, the basic scents I want to use for my creation, something like a background that always can be seen (smelled) through the whole fragrance picture of my creation. Like I did here with the basics green for the grass, blue for the sky and a little less, but still present yellow for the sun:

So far the basic of the painting, uhm I mean fragrance. Now I'm adding some smaller amounts of other colors, I mean notes:

You can still see the basic or the background of the painting, like you still will smell the basic notes in your creation. Finally I add some other colors, not big spots but enough to be noticed.

So some colors, notes, will act as the basic and some colors, notes will act as little spots to give the painting, perfume, more contrast or accents. Sorry, but I can't paint, I wish! I hope that this visual made it more clear on how to 'paint' a perfume.

Rêverie au jardin by Andy Tauer

2007-06-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

Andy Tauer wanted to capture the scent of lavender in all its facets and complexity and created a fragrance based on this smell. He created "Rêverie au jardin" what means "Daydream in the garden". Now when you aspect to smell an ordinary lavender cologne, you are wrong. This lavender fragrance is more than just a fragrance that smells like lavender, it starts fresh green like you imagine yourself in a green meadow, slowly the lavender notes comes through. I know how difficult it is to create a perfume with a lot of lavender, it easy becomes smelling like an air freshener and smells cheap. But here in this fragrance the lavender has all kinds of aspects, it starts sparkling fresh green, something that surprised me to smell, later the lavender comes forward, a herbal fresh lavender softened by Bulgarian rose absolute. The base notes are sweet tonka vanilla with woody notes of cedar and sandalwood.

The notes:

The head notes are very green and fresh- lavender(high altitude mountain lavender from France, galbanum and fir balm with bergamot and rose absolute from Bulgaria softening the herbaceous lavender.

They lead over to a musky, fresh heart note (frankincense from India and ambrette seeds) with a woody and flowery orris line.

The body note is the most complex part of the scent, being a soft, and airy wood accord (vetiver, tonka beans, oakmoss). Hints of vanilla and ambergris, sandalwood and cedar wood play into a balsamic tone that seems to last for ever.
World wide:http://www.tauerperfumes.com/US: http://www.luckyscent.com/Germany: http://www.ausliebezumduft.de/Switzerland: http://www.lemaroc.ch/UK: http://www.eieflud.co.uk/

Mint, apple and lemon

2007-06-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

Here in the Netherlands we had some rainy days lately, but gladly it's dry in between as well. Last night we had a birthday party of my girlfriend and the whole night it was dry so we could sit outside in the garden. We sat outside until half past 4 in the night, no need to tell it was a great party! This morning I walked in my garden and was not only smelling the flowers that are blooming but smelled the leaves of some plants as well, I crush them between my fingers so the essential oils will be released. We have peppermint plants in the garden, the Latin name of this peppermint is Mentha suaveolens, we use the leaves in our tea. The smell is soft minty with a green apple note. It's amazing how many different species of mint plants there are, there are mints that smells like grapefruit, chocolate, pineapple and many more variates. Here you can read about some species and their smells. On real warm days I like to make a refreshing lemon drink. I use water. sugar, Lemon or Lime and peppermint leaves, which I leave in the drink for decoration and taste, with a lot of ice, this drink is wonderful on hot days. I have essential oils of the peppermint as well, one oil is from the normal peppermint and the other is an essential oil from the Nana peppermint, Mentha Spicata, a mint that Arabic people use in their tea.

Another plant in my garden with aromatic leaves is Melissa officinalis (Lemon Balm) when you crush the leaves of this plant between your fingers it smells like Lime, I've heard once that when you drink a tea of this plant everyday, you will have a long healthy life. There are many more plants with aromatic leaves in my garden, like the Agastache Foeniculum (Anise Hyssop) these leaves smells like licorice with a hint of mint as well. The leaves of the geranium smells heavenly green rosy. I like to sniff everything I even dig up the violet flowers to smell their roots which smell a bit like Orris root.

Well have to go, it's Father's Day and I made a fragrance for my father to give to him as a present, I hope he likes it.

Have a nice Father's Day!

Peony

2007-06-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

The flowers around me are so inspiring these days. I can't get enough of smelling all these lovely fragrances. A lot of flowers are blooming in my garden and I can't resist to smell them every time I pass by them. When I smell them I wonder in my head what it is that makes these flowers smell so great. Last week my mother gave me beautiful flowers of Peony out of her garden they are white with little purple red spots on them. The funny thing is that the petals, that are soft like velvet, have a heart shape. The smell of these flowers are incredible it's soft, clean and fresh at the same time. It doesn't smell like roses, although it has some similarities, the smell of a rose is deeper. I took the vase with the flowers with me outside and went to my garden sitting at the table. I took also some of my aroma chemicals with me outside, and smelled the material that I thought would be in it and compared the smell of it with the flowers, to be sure if it is really in it or not.

I can smell Citronellol a component that also occurs in rose, Citronellol has a rosy but also a bit of a citrus kind of odor. I also detect a Linalool note, Linalool occurs naturally in Lavender, Rose wood and many other plants and flowers. Linalool has a soft floral and a bit of a woody odor. Peony also has a little bit of a green note, what I think can be coming from Aldehyde Lauric C12, which has a clean fresh green smell. There is no doubt that it also contains some Geraniol which also occurs in rose and so many other flowers and even fruits. The smell of this flower also does remind me a bit of Honeysuckle somehow, so I guess that it also contains some Geranyl Acetate. I created my own Peony base based on this experiment and the similarity with the the smell of the real Peony flowers is striking. As far as I know there is no essential oil or absolute made from the flowers of Peony. I create a lot of my own bases this way, like I did with the flowers of Snowball Viburnum for example. These bases are not perfumes, but I use them as building blocks in my creations. I can't wait for the other flowers to bloom.

My Swap Perfume revealed

2007-05-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

On my Yahoo group Perfume Making we did our first 'Perfume Swap' in January this year. We sent each other our own created perfumes to get feedback about our perfumes. We did the Swap anonymously so we didn't knew who made which perfume so we could give honest feedback. 19 members participated in this Swap, so we all received 19 sample vials with perfumes created by our members. It was real fun to smell all these lovely fragrances. I promised in this post that I would reveal my Swap perfume to you all, so here I will post all the feedback that I received for my perfume. We had to answer a lot of questions, but the answers were real helpful for all of us. Some members could not answer all the questions but that is okay. I used here only the first letter of their names and sometimes I put behind it if it is a man (M) or a woman (W). On the botttom of this post I will tell my conclusion of the feedback.

The perfume that I sent in is desribed in this post. I changed a few things but the basic idea of this fragrance remained the same. It is an Oriental/Leathery fragrance with flowery notes, I wanted to create a perfume that was meant for a woman that is/or want to be confidant about herself, a classy, elegant woman. It was meant to be a sexy but not a girly- girly kind of sexy perfume, it was meant for a mature woman that knows what she wants and is not afraid of her sensuality. Here are some notes of this fragrance:

Top notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Ylang Ylang, Honey

Heart notes: Jasmin Sambac, Mai Rose, Orange blossom, Cinnamon, Cedar

Base notes: Agarwood, Patchouli, Vetiver, Amber, Vanilla, Castoreum

Here is the feedback to my perfume:

Impression:

1 What is your first impression of this fragrance?

L(W): Very sexy! Bud smells it the same way. Stuart Little, the cat, also liked it.
J(W): Narcotic Florleather
A(W): Smoky, oriental, deep floral-floriental
S(M): heady, floral, sweet, creamy
N(W): a burst of a bunch of tiny light purple flowers
M(W): It took me a bit of going over the first impression, but I feel it's
hyacinth with a leather note.
M(W): sweet bomb, strong, ambra-muskey, narcotic flowers, woodsy tones and
leathernuance
J(M): Vanilla classic
C(W): shadowy, mysterious, woody, warm, dusty but not unpleasantly so
B(M): flower, sweet, elegant, clove
M(M): Floral, woody, spicy, elegant, classy, well constructed.
C(W): Beautiful bright spicy fruity opening. Cashmeran? After the first
minute or two, it briefly smells a bit metallic on my skin, but not on
the strip. Linear after that, mostly a base accord on my skin, though
sweet orange blossom on my sleeve where it rubbed off - the fabric is
holding onto top notes better than my skin is.
D(M): Gorgeous, floral, rich. Balanced by herbal / spice blend
P(W): Floral, powerful, pulled me in the first whiff I took.
A(W): Sweet at first, then quickly changes to something tarry, smoky, creosote -
almost like car exhaust. A little bit of spiciness - paper, leather.
S(W): Loud floral
R(W): My first impression of this fragrance was this is a floral blend
F(M): Floral, ethereal, soft, sweet, a bit *narcotic *(phenylacetic
acid- on the strip)? A very subtle hint of something sweeter, like
fruity almost

2 If the smell of this fragrance could have a color, which color
would it be? (for example: Light, Dark, Intensive, Sharp, Pastel,
Purple, yellow, Green or more colors at the same time)

L: Intense
J: Steel
A: Crème to gold
S: periwinkle
N: lilac
M:....
M: pink , gold, dark red
J: Yellowish brown
C: camel-hair tan, umber brown
B: orange
M: Purples reds orange
C: bronze and umber, orange
D: a mauve brown - rich and warm, but not dark
P: Burgundy, gray, blue
A: Smokey grey, mauve & pink, morphing to mimeograph ink blue, and then violet
S: Bright yellow, copper, pink
R: yellow
F: purple, magenta, blue, silver-ish

3 If this fragrance would have a shape or form, what kind of shape or
form would it have? (for example: Big, Small, Massive, Angular,
Pointed, Round, Slender etc)

L: Phallic
J: sharp but smooth and detailed
A: round
S: very large sphere
N: like a big bouquet
M: .....
M: pink heart
J: .....
C: large, pillowy
B: Big, round
M: A body-sized velvety ball
C: large, mighty, a little angular, with deeply etched curved flourishes
D: curvilinear - like flower spikes bent by a breeze
P: Large, puffy, all-enveloping - maybe like a cloud.
A: Clouds of smoke and pink cherry blossoms.
S: Something like a giant sea anemone
R: round
F: Round, med-large (varying sizes), plump

4 If you could touch this fragrance, how would it feels like? (For
example: Soft, Hard, Warm, Cool, Rough, Smooth, Like a diamond, Like
silk, Like fur etc)

L: Warm and smooth
J: Strong but flexable
A soft, silky
S: soft petals
N: fluffy, silky
M: .....
M: like heavy oriental silk
J: .....
C: very warm, enfolding- medium length, dense brownish fur
B: warm
M: Velvety plush
C: warm and bright
D: soft, warm grassy slope
P: Soft, but strong
A: Non-tangible.
S: ...
R: soft
F: soft, smooth, a bit sharp/heavy at the top (scratchy?)

5 Can you imagine a certain place, scene or a photo with this
perfume? (For example: a sunset, a tropical garden, a gala evening, a
sports activity, the ocean etc)

L: Gala evening
J: Fast business, stock exchange, high power, lots of money, fund
raiser event
A: Fine restaurant or elegant setting
S: I think a tropical garden does fit for this one
N: grand garden
M: .......
M: chinese theater, oriental shops
J: 1920's party
C: A photo of a Middle Eastern Bazaar- interior of a shop tent,
a rather hot, dusty day, so that there are light halos, muted
colors and soft shadows throughout the picture. Numerous
fascinating things, sacks of spices, rolls of richly detailed textiles,
native carvings, ethnic jewelry, tempt your eyes to linger everywhere.
The image is very artistically composed and printed, like something
you'd see in The National Geographic.
B: perfume store
M: At the opera, nice restaurant
C: can't say
D: above - strong but pleasant sunlight - laying in new growing grass
in spring with the brave spring flowers pushing up.
P: Evening.
A: Busy city street - morning rush hour.
S: .....
R: I imagine a fun scene such as a party or dining with friends
F: tropical garden??

6 Do you find this perfume masculine, feminine, or unisex?

L(W): Unisex
J(W): Definite feminine
A(W): I would wear it in a second, but it has a masculine hint to it.
S(M): Feminine for sure
N(W): feminine
M(W): Good question. At first, I would have said feminine, but now, I think I
would say unisex.
M(W): feminine
J(M): Definite feminine
C(W): Unisex
B(M): feminine
M(M): feminine, definitely.
C(W): unisex
D(M): I would almost go for unisex, but the floral type insists feminine
P(W): Absolutely feminine.
A(W): Unisex
S(W): feminine
R(W): unisex
F(M): Feminine

7 What kind of woman or man can you imagine wearing this perfume?
(For example: Young, Romantic, Sportive, Middle age,
Aristocratic, Playful, Firm, Chique etc)

L: Both romantic and aristocratic
J: Professional woman, stylish, self confident, high income earner,
A: A romantic woman, probably a middle aged woman or anyone older than
early twenties - this is a little too much, I think, for a young
sweet something.
S: 25 to 45 yr old woman, vivacious, outgoing and playful
N: Sophisticated
M: .....
M: middle age lovers of heavy sweet scents
J: Very diverse, both my 29 yo sister as my 90 yo grandmother like it
C: An adventurous and sensual 30+ man, confidant, creative...wearing for
intimate evening, or special occasion scent. A strong, independent woman, also
30+... wearing as a her personal "power perfume", like a women of the
1930s-1950s
would wear Caron's Tabac Blond.
B: Romantic lady
M: Romantic lady, age 35 and up
C: bold, sensual (man or woman)
D: style-conscious, but daring - a younger, hipper Martha Stewart
(don't take this the wrong way - I worship Martha)
P: Romantic, sensual, mature.
A: Middle-aged, sophisticated, experimental, not afraid of what life has to
offer, looking for new experiences/adventures - mid-life crisis??
S: Someone outgoing
R: A wide age group could wear this perfume
F: younger, but not youth, more mature

8 Would you like to wear this perfume yourself?

L(W): Yes!
J(W): Yes, if only I had a place to wear it, doesn't fit too well in
my garage. LOL
A(W): Yes
S(M): Whish I could
N(W): probably not
M(W): Yes, I have worn it. I wore it to a birthday party. I really like this
perfume and would like more. I only have a tiny sample. If anyone isn't
keeping samples, I'll take this one off your hands. (grin)
M(W): Yes, for special events
J(M): No, too feminine
C(W): probably not-
sadly, something in it turns sour on my skin in the drydown
B(M): No
M(M): Not as a man. But I would enjoy this on a woman.
C(W): Yes
D(M): If I was a hip chick, you bet
P(W): Yes
A(W): Not particularly - maybe only if I really wanted to cause a stir
S(W): no
R(W): When I wore it, I thought it was quite nice
F(M): No, too feminine

9 If so with what kind of event would you wear this perfume? (For
example: A bar, Christmas, A fancy diner, Friends, Work,
The beach, A summer party etc)

L: To bed, for a very special encounter.
J: Special evening out, date night, meeting for dollars.
A: Well, I'd be apt to wear it to work, but I would also wear it for a
nice dinner, a play, ballroom dancing.
S: A family gathering or a day out on the weekend
N: perhaps formal occasion , business
M: It's kind of heavy for summer or work. I
would wear it out to dinner, a party, a bar.
M: evening wear, theater, balls, artevents
J: ....
C: I might ask my guy to wear it if he liked it, since it doesn't work on me.
This would be for evening wear both going out and for staying home and cuddling.
B: In theatre, romantic open fire
M: A fancy ball, dressy evening
C: casual, outdoorsy, home, social events
D: Highly flexible, but not for work. There is an edge that insists on
fun.
P: Evening event. To me this one is sultry, romantic - definitely an evening
fragrance.
Annie: .....
S: Christmas party
R: I would wear this fragrance when I am going out for the evening.
F: Romantic dinner out, Spring or Fall, type of scent, being a
heavier type of floral

10 How would you describe this perfume? (For example: a flowery
perfume, a Chypre perfume, an oriental perfume, a strong perfume,
a gentle perfume, a soliflor or maybe you think it's not a perfume
but an accord or a base)

L: A strong perfume, with an oriental flair
J: Floraleather
A: I think it is a floriental.
S: floral
N: floral
M: This perfume is very strong. But I like it that way.
M: very sweet oriental, heavy but nicely buquet on my skin
J: Oriental vanilla
C: A smooth woody amber perfume with salty, caraway seed, cumin notes.
Primarily aroma chems to my nose, maybe a few of those costly sandalwood
replacements,
yes?
I don't know if it's my recovering 'kleenex nose', but unlike a lot of others,
I perceive very little in the way of florals in this scent, but that may
just be my own limited definition of what constitutes 'floral'.
B: flowery spicy
M: a spicy woody floral
C: warm & bright ambery oriental
D: a new chypre
P: Floral, spicy, powdery
A: Fantasy fragrance.
S: Strong floral
R: This perfume is floral
F: Floral, .fantasy blend, edible, mouth-watering, modern
(chemical). It opens up as a floral then evolves down to more of a
fruity (fantasy-type) middle

11 Does this perfume remind you of an existing perfume?

L: Black Watch by Prince Matchabelli
J: Don't have enough samples to compare it too
A: Yes, a little bit but I'm having trouble remembering it.
S: Oscar de la Renta
N: no but I really do not know commercial perfumes
M: No, it's very different... unique
M: but it reminds me a lot to a very typical smell in some expensive places and
shops in Asia
J: A bit like No5, Mitsouko and other classics with lots of vanilla
C: no
B: No
M: No, but I don't know a lot of them on the market
C: no
D: some elements do, but the overall impact is new
P: No
A: Not at all.
S: No
R: This perfume does not remind me of any other
F: No, maybe Joop???? (not that familiar with many, can't recall)

12 What kind of package and name would fit this perfume?

L: Black faille box. The name - All I can think of is Phallus, but there must be
something more original.
J: Black with steel, sleek, modern. Perhaps a name like "Saber" or
Wall street
A: .....
S: Yellow and white box with gold print, but not pretentious
N:.......
M: If Disney didn't have a copyright on it, I'd say "Fantasia". or maybe
"Fascination".
M: exotic disire , colours red, dak red, pink maybe orange, gold
J: .....
C: A tall, cylindrical bottle with a lightly textured cap of burnt reddish
'flamed' gold-leaf.
The box would be soft deep umber brown, matte finish, with design
accents, perhaps the name, in this same metal-leaf.
B: Milky glass with gold
M: burgandy and gold with a bulb atomizer.
C: ?
D: ......
P: Gray box with burgundy accents. Maybe a spiky bottle.
A: "Rush" - I'd use a vaguely car shaped bottle in sleek shiny black glass -
sleek shiny black box with silver/chrome trim and print.
S:....
R: NA
F: Lavender with pastels, multi-colored (purples, blues,
magentas) spheres (bubbles) maybe. Name: "Juicy"

Improvement

1 How well does this perfume last on you? Is it long enough?

L: It lasts a very long time
J: It has a nice long staying power and maintains consistency
A: It lasts a lot better than most. The dry down lasted for several
hours.
S: It was long lasting and had a very nice drydown
N: It lasted mostly a couple hours
M: Well, I'd hate to have anyone think I have poor bathing habits, (LOL),
but I could still smell it two days after I applied it. It was in my
hair. It lasted a very long time.
M: It lasts long and remain
J: It lasts a very long time
C: Good grief, we've got an Energizer Bunny here. Goes on and on and on...
both on skin and scent-strips. It lasted for 8+
hours on my skin. The scent strip from 36 hrs ago still carries a faint odor.
B: Longlasting
M: It lasts very well, moves nicely. Well contructed.
C: Very good lasting power
D: Yes - lasts nicely
P: Lasts a very long time.
A: It's been almost 8 hours since I put it on, and I can still smell it pretty
well, so I'm going to guess that this is one of those fragrances that might last
at least 24 hours on my skin... I'd say that's long enough.
S: yes
R: It is long lasting
F: yes

2 What do you think of the strength is it too weak, too strong or
just fine?

L: Perfect
J: Strength is fine
A: Definitely strong at first, but pretty good after that.
S: It was strong initially, but softened nicely over time
N: just fine
M: It's strong, but I like it that way.
M: it couldn´t be much stronger without disturbing noses, yes its fine.
J: Good
C: Quite strong, but IMO, that's a plus for this sort of fragrance
B: It's okay
M: Just right.
C: It's quite strong but I like that
D: perfect - I could go a little stronger, but that's why there are
levels of perfume.
P: I think it is strong, but it is not too strong.
A: It's a little overpowering at first, but dries down to a nice level.
S: a bit too strong
R: it's good
F: a bit of a (too strong) narcotic nuance (top) [strip], but
strength is fine

3 Do you find this perfume complete?

L: Yes
J: Yes
A: I like the base and I think the citrus is not a bad idea for the top
note, but I think I would like it to have more of a middle note.
S: yes, very nicely complete
N: yes I think so
M: Yes
M: Yes
J: It is mostly vanilla, I miss a real top and heart that could
precede the vanilla base
C: Yes
B: Too many separation from top to basenote
M: Yes, but I have an idea for it. See below.
C: Yes, it's wonderful.
D: Quite - there is an elegant balance already
P: Yes. This one grabbed me from the first day I opened the package. It cannot
be ignored!
A: No. I'd like to smell more things in the dry down. the heart and base notes
could stay linear, but they need to have more interest.
S: yes
R: Yes
F: Yes

4 Do you miss something in this perfume and can you tell what it is?

L: Nothing is missing.
J: No
A: No, I don't think anything is missing
S: There is an element of something like mimosa in there that I wish I could
take out. This isn't that important and many might find they love that. I
wouldn't say anything is really missing.
N: not that I can say
M: nope
M: Not at all, maybe calm down a little the sweet impact
J: It is mostly vanilla, I miss a real top and heart that could
precede the vanilla base
C: nothing missing
B: ......
M: The opening is a bit flattened off, not bad at all, but I personally would like
it to have a
spike top note that is a bit more "pointed" just for the opening. This could be
a quickly
evaporating smaller ester to give it a short sharp, crisp blast... I tried it
with a trace of the
radishy/crysanthemum Diola (IFF) and it my nose it makes this fragrance really
"sing" at
the opening and gives a great finish to it and stronger signature.
C: No
D: .....
P: No
A: Perhaps some citrus in the heart, and some kind of woody note (sandalwood?),
maybe something amber or oriental in the base.
S:......
R: No
F: No

5 Do you find this perfume complex or simple?

L: complex
J: Complex
A: Complex
S: It is complex in a very pleasing way. Like when you view a painting that has
a lot to look at and understand, so it is with this fragrance. While it is
overtly floral, I also loved the creamy elements too.
N: sort of complex
M: very complex. My compliments to the artist. I love this scent
M: very complex
J: Simple
C: complex
B: Very complex
M: Very complex
C: a bit complex
D: complex
P: Complex.
A: Starts out complex, but dries to a more simple impression
S: complex
R: Complex
F: complex (modern)

6 Does this perfume has harmony?

L: yes
J: Yes
A: Yes
S: I felt it was harmonious. The elements blended well together and there were
appropriate links between the top, heart, and base as well as between
ingredients.
N: Yes
M: Absolutely
M: Yes
J: .....
C: Yes
B: Yes
M: Yes
C: Yes
D: yes - a beautiful balancing act between floral, herbal and spice
over indistinct but totally yummy base notes of wood and vanilla
P: Yes
A: Lots of dissonance at first but just a little dissonance as the tops notes
fade. Nicer harmony toward the end.
S: I'm not sure, I'm having a hard time with this one
R: Yes
F: yes, but a bit too scratchy? (powerful) at the top, the
initial blast at the top is a bit overwhelming at first, but it
evolves beautifully and harmoniously

7 Does this perfume touch you emotionally?

L: Yes - it really raises my libido
J: Yes, it is strong, provocative and enticing and has an edge of
power.
A: Yes, but I love orientals.
S: Yes, but it's hard to verbalize. The composition made me feel comforted, at
ease, but playful too.
N: Yes
M: Yes, I can't stop smelling it.
M: Yes, it is strong, powerful and reminds me to some places
J: Yes, it gives a feeling of warmth and joy
C: Well... it DID make me consider inviting my gentleman friend over in order to
try some on him since it didn't play nice with my skin chemistry, but smelled so good on the
strip. Hmmm, maybe it would work better on my sweetie's skin... Yeah, that's my story
and I'm sticking with it! ~;<}-or as our own dear Frank would say..."Hubba-hubba!"
B: Yes
M: Yes, it's pleasant, refined, but not at all radical.
C: the opening accord does very much - bright and jubilant, uplifting. It's a very rich throughout, and satisfying.
D: I have a feeling of connection with it
P: Yes, absolutely. It is rich, sultry, romantic - just a beautiful perfume.
A: Yes - makes me nervous/anxious.
S: no
R: Yes
F: for some reason, yes, yet can't pinpoint it, maybe it's the fruity part that does it, or the base accord or combination

8 Does this perfume has diffusivity?

L: yes
J: Oh yes, one spritz and it has lingered
A: Very much so
S: I did find it diffusive, it created a lovely trail.
N: yes somewhat at least at first
M: Yes - my boyfriend could smell it and he doesn't have a good "smeller"
M: definitly
J: Absolute, the best so far.
C: Yes
B: A litte
M: Medium, not huge. A touch more coumarin would make it huge
C: Very good diffusion.
D: somewhat - not 'in your face' but a pleasant flow
P: Yes
A: Yes, but only the sweetest notes... but maybe that's a good thing.
S: very much so
R: Yes
F: Yes

9 How does the dry down of this perfume smell?

L: very long intensely sweet drydown
J: I like the dry down very much, still maintains consistent
fragrance after several days in the bag
A: Mossy, balsamic and very slightly indolic
S: some of the warmth comes through and those creamy, comforting elements
N: interesting sort of changing in a fleeting sort of way, yet not changing, sort
of odd yet pleasant
M: There is a unique scent to this perfume that is fascinating to me. I've
discussed it with another member of the group and the consensus is that
the scent is a true accord and we're not just smelling a strong
ingredient. It is a combination of ingredients that has made a wonderful
new scent. This new scent is in the top, heart and the drydown.
M: nicely warm very pleasant and long lasting
J: Warm vanilla
C: Nicely consistent with the opening and heart of the fragrance.
I get a slightly salty, dusty 'precious wood' blend enhanced with savory spices
blending seamlessly into pretty 'butch' animalic notes.
B: Spicy chemical, sweet
M: Spicy isoeugenol, an orcinyl-3-type thing (some gutsy amberish wood note with
some
smoke.. perhaps Ambrol, Firmenich)
C: Ambery and warm, very good.
D: Maintained balance
P: Drydown is softer, but still a prominent fragrance on its own. A little more
powdery.
A: Starts out sweet w/ a blast of car exhaust - @ 1 hour, more of the sweet is
left on the skin - kind of like the smell of mimeograph ink - @ 4 hours, less
intense, more like cherry lipstick, or candy colored with Red No. 1 (it
especially smells this way on a strip) - also a bit of benzoin maybe some
sandalwood coming through - honey-like smells, @ 7-1/2 hours sweet
cucumber/melon musk.
S: .......
R: This perfume is quite pleasant and I cannot say one thing stands
out…it is a perfect blend of the ingredients
F: Ambery *(Ambergris-like, Ambrox, ambroxan), woody, powdery,
sweet (E.vanillin?)

10 Does this perfume has a strong accord?

L: yes
J: Yes
A: Yes
S: the floral accord is quite nice
N: I think so
M: Absolutely.. new and refreshing
M: .....
J: Yes
C: Yes
B: Yes
M: yes, definitely
C: ambery woods
D: no
P: Yes
A: After the top notes fade, I think.
S: yes
R: Yes
F: Yes

11 Does this perfume has enough character?

L: yes
J: Yes, loaded with character
A: Yes
S: yes, it has a real personality. It has vision and prominence.
N: I think so
M: Oh yeah!
M: Yes, enough.
J: Yes
C: Yes
B: Yes
M: yes, but with a more piercing opening it would even have more character
C: yes
D: yes
P: Yes
A: Too much maybe??
S: yes
R: Yes
F: Yes

12 Do you consider this as a perfume or is it suitable for other
things like soap, candles etc?

L: I would love to also have soap and candles in this scent
J: Perfume only, would not want to waste it on anything else
A: Oh I'd love it as a perfume, but I think it would be good for other
products as well.
S: I saw it as a perfume for sure
N: perfume, possibly room spray, maybe candle
M: No, it's a perfume
M: could be a nice try
J: It can absolutely used in other cosmetics and so on, but is the
best in some stay on formula like perfume
C: perfume
B: For Perfume
M: Could be used for perfume, matching soap.. and a candle.. why not?
C: It's a perfume
D: perfume
P: Oh, nothing but a perfume. It seems perfect for that.
A: Just perfume
S: just perfume
R: I consider this as a perfume with lotion, soap etc
F: perfume, talc, soap, bath products

13 Do you like the fragrance just the way it is and wouldn't change
anything? (Please be as honest as you can and don't try to give an
idea to change when it doesn't need anything)

L: It's perfect just the way it is
J: I love the fragrance, it has obviously been well thought
through. There are lots of materials and some I believe are very
expensive. I would be at a loss to suggest any changes to this
fragrance.
A: I happen to like it just the way it is.
S: Aside from removing a mimosa type element, I really wouldn't change anything.
Even then, I'm not sure I'd mess with it too much.
N:......
M: No changes
M: yes, I like it and would use it this way.
J: It is too subtle I think. It is mostly vanilla. The spicy accents
are very faint
C: Fine as it is, except for whatever eventually goes rancid/sour on my skin,
but that's my problem, not the perfume's.
B: Yes, but the spice-accord is too strong
M: Diola. And, ok.. this is really difficult to explain: There is a certain "almost
cigarette" quality that clary sage oil, nerone, isoeugenol and narcisse all have in common.
I get a touch of this odor in #3 and wish it had a touch more of it. It's a slight
roughness. A trace of nerone would do it or narcisse base.
C: I wouldn't change this one. It's quite good.
D: A beautiful composition as is.
P: I wouldn't even try to change anything in this one. It is powerful as is. Such
a well-formulated perfume. Whoever you are - you know what you are doing. This
one could be marketed now IMHO.
A: I'd definitely make the initial impact less "offensive".
S:......
R: I think its fine the way it
F: soften (round) the top accord, might remove a bit of urine-
like (narcotic?) nuance. On the skin it is not that noticeable, more
noticeable on a strip, but something is overpowering the opening.

Feedback:

Here you can add all your thoughts, ideas and further feedback. Like what you think could be improved, what you would like to be changed. Maybe less vanilla, more rose, a stronger dry down, more topnotes, giving advice to use some other notes to improve, etc:

J: The only problem I could see with this perfume would be the cost
of reproducing this for resale. I would think that the ingredients in
this formula are considerably expensive and making this for anything
other than special people or high dollar consignment would make it
difficult to replicate.
S: wouldn't add anything. I thought this fragrance was well crafted, well
thought out, and something that would have broad appeal for people that enjoy a
big, floral scent.
N: I can't think of any thing to change.
M: maybe soften a little the bombeffect putting some sandeltones
J: The perfume is now mostly a vanilla base. It needs a real top and
heart. That can be filled in in many ways, but probably the best
with some spices and jasmin (preferably sambac) or other spicy and
exotic flowers.
B: It's difficult to add another fragrant materials, because it's changes the
character of this perfume
A: Add some ambery/woody/slightly pungent base notes, Take Away: some of the creosote/exhaust smell at the beginning, plus a little of the sweetness in the heart.
S: It gets a metallic note on my skin for a while, that disappears
again later. Also it went kind of mouldy (like when you leave a wet
towel in a plastic bag for too long) on my skin the second time I
wore it, but that faded after a little while too.
M: This is a very professional lady-like perfume, IMHO. My compliments to the mystery perfumer!
D: I can see the heart/base elements as a highly flexible accord on
their own. I find it very difficult to identify a focus essence. It
is both all and none of its constituents, forming a new whole.
Tweeking the florals and sweetness level could easily result in a
male version. The overall effect is 'gorgeous' - a throaty blend
that I want to take deep breaths of.
F:Add: (Top)- maybe a bit of citrus, or fantasy-type fruit, or softer
floral to round it a bit, something to soften the top accord.
Take Away: something at the top is a bit too strong (domineering)
Top: adjust something (^above^)
Heart: nothing, fine as is
Base: nothing, fine as is
Dry-down: nothing, fine as it is
D: Opens with a strong floral spice, very perfumey. Sophisticated.
Middle notes are a bit too dry-spicy lily, almost a gunpowder note.
Great longevity and diffusivity. The spicy lily gunpowder middle note
would be better a little farther in the background.
A woman's perfume for formal occasions.

My conclusion about the feedback:

I find the feedback really interesting, it confirmed some things I already thought about this perfume. I think that the perfume itself is not too strong but that the topnotes are, I will work on that some more. I also want to deepen the heart notes. I find it really important that a perfume does not only has a nice smell but that it tells you something as well, that it touch people, I'm happy to see that the members find that my perfume touch them emotionally. It was also good to see that they find it longlasting, I also find that really important for a fragrance. It was funny to see the difference in the answers for the same question sometimes, like one member said it was too spicy while the other said it needed more spicy notes. Well back to work on it again, I will keep you informed about my experiments with it....

My third attempt to create The Kiss

2007-05-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

I worked some more on my perfume based on the painting The kiss, that some of the members on my perfume making group at Yahoo are working on too. We swap it with each other and give feedback and it gives us a chance to learn from each other.

I already know the basic notes it will need, like amber, sandal, orris, rose and musk, of course there will be other notes as well but these are the main notes, the basic structure of the fragrance. Today I approached the creation differently, I combined some of the notes separately, like the amber notes. I combined all the amber notes in a bottle to see how they work together and what the best rate for them will be. For the amber notes I used notes like labdanum absolute, Cedramber, Kephalis and iso E Super. I did the same thing with the other notes, like the rose notes, I added some aldehyde's and Damascenone to the rose.

I let all the bottles I made stand for a while so it can mature and I will evaluate them later again, to see in what kind of rate I will use all these notes in the fragrance.

Reorganizing my perfumery room

2007-04-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

I finally cleaned up my perfumery room and arranged all my materials again. I placed another cabinet on the wall because I didn't have enough space for all the materials anymore. I also cleaned up the closet where I keep all my materials. I made some photos of it:

Here you can see my perfume organ where I work at, I keep my diluted materials in bottles with droppers.

Below are all my materials, as you can see I use droppers for each material, sometimes I screw them on top of the bottle and when that doesn't work I keep the dropper in a plastic back around the neck of the bottle, so I can't make a mistake by using the same dropper for different materials:

Some magazines about perfumes.

My books about perfumery and essential oils.

It's nice to create perfumes in a cleaned up, and organized perfumery room. But I have to remind myself to keep it this way. When I create I can make a mess all over again. To keep things neat is the last thing that's on my mind when I create perfumes.

Easter Perfume Bottles?

2007-04-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

It's almost Easter and this inspired me to find some beautiful perfume bottles in an egg shape. At your right you see a 'lady's companion' - a perfume-bottle holder - made by German master silversmith Henry Steiner (1835-1914), who came to Adelaide in 1858. The design is an emu egg that encloses two perfume bottles. The egg has been cut in two and is hinged to allow access to the perfume bottles inside.
Below some other perfume bottles with an egg shape:

Sashka
Beyond Paradise Blue

Lovely Obsession

Mischief

Black Cashmere

Agent Provocateur

Another beauty from Agent Provocateur Maîtresse

Happy Easter!

Un Air de Molinard

2007-04-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

Some perfumes smell nice, but some do trigger an emotion and suck you into another world. Well, Un Air de Molinard is such a perfume. When I get the first waft of this perfume it's incredible fresh but not sparkling fresh, it's fresh soft. It's tender but not timid, recognizable but also mysterious. When wearing this fragrance, an inner peace comes over me.

It opens with mandarin and pampelmousse what gives the fresh top notes, these notes are combined with cassis, to deepen the citrus notes. The iris in the heart soften the citrus notes and gives this perfume a soft dry powdery feeling. The heart possesses rose, jasmine and osmanthus. The heart is not heavy flowery but delicate, sweet and soft. Iris and osmanthus are the dominant notes in the heart. Osmanthus has a sweet flowery smell that combines wonderful with the citrus notes of the top. Slowly the base notes are revealing the soft woody warm scent of vanilla and vetiver. I like the combination of vanilla and vetiver because vetiver gives vanilla a more sensual feeling the vanilla will not smell only sweet but also woody and a bit smokey. Musk is also present what gives this perfume a vibrant warmth and a little amber to give it a warm dark sweetness.

When you wear this perfume you will not constantly smell this fragrance but now and then get a waft of it, to let you know you are wearing this wonderful fragrance. Un Air de Molinard is a perfume from an exquisite Molinard 1849 Collection, a vintage revival of seven classic fragrances by Molinard of the 1920's and 1930's, limited in it's distribution, currently available at Aedes and Barneys, I couldn't find it on the site of Molinard. The beautiful bottle is designed by Rene Lalique. Thanks to Chaya I could experience this incredible beautiful fragrance, an experience I will never forget, thank you Chaya!

Chemophobia

2007-04-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

Do the chemicals: 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-ol or
1,3(E),5(Z)-undecatriene or 1-p-menthene-8-thiol sounds like dangerous chemcials to you, or would you hear any alarm bells when you know that these chemicals were ingredients of the perfume you are wearing right now?

Probably because you don't know what these names stands for they can sound like intimidating names. Unknown names or things we don't understand can scare us sometimes. In fact these chemicals are just aromatic chemicals that are found in nature. 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-ol is a component of natural Yuzu oil, you can read about this chemical here.1,3(E),5(Z)-undecatriene is a component of natural Galbanum oil, you can read about this chemical here.1-p-menthene-8-thiol is a component of natural Grapefruit oil, you can read about this chemical here.

Every living thing, including you and me, is made of millions of complex chemicals. Natural essential oils are blends of many chemicals. The word "chemicals" has become an emotionally-loaded word and has a negative sound to some people because virtually the only time the media reports about it, it's a negative report. The word "synthetic" is looked upon with suspicion, at best. Conversely, "natural" is often thought of as inherently harmless. Natural does not equal safe and synthetic does not equal unsafe.

Tony Burfield from Cropwatch wrote an article about chemophobia he said that the finger of suspicion is also pointing at fragrance volatiles - one is tempted to say, raising it to a level of near-paranoia. He writes about an article that Pat Thomas once wrote where he suggests that there is no difference between conventional perfumes and pollution, saying 'fragrance chemicals...include...many other known toxins capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic and asthmatic reactions. Pat Thomas discussing fragrance chemicals found in the perfume Eternity Eau de Parfum (Calvin Klein). Here are some examples of fragrance chemicals that he described as being harmful:

Benzyl acetate – said to be irritant and also said to be linked to pancreatic cancer.

Benzyl acetate occurs in jasmin, narcissus & hyacinth head space odours and in gardenia oil, ylang ylang oil & cananga oils.

Eugenol – said to be an irritant, a cause of contact dermatitis, pesticide & insecticide ingredient.

Eugenol occurs in the head space of hyacinth flowers & carnation flowers; and in the oils of clove, cinnamon leaf, pimenta berry, W.I. bay oil, & basil oil CT linalol.

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy (aka vanillin) – irritant to mouth throat eyes etc... kidney damage, CNS disruption

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy occurs in vanilla beans, peru balsam, & benzoin resinoid.

Tony Burfield also says:

"Of course in the real world, toxic effects of chemicals are directly related to the dose, and splashing 0.03 ml of alcoholic perfume containing minor concentrations of these components behind the ears is unlikely to promote the effects listed above, even in a small minority of extremely susceptible individuals. Further, many of these components identified are identical to those components naturally occurring in the scents emitted from flowers, meadows & pine forests, or are responsible for the odour & taste of spices and natural flavourings etc. – so what are we to do? Mow down all the flowers and trees, since they give off these dangerous

volatiles? "

End quote.

Yes there are dangerous and toxic chemicals and yes there are dangerous and toxic naturals, but that doesn't mean you can group them all together and say that all chemicals and all naturals are bad and toxic.

Toxic ingredients have to be banned out of our perfumes, that's for sure. That's why Ifra made a guideline to tell us which ingredients should not be used or tell us the amount of ingredients we can safely use in our perfumes.

Here are more links about chemophobia:

http://members.tm.net/lapointe/ChemTox.htm
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=919
http://www.crscientific.com/chemophobia.html

Have a fragrant safe day!

Stinky

2007-03-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

How can bad, stinky smells turn into something wonderful smelling? In perfumery we not only use delicate wonderful smelling components, we sometimes use very stinky components too. For example Jasmine is a wonderful smelling flower, it's one of my favorite scents, but when you smell the single components of Jasmine on their own, like Indole, it doesn't smell so wonderful anymore. Pure Indole smells fecal but when it's diluted at 1% or less it becomes flowery like Jasmine or Orange flower.

A friend asked me for Cat Ketone (4-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone), so I ordered it for him and received a bottle with a 1% dilution of Cat Ketone. Cat ketone occurs naturally in Black currant and Sauvignon grapes. When I opened the bottle to sniff, my head went backwards in a shock and the only words I could say were: "holy shit", it was unbelievable overwhelming and stinky, it smelled like cat urine!!!!

I left it in the bottle and quickly screwed the lid back on. But too late, my whole house stank like cat urine, it was unbearable. I opened all the windows and burned incense but the smell stayed. The day after I was drinking some juice of tropical fruits like Mango and guava, I smelled the juice and instantly recognized the smell of Cat Ketone, but strongly diluted. My plan was to take a little bit of the Cat Ketone for my self and give it to my friend, but I changed my mind and gave him the whole bottle.

Work in progress

2007-03-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

I used another design for this blog and I'm still working on some things. Like the categories that you can see on your right. I like the posts to be grouped by category but I had to label every post I made in the past and I forgot how many posts I posted on this blog. Well still 50 posts to label and than it's done, I also will add the quotes that I have about perfume and add some nice photos with it. It takes a bit of time and I'm sorry for that.

My second attempt to create The Kiss

2007-03-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on my perfume inspired by the painting: The Kiss. First I work on the skeleton of this perfume, the notes that are the basics of this perfume. I used too much sandalwood the first time and toned it down a bit because I don't want the sandal notes go trough the top notes, I keep the rose I used the first time, but want to combine it with some jasmine, I'm not sure yet what kind of jasmine would be the best one to use. I think Indian jasmine is the nicest one in this case. I added some Geranyl acetate to the rose and that is working real nice, it gives some freshness and sweetness to the rose. I also added some carnation notes to compliment the rose notes. I like the iris in this perfume it's so nice soft warm and gentle, so that will stay as well.

For the base I used the sandal combined with guiacwood, I'm still thinking what else it would need, I'm thinking of cedar or vetiver or maybe some aroma chemicals to enhance the sandalwood, like Javanol a product of Givaudan. To give it some sensuality I added amber notes like labdanum absolute and different kinds of musks, I learned that it's better to use different kinds because some musks can work as boosters for the other musks. For the top note I used some fresh but soft citrus notes combined with a bit of spicy notes from nutmeg what combines real wonderful with the carnation which has also some spicy notes. So the basic notes of this perfume like it seems right now are: rose, iris, sandalwood and musks. The smell of this perfume is rosy, soft, creamy, warm woody, ambery and musky. I like it already but there is a lot to work on still.

My first attempt to create The kiss

2007-03-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

I already started with my perfume inspired by the painting The kiss (see post below). I started to create the main accord of this perfume, I used amber because I think amber translates the golden colors of this painting, one of the amber notes is labdanum absolute, sandalwood is for the comforting emotion of an embrace. To translate the white soft skin of the woman on this painting I used Iris what gives a warm soft creamy scent to this perfume, it combines perfect with the sandal. To give this perfume a romantic character I used rose. These notes all combine lovely with each other. I accentuate these notes with tolu, guaiacwood (champaca wood) which gives a great fixation to rose, patchouli and carrot seed oil which has an iris like note. I have to think what kind of top notes it will need.
The photo of the painting is from: http://www.yessy.com/

The kiss

2007-03-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

On my Yahoo group: Perfumemaking we are doing 'perfume swaps'. In January we did our first swap, we sent each other our own created perfumes to get feedback from each other, this is real fun because we are very curious about the creations of each other and because we like to hear the thoughts and feedback for our own creations. Some perfumes that were sent in are real remarkable. I would love to talk about the perfume I sent in, but because we did an anonymously swap I can't tell you(yet), we are still giving feedback on all the perfumes but later I will reveal which perfume I sent.

We already are talking about the next swap, this will be a complete different swap. It will be an 'open' swap were we will share our formulas and discuss them to learn from each other. This swap is an experimental swap and we choose it to be a swap where we create a perfume based on a painting. The painting most of our members will use is The kiss by the Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt who lived from 1862-1918. The Art Nouveau (New Art also called Jugendstil) movement in Austria was called the Secession. Gustav Klimt was its founder and president from 1897 to 1905. His painting The Kiss is a symbol of Vienna Secession. Klimt's works of art were a scandal at his time because of the display of nudity and the subtle sexuality and eroticism. His best known painting The Kiss, was first exhibited in 1908. As everything coming out of Klimt's hands, it was highly controversial and admired at the same time.

The Kiss is a fascinating icon of the loss of self that lovers experience. Placed against a deep and vibrant golden background, a couple is locked in an embrace, only the faces and hands of this couple are visible; all the rest is great swirl of gold, studded with colored rectangles as if to express visually the emotional and physical explosion of erotic love under their feet a carpet of flowers. This painting gives me a protective, vournable and sensual emotion.

It's interesting to translate visual into smell. I'm thinking how I will create this perfume, what notes it needs. When I look at this painting I want of course a sensual perfume but it also has to evoke a protective emotion, like an embrace. When I look at the golden colors of this painting I'm thinking of using a note that can translate this color, for me amber would translate the golden colors. To translate the sensual parts of this painting I will use sensual notes like musks. Other sensual notes could be civet or castoreum although I think the castoreum is not the one I'm looking for. Rose is a romantic flower and would definitely be a note in this perfume. When I'm thinking of a kiss I think about sweet notes as well, like honey notes or chocolate notes even cherry notes, hmm have to think about it....

Santal de Mysore

2007-02-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Chaya who comment her often sent me some samples of wonderful perfumes and Santal de Mysore was one of them. Thank you Chaya! When I first smelled this perfume I was in love.

Serge Lutens (see photo left) launched this perfume in 2001. Serge lutens, served as the image creator of shiseido for 20 years, he released his first perfume for Shiseido in 1981: the now legendary Nombre Noir. He also launched his own "Serge Lutens" line of perfumes under the exclusive Le Palais Royale de Shiseido

This perfume is based on the scent of sandalwood, no surprise when you know its name, it has a warm, thick, creamy, woodsy fragrance. The sandalwood in this fragrance is a deep warm sandal sweetened with a caramel note that could be coming from Fenugreek although it's not listed in the ingredients. The top is sweet but has also spicy notes like the note of Cumin and an almost curry like note. This perfume is so soft and warm, not in a timid way but a full warm soft thick perfume, it's like the feeling of soft velvet. It isn't linear though because of the spices that are used in this fragrance. The fragrance plays a game on your skin, one time it will give you a warm caramel note and another time a sandal note, a spicy note or even a green note comes forwarded once in a while.

It's interesting to know that sandal wood is a very precious material. Realizing its value, the Sultan of Mysore(India) declared it a royal tree in 1792. No individual may own a sandalwood tree. Even if the tree grows on private land it is owned by the government. However, an individual is entitled to receive seventy five percent of its value as a bonus for growing and protecting the trees. It is against the law in India to cut down a sandalwood tree until it has reached a mature age of at least 30 years old. The best sandal wood oil is produced from trees that have matured and are in the age group of 50-60 years, yet because of such high demands sandalwood has become an endangered species.

Christopher Sheldrake (here on the photo together with Jacques Polge, Sheldrake is the one on the left) created this perfume for Serge Lutens. Christopher Sheldrake originally from Australia is a perfumer for more than 30 years and created almost every perfume for Serge Lutens. He also created Feminitè du Bois for Shiseido a perfume that I really adore, I will talk about this one later. Sheldrake is now the deputy perfumer at Chanel, where he works with Jacques Polge, the head perfumer of the house.

Accords in perfumes

2007-02-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

In perfumery we talk about accords like in music you use the term chords. A chord in music is made from different tones but together they sound like a single tone or note because they have a harmony.

It's the same in perfumery; an accord is made of different notes that blend together so well that it's like you smell a single note, the notes that are used lose their individual identity and create a completely new, unified odor impression.

You could also compare it with painting, when you blend the two colors yellow and blue you will not create a yellow/blue color but a complete new color: green. You can't identify the yellow and blue anymore. The same it is with an accord in perfume, these single notes are so well balanced together that you can't identify them anymore together they created a complete new note.

When we say that a perfume has a strong accord we mean that it is build upon notes that harmonise together and smell complete, they 'work' together. The perfume has character and the notes are there for a reason it doesn't smell confusing it's like the perfume couldn't be made on another way.

Accords have mostly just a couple of notes, like 5 or 7 notes but they could have also much more. These notes are combined together in a way that the result smells complete, this accord is the skeleton of the perfume the perfume is based and build around this accord. Than the perfumer starts to add notes in real tiny amounts to complete the perfume, maybe to enhance some notes or to tone down some notes. This process takes a lot of time and patience of the creator.

There are many types of accords like Chypre, Fougere etc Here are some of them:

Ambre accord
Has beside ambernotes also vanilla, cinnamonlike,
spicy, dry fruitlike aspects. Together with balsamic
notes like: Benzoin, Tolu and Labdanum.

Ambrein accord
Bergamot, Vanilla or Vannilin, Coumarine and Civet
makes the Ambrein accord, together with balsamic
notes like Benzoin, Opopanax, Tolu, Labdanum. Mostly
combined with wood and rose notes.
Typical perfumes made of the ambrein accord are
Shalimar, Must de Cartier and Obsession

Chypre
Chypre has a harmony between the freshness of bergamot and the
intense fragrance of oak moss. Mostly combined with roses and
jasmine. The base contains beside the oak moss also patchouli,
cedar and labdanum. Chypre was the name of a perfume made by
coty in 1917. It does not exist anymore but many chypre perfumes
are inspired by it.

An example of a Chypre formula:

Bergamot 15
Sandalwood 8
Vetiver 6
oakmoss 5
Rose 6
Jasmin 5
Gamma Methyl Ionone 3
Patchouli 5
Musk ketone 3
Clary sage 2
Neroli 2

Fougere
Fougere is a type of perfume that has lavender,
patchouli, oak moss and the fragrance of hay from
coumarine, Tonka bean or Hay absolute. In French Fougere means fern.
In 1882 Houbigant made Fougere Royal. The Fougeres
are related to that perfume. Fougere based perfumes
are mostly men perfumes.

Mellis accord
The Mellis accord has Benzyl salicylate,
Eugenol combined with Patchouli, Hydroxycitronellal,
spices, woodnotes and Coumarine together with balsamic notes.
Typical Mellis perfumes are Youth Dew, Opium and Coco Chanel.

There are many more accords and sometimes two or more accords are blended together. Perfumers use these accords that already been found by other perfumers to create complete new accords by adding new or unexpected materials to these accords. Also new accords are still discovered.

Below an example how different notes can create a whole new note where you don't smell the single notes anymore.

Just take these notes, combine them (only in the right proportions)and ...... scroll down to the bottom and see the result

Butter

Fresh grass

Ripe apples

Cotton candy

Strawberry

Happy Valentine

2007-02-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

Pink lotus

2007-02-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

This painting perfectly shows how pink lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) possesses an amazing ability to flourish in a variety of environments ranging from clear ponds to muddy marshes. How can the flowers be so pure and delicate above the waters while its roots are in the mud. It's mystical, like a symbol, that something good can come after darkness. And it's true lotus symbolizes purity, beauty, majesty, grace, fertility, wealth, richness, knowledge and serenity Lotus is a sacred flower for Hindus and Buddhists.

Lotus is also one of the principal archetypal symbols used in yantras. Generally centered on the axis with its petals unfolding towards the circumference, it is the appropriate image to illustrate the unfolding of power of the divine essence. Lotus is a strong plant I found something real interesting, on March 30, 1951, lotus seeds of more than 2ooo years old were found in a muddy stratum under the Kemigawa Social Farm of Tokyo University. These seeds blossomed the next year, on July 18, 1952, and became known as the "oldest flower on earth." This lotus plant was called the "Ohga Lotus". How amazing that these seeds were able to grow again after 2000 years. You can read the article here.

Called a 'lotus', the depictions of the floral symbol of Upper Egypt is actually known as a Nymphaea caerulea which is actually known today to be a (blue)water lily. This flower, along with the papyrus flower, was shown throughout Egypt in tombs and temples to symbolize the union of Upper and Lower Egypt. The perfume of this flower was not only pleasing to the Egyptians, but they saw it as healing as well. Scenes show women holding the water lily and people being offered the flower at parties, smelling its divine fragrance. Some people today believe that the Egyptians used this plant as a narcotic both for its healing qualities and as a recreational drug when soaked in wine, though this is a hotly debated topic.

I just love to see this lovely flower and I had to find out how the absolute made of this flower would smell like. It's a very expensive absolute it cost around 6000 dollar a kilo. The first impression of this absolute wasn't what I expected, the smell wasn't flowery it was more earthy and peppery after I diluted at a 5% the scent was more pleasant it became more flowery with still the earthy scent in the background, I can detect a herbal scent as well. Lotus absolute doesn't smell like any other flower absolute I ever smelled before, it has an unique smell. I like to combine pink lotus with tuberose and jasmine especially jasmine sambac. It's also real nice with oak moss and a tiny bit of aldehyde C12 mna but this aldehyde overwhelms the composition real easy. I'm always curious about the aroma components of a flower so I googled and found an interesting article that speaks about the head space analysis of lotus.

The living flower contained the following components with the percentage written behind it:

Sabine 6%

para Dimethoxy benzene 18%

4-Terpineol 3%

alpha Terpineol 9%

cis Jasmone 0.1%

C15 Hydrocarbons 20.1%

However the picked flower contained the following components with the percentage:

sabine 12%

para Dimethoxy benzene 8%

4-Terpineol 1.5%

alpha Terpineol 1%

cis Jasmone 0%

C15 Hydrocarbons 30%

This shows that alpha terpineol which possesses a very floral odor decreases drastically from 9% in the living to 1% in the picked lotus blossom. Similarly, the character-donating component, para dimethoxy benzene, decreases markedly from 18% in the living lotus to 8% after picking. The cis jasmone disappeared totally. So maybe it would help to add some of these components to the absolute. If you are interested to read the article you can read it here.

Mmmm

2007-02-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

Today I spent my day on sniffing all kinds of wonderful perfumes. Chaya who comment here often was so kind to sent me some real wonderful samples of perfume. I will review some of them later. I also sniffed the perfumes we swap on my Perfumemaking group at Yahoo. We let other members smell our own creations to get feedback about them, this is real fun to do, but also difficult, the feedback is supposed to be a helpful feedback not only a description of the perfume. It would be funny to see how many different feedbacks we will receive, because a personal preference has also much to do with it.

You can smell if a perfume is well constructed but taste is something else, I think that what we like to smell could have much to do with our scent memory and our character. I also think that it's important to know why we like to wear perfume, some of us would like to be noticed others would like to wear a more subtle perfume. I wear perfumes for different reasons but the most important reason is that it has to make me feel good.

Your chair?

2007-01-28T17:39:00.000-08:00

This image does me remind me of something a girl once told me. When she was a child she had an odd thing, when someone she didn't know visited her parents and sat on a chair, she always sniffed that same chair after the visitor was gone. Hmm would be strange if adults did the same thing. Kids are much closer to smell, they smell without being prejudged, they just analyze odors not dividing them in bad or good smells.

The Axe effect

2007-01-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Is it true that we choose our partner because of the odor of the body he or she has? I think so, we all have an unique body odor but it's also that a whole family can have a family odor. I think that we choose our partners not only for her or his character but also because of their scent but we are not aware of it.

I found an interesting article about how hetero and homo sexuals react on the odor of a male or female. Researchers obtained the body odors of male and female heterosexual and homosexual "odor donors" who avoid all fragrances, soaps, and shampoos for 9 days. During this time they could not shave their armpits or eat spicy food. Following this preparation they wore cotton gauze pads under their arms for three days. These pads were later cut up and places in plastic squeeze bottles for use in the study. These pads were smelled by a group who didn't know from which group it came from. The result was as follow:

Heterosexual males found the odors of heterosexual females to be the least unpleasant, and the odors of gay males to be the most unpleasant.

Gay males found the odors of heterosexual females to be least unpleasant, but the odors of gay males followed close behind.

The odors of lesbians and heterosexual males were judged most unpleasant (but the overall differences were smaller for gay males than for other "odor evaluators").

Heterosexual females found the odors of gay males and lesbians to be more unpleasant than the odors of other heterosexual females and heterosexual males.

Lesbians preferred the odors of heterosexual females and especially disliked the odors of gay males.

http://mentalhealth.about.com/od/gender/a/bosexpreference.htm

According to a study by Dr George Preti makes the smell of a sweaty male armpit a woman feel calmer. For this study they collected the sweat of male donors by placing pads under the armpits and made concentrated compounds extracted from the sweat. Female volunteers were being exposed to the smells for six hours, after six hours the women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed.

Preti and team also measured the women's' levels of luteinising hormone, which plays varied roles in triggering ovulation and in sex drive. Pulses of this hormone released from the brain increase in size and frequency as women approach ovulation. In the experiment, the researchers found when women smelt the sweat extract it induced a surge of the hormone.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s888984.htm

Interesting to make a relaxing perfume for women from the sweat of men. Well in the essential oil of sandalwood there is something similar as the pheromone called androstenone what also is found in the sweat of men. But would it calm me down? I'm not sure when looking at the photo of vin Diesel, somehow it didn't make me feel calm........

Vega

2007-01-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

Vega by Guerlain is a beautiful aldehydic perfume. I had the change to smell it thanks to Andy Tauer who was so kind to sent me a sample of this lovely juice. Vega was originally created by Jacques Guerlain in 1936 and was recreated by Jean-Paul Guerlain for the opening of the renovated La Maison Guerlain in 2006.

The first acquaintance with this perfume made me think of Chanel no5, but that's because it's an aldehydic perfume, it's not the same but the topnote has some resemblance, Vega has a more powdery scent and Chanel no5 is more flowery. My impression of this perfume is chique it's a chique perfume. The scent of aldehyde is clearly present with an almost metal scent and believe it or not I smell a scent of blood. To soften the aldehydes there is a lot of ylang ylang used and what makes this fragrance so great is the use of iris, a soft powdery scent that soften this perfume on a remarkable way. To warm this all up there is some sandal and vanilla added.

I wore Vega a couple of times now and received a lot of compliments, when you wear this perfume you will not stay unnoticed. Vega is not a romantic perfume it's a chique perfume, it's a beauty.

I'm so lucky

2007-01-11T23:04:00.000-08:00

Every time when I'm in my perfumery room and smelling all those lovely fragrances I'm aware that I'm a lucky and happy person. Working on a perfume is a wonderful process, it's so magical. Adding a bit of this or that can change the whole perfume you only need a tiny bit to get that result. I have so many materials that I study them every day, even when I don't have the time to work on a perfume I find at least the time to add a diluted material on my skin to smell it the whole day, sometimes I put two materials on top of each other to smell the result of their combination. Today I have Ambrettolide on one wrist and Muscenone on the other.

You all know now that I work with natural oils and handmade aroma chemicals. For everyone that thinks aroma chemicals do smell "chemical" and less pleasant as naturals l wish you had the change to smell them. I think it's a psychological thing to think they smell "bad", it has to do with your expectations.

For example a rose does have many aromatic molecules it's not one molecule that makes the rose smell like rose, there are hundreds. Some important ones are: Phenylethyl alcohol, Geraniol, Citronellol, Nerol, Linalool and many many more. You think these molecules stink or smell bad when they are smelled on their own? You think the single chemicals Geraniol and linalool smell "chemical"? No they smell wonderful.

On my perfumemaking group we have some members that are new to perfumery and think that working with chemicals is the same as working with fragrance oils. Fragrance oils are a complete different thing, I never work with that. A fragrance oil is a blend of different aroma chemicals mostly based on oil. These fragrance oils can contain materials that are not safe to use on your skin. I do use bases sometimes but these are not complete perfumes, I use for example an oakmoss base(a base is a composed blend) because real oakmoss is only allowed to use in real small amounts because it can irritate your skin(never noticed that by myself by the way) this base is made of safe materials. So I use bases as notes like an oakmoss note for my perfumes, not as a complete composed perfume base.
Well back to smell my Ambrettolide and Muscenone.....

Inhaling the scent of summer

2007-01-07T05:05:00.000-08:00

Sitting behind my PC I thought about what to write today, when reading Andy's blog, I thought about how lucky I am that even when it's winter I still have the scent of summer around me, even though they are bottled. When opening one of these bottles I can smell summer again.

Yesterday was a grey and rainy day, well I could say the same thing about today, and I was longing for the spring. The holidays are over and now we have to wait for the spring to come, promising a summer with an air filled with lovely scents. I burned my aroma burner with a few drops essential oils of mandarin and jasmine and inhaled the scent of summer.

Today I'm studying some of my essential oils, on one wrist I'm wearing a dilution of Pink lotus absolute and on the other I'm wearing a dilution of Tuberose absolute. I'm still working on a perfume based on Tuberose, it's one of my favorite flowers. I do like Pink lotus but it's not as flowery as I thought it would be, it's more earthy, I will talk about that later.

Perfumery art or craft?

2007-01-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

Perfumery is an art form and it's also a craft but I don't consider every perfume as a work of art. And not every perfumer is an artist either, they like to call themselves artists but what makes them artists, who decides that?

For example I would like to paint (but I'm really not good at it, I whish) the fact that I paint doesn't make me an artist does it? I could call myself a painter or artist when I believe in myself and think I'm good at it.

I could make a "perfume" by taking sandal oil and mix it with alcohol put it in a bottle and name it "Sandal dream" and think I made a perfume a work of art I could even consider my self as an artist, a perfumer, but am I?

I think someone else decides if you are an artist or not, I don't think you can say something like that about yourself, before someone else call you an artist.

Art is about evoking emotions you have to reach people with your creations, tell them a story with your creations, they need to be touched by it. It's about beauty(although not always), about emotion, feelings, imagination, harmony, expression and sensibility. When you've accomplished that you can call yourself a real artist and your work a piece of art.

The beautiful painting is from: http://boundlessgallery.com/

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T16:22:00.000-08:00

I wish you all a very happy new year and may all your dreams come true, may you stay healthy and be happy, love and be loved, be creative, forgiving, open minded, helpful to each other, appreciating for everything you have and for all nice to each other.

Have a wonderful and fragrant 2007

Perfumer Ineke

2006-12-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

Ineke Ruhland is born in Canada she moved to Europe in 1988 to work in the fragrance industry. In 1996 she studied perfumery at ISIPCA in Versailles France. Following three years of apprenticeship at a fragrance house in Paris, Ineke moved to San Francisco where she created her own perfumes. The perfumes Ineke makes are delicate and elegant, presented in beautiful bottles named following the alphabet.

After my own heart

Notes: bergamot, raspberry, lilac

sandalwood heliotrope musk

After my own heart is a fresh tender perfume it has a tiny subtle sweet note but over all it's light and playful. The dominant note is lilac but it has also a fresh citrus note and a green note is also present. The color of this juice is reflecting the fragrance very well it's soft fresh with a transparent feeling.

B
Balmy days & sundays

Notes: freesia, leafy greens grass honeysuckle rose mimosa

chypre accent musk

Balmy days & sundays is more rounder than After my own heart, it's heavier because of the honeysuckle. But still transparent with a green freesia note. It's a quiet perfume like a whisper, a bit too timide for me.

C
Chemical bonding

Notes: smooth citrus cocktail tea blackberry dewy peony

vetviver amber powdery musk

This perfume has citrus but it's fruitier it's not sparkling citrus like in a cologne this citrus is combined with heavier notes, well like Ineke describes the notes herself she say it's a smooth citrus cocktail and that's true. You can smell some sweet fruity notes through it, maybe that's the blackberry I'm smelling? I like this one the most of all four because in this perfume the base is more prominent than in the other three. The base is dry ambery maybe some Ambrox and Cashmeran is used I don't know.

D
Derring-do

Notes: fresh citrus blend rain notes cyclamen magnolia fougere accents

guaiacwood cedarwood musk

This is the masculine perfume from Ineke it's a fougere accord(lavender, patchouli, oakmoss, coumarine) mixed with citrus and magnolia. I love the scent of magnolia and was surprised to find it in a men's fragrance, it works perfectly well in this perfume. It has rain notes for sure like the air can be filled after rain with a scent of waxy green wet leaves. I say waxy because it doesn't smell crispy green but rainy green waxy with a melon note as well. The base is nice woody musky.

Ineke's website is beautiful please have a look:

http://www.ineke.com/

The photo's are from her website and from:

http://www.basenotes.net/

Perfume the movie

2006-12-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I've seen the movie "Perfume the story of a murderer" and I enjoyed it very much. I read the book a couple of times because the story is intriguing. I was real curious about how they would make a film based on the novel "Das Parfum" by Patrick Suskind(see photo on your right) from Germany who wrote the novel in 1985. There are 15 million books sold until now. Only in 2001 he gave away the film rights for 10 million Euro!!! The movie was directed by the German film director Tom Tykwer.

The story is about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who was born in the 18th Century in Paris and had an incomparable sense of smell. He had a live without love and was only interested in scents and smell, not only scents that considered to be "nice" smells but also "bad" smells. The strange thing was that he didn't own a body odor of his own and noticed that because his body didn't had a smell he was a nobody to everyone. It was as if everyone was looking right through him and didn't notice him at all. As he grew up he "fell in love" with the smell of a young woman, a virgin. He wasn't fallen in love with her person but only by her scent, her sent gave him tears in his eyes and he was deeply touched by it. He wanted to know how he could conserve her scent, and wanted to create a scent for his own so he wouldn't be no longer a nobody to everyone.

When he met the perfumer Giuseppe Baldini he proved that he could do miracles with scents and created a perfume without ever learned how to make it. The perfumer was so impressed and knew that he could use Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to make him new wonderful perfumes a thing he wasn't capable of anymore.

The perfumer learned him how to conserve scent and Jean-Baptiste finally knew how to use it for conserving the scent of the young woman. He had to kill her, shaved her had and spread her in a layer of animal fat what absorbed her scent. He distilled the fat and finally had a view drops of her scent. He killed 12 virgins to complete his divine perfume....

It must have been a difficult job to make a movie about smell without actual smelling it but the book didn't have smell as well. I think they did a wonderful job filming this novel. Some parts of the novel are different but the movie tells the whole story complete and changed only small bits, I think because it was necessary for the movie.

Some parts of the movie could be "smelled" I think that's something incredibly difficult for a movie. I especially liked the end of the movie when he's about to be executed, when he's got disgusted by humans, he thinks about the women he killed and realized there is also something else to enjoy the scent of a woman... by making love to her, he never thought about that before.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

vrolijk kerstfeest

sعيد ميلاد المسيح سعيدة

Joyeux Noël

frohe Weihnachten

merry christmas

Buon Natale

christmas alegre

Feliz Navidad

glad jul

веселое рождество

즐거운 성탄

圣诞快乐

mo’adim lesimkha

The nose knows????

2006-12-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

Fig

2006-12-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

On the Yahoo group: Perfume Making, we're talking about how to create a fig scent. There is a fig leaf absolute but the absolute can't be used in a perfume because it's extremely phototoxic. This photoxicity is because of bergapten a component also found in bergamot and the component angelicin. I found an article about angelicin that you can read here where is told that angelicin was tested on the skin of mice and the outcome was that it produced skin cancer when administered with ultraviolet A radiation. Also Ifra(The International Fragrance Association) says that fig leaf absolute can't be used in fragrances.

I like to eat figs they are honeysweet and I heard that figs are real healthy. I like the smell of fig leaves as well, my brother has a fig tree in his garden and the smell of the leaves are wonderful. So I tried to make a fig scent not the scent of the fresh figs but the dried figs and a fig leaves scent.

This is what I made for the dried fig scent so far, I used benzyl alcohol(light floral), linalool(floral woody, rosewood like), amyl cinnamic aldehyde(waxy jasmine), benzaldehyde(almond like), coumarine(tonka like), benzyl benzoate(balsamic), exaltolide(musky), maltol(sugary), ethyl phenyl acetate(honey like), ylang ylang oil(exotic), vanillin and indole(animalic).

The smell of it does smell like dried fig indeed but it needs more of a dark sweet scent so I think for the next batch I will use also some labdanum absolute, beeswax absolute for the honey note and some Geranyl acetate to sweeten it and maybe some amyl salicylate as well for a sweet herbal orchid like note.

I also tried to make a fig leaf scent and used stemone(fresh green), galbanum oil( green), linalool, benzyl acetate(fresh jasmine fruity), beta ionone(woody violet), leaf alcohol(smells like fresh cut grass), cis 3 hexenyl acetate(green leaf), styrallyl acetate(green gardenia rhubarb), lindenblossom base, vertelione(violet leaf like), Phenylethyl dimethyl acetate(pungent green), black pepper oil and cyclogalbanate(green galbanum pineapple).

It's a nice green leaf scent but I want to make it more green maybe a bit deeper green, so the experiments will go on.

What is it......

2006-12-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

that made me start making perfumes? Sometimes I ask myself that question. I always loved fragrances, as a little child I always took a cloth with me to bed and my mother had to spray some perfume on it, I kept it close to my face when sucking my thumb. My mother was a consulant of Mora Shira when I was a child and I liked to sniff all those lovely fragrances.

I liked to read books about essential oils and liked gardening, so I also started to read books about all kinds of plants and flowers. I also liked to read about healing herbs, but one time my brother gave me a book from Jean M Auel it was her first book "The clan of the cave bear". I was hooked, what a beautiful book, I never read something like that before. It's a long story to tell but this book is about the prehistory it's about a "human" little girl that lost her family in an earthquake and starts to run and run for weeks until she is found by a Neanderthals clan.
She raised up between them but they don't accept her so easy, she is different. The woman that takes care of her is a medicine woman and learned her all the secrets of healing herbs. This way the little girl Ayla gets respect from the clan and she can stay. Well the story goes on but it's too long to tell it all. Jean M Auel wrote 5 novels about Ayla.

The parts in the book about healing herbs were very interesting to me, and I started to plant healing herbs in my garden and made creams for my face with them. Later on I liked to make a garden that was fragrant so when you walked trough it you could smell all kinds of different flowers and plants. I planted the fragrant flowers and plants in a way that you always could smell something also in the evening and night. It was like walking through a perfume and smell all the details of it. I think there it started, I wanted to make a perfume.....

Here you can read more about the books from Jean M Auel and read a piece of the first chapter of her first book The clan of the cave bear:
http://www.amazon.ca/Clan-Cave-Bear-Jean-Auel/dp/product-description/0553250426
Here a site about the herbs Ayla used:
http://ecfans.com/aylasherbs/AHerbs_ac.htm

Jardins de Bagatelle

2006-12-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

A perfume what smells like you walk in a garden, a garden with all kinds of fragrant white flowers. The opening is fresh, flowery with some sharp green notes. It's filled with juicy Neroli tempered with Mimosa. It's not a fruity perfume but more a perfume made of a bouquet of white flowers with some citrus and woody notes with an animalic note in the background.

The heart of this perfume is full of white fragrant flowers, but the scent of the flower I can detect most is Gardenia soon assistant by the sensual notes of Tuberose and Jasmine. A scent often used together with Tuberose is narcissus, the smell is a bit similar to the smell of Tuberose although Tuberose smells more creamy and have a green note and Narcissus has a more fruity and more animalic scent, if the smell of Narcissus could have a color it would be yellow. The Narcissus gives a nice bite to this perfume.

To hold all these lovely fragrant flowers together there is added an Iris note, maybe with the use of Ionone a component of Iris that has a dry woody flowery fragrance. It gives a solid smell to these fragrant white flowers so their fragrance will melt with your skin and doesn't smell like you wear the scent of flowers but something that becomes a part of you and your body chemistry. The fragrance of Iris will lead you to the woody notes; a warm earthy smoky Vetiver together with Cedar and Patchouli to spice it up a bit, also an animalic note is added to prevent this perfume to become an innocent perfume.

Jardins de Bagatelle is a very well made elegant perfume, it surprise you with little unexpected notes and the notes are perfect balanced. I do love all the perfumes made by Guerlain and I do love this one as well, but it's not my favorite like Mitsouko, Shalimar or Samsara.

Apologize

2006-11-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

I realize I don't post as often anymore, I apologize for that. I have many things to say I want to do more reviews of the Guerlain perfumes and also of the perfumes by Ineke. But lately I can't always find the time. I just post when ever I have the time or whenever I feel like it, I want to enjoy to write the posts and don't want to feel like it's a must. I hope you all don't mind that I don't post on a regular bases.

Fragrant wishes to all readers of this blog

Smell

2006-11-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was in a perfumery shop and had a real nice conversation with the lady of the shop. I asked her if I could smell some of the new fragrances and we start to talk about fragrances in general.

I told her that I think Chanel no5 is nice and that it was really new and special in the time it was made but that it's not one of my favorite. She said she was a real fan of Chanel no5 and that when she wears it people always say to her that she smells so nice. I told her that Chanel no19 is my favorite and that I like Coco Chanel as well.

O, she said, before I liked Coco Chanel as well until I went to a funeral of a good friend of mine, she said that the daughter of her friend was wearing Coco Chanel and since then the smell of this perfume reminds her of this sad day and that she can't wear it without being really sad.

That reminded me of a perfume I can't wear or smell without being sad, it's Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana I weared this perfume when our dog Jacko died. Since then I don't wear it anymore, I can recognize this perfume without any doubt when someone wears it. I still miss my warm and dear friend.

This is our dear friend Jacko who died two years ago

We started to talk about how difficult it seems to translate smell in words, I found out that when I ask someone to describe a perfume they look at me like I asked something really strange, they say something like that it's nice or that it's sweet or that it's fresh but they find it difficult to tell more about it.

A couple of days ago I visited my brother, my friend was there as well, my sister in law and I started to talk about a perfume. She used words like, it has a high tone or this perfume smells round etc. My friend raised her eyebrows and asked where the hell we were talking about. She said it was like we were talking a different language. We explained to her what we were talking about and after the explanation she understood a bit more of this special language.

I told the lady of the shop about this and she affirmed this, she told me she did a wine tasting course once and that it was difficult to describe the taste or smell. There are some kind of words used to describe some aromas, but she told me that some descriptions were not her descriptions, everyone has their own scent memories or referents, so the description by someone else could be from a whole different scent experience than yours.

We also made the connection to music, we both like music it seemed. Music can touch you in the same way a fragrance can, but somehow it's easier to describe music then to describe a fragrance. We can even find out what kind of notes the music is made of, try that with a perfume....Maybe we have to learn how to describe what we smell it's an important part of our live, strange that we have a difficulty to find the words for such an important thing.

Blending perfume

2006-11-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

Today I was thinking about the difference between a blend and a perfume. I still don't know the difference but I guess a blend is a simple mix of some aromatic materials, well maybe it doesn't need to be a simple mix but it isn't a perfume although you could call perfume a blend but that's not a common word used for a perfume(I think). You're still with me? It sounds a bit confusing.

I searched for the word "blend"(in verb form) in the free online dictionary and this is what it says:

*To combine or mix so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable from one another.

*To combine (varieties or grades) to obtain a mixture of a particular character, quality, or consistency.

*To form a uniform mixture.

*To become merged into one; unite.

*To create a harmonious effect or result.

Mmm you could say the same thing about perfume, so maybe you can use both words but I prefer to use the name perfume above a blend. A blend to me is a mix but not necessarily a perfume. To mix some aromatic materials doesn't make a perfume even when it smells good. You wear a perfume on your skin it becomes a part of you, perfume has something special it becomes personal. I think you can say that a perfume is a blend but not every blend is a perfume.

Blending different aromatic materials is a remarkable process, you think you know how the result will smell because you know what you just mixed but the outcome is sometimes different than you expected. Sometimes you know because of earlier experiences but you can't always predict how a mix will smell. Like when you paint and you mix colors you'll see that blue and yellow mixed together will form a whole new color; green. We all know that by now, it's the same in perfumery we know the outcome of some combinations but we can't predict them all. A couple of days before I added a tiny bit of Maltol to a creation. Maltol is an aroma chemical that smells like sugar. I added a real small bit, but the outcome wasn't sugary at all, it made the fragrance more stand out it gave the fragrance a solid base what gave the top and heart notes a lift. I like discoveries like that.

I found a new hobby

2006-11-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

At my Perfumemaking group we are talking about tincturing. I like the idea of making tinctures of unusual materials. Zz from Parfume Moderne gave us some tips on how to make tinctures. I remember that I tried to make them a couple of years ago but that wasn't a success.

Right now I made two tinctures; one with coffee and one with dried apricots. When I like the result I will make more tinctures. I used 2 grams of the materials and 14 grams of alcohol to try it out, I'm not sure that it will work that way or that I have to add more coffee or apricots.

I can imagine that it's a really nice hobby to find all kinds of things to tincture. I know that Zz tinctured mushrooms for example that sounds really interesting. I'm already looking around for more materials to tincture, but right now I just have to wait patiently......

The photo is from http://www.jashbotanicals.com/

Have a fragrant day!!!

2006-11-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

Orris by Andy Tauer now available

2006-11-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Orris perfume by Andy Tauer is created without thinking about the costs. It's made of the expensive materials Orris and Agarwood with dark rose, spices and mysore sandalwood.

Andy shared this perfume with 40 people by sending them a free sample to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his blog. I was one of the lucky ones that received the sample.

The reaction he received on this perfume was sensational. Everyone wants this perfume. And even though Andy didn't have plans to make this perfume in production because of the high costs of the ingredients, he decided to create a limited number of bottles of this incredible stuff.

The Orris is different than any other orris scent I'd ever smelled. It's soft dry woody, but because of the spices it isn't just soft powdery but more intense. It's soft with a smoky and spicy touch. It's starts with lemon and spicy notes but soon gets dark, deep and smooth with still the spiciness on top of it. Somehow all the perfumes of Andy have something that you can recognize as an Andy Tauer fragrance. He has his own style that always come through his creations.

The Orris perfume could be ordered right now the shipment will be by 15 November.
http://www.tauerperfumes.com/blog/

Blending, mixing, stirring and sniffing

2006-11-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

The whole week I'm blending, mixing, stirring and sniffing. I took the whole week off so I can spent all my time on making perfumes. I'm studying the musk materials right now, I have many different musks and I'm trying to find out which musk combines well with the other. The odorants of musk are really different I have sweet musks but also musks that have a dominant animal note, I have musks with a dry note a full rounded note, a green note, a musk ambery note and so on.

I'm also working on the fruity/chypre again. The fragrance matured for a while so I had the change to smell the result. I'm in love with this fragrance the picture I had in mind for this fragrance is a self-assured woman who is feminine but also strong. The fruity notes stands for the femininity and the firm base with oakmoss and amber for her self-assurances. I added some notes that are also used in men's fragrances but combined with feminine notes like fresh juicy tropical fruits and flowery notes of jasmine and tuberose. I like the result but I will smell it over a longer period, I can't wait to wear it when it's done. I will try just a couple of things to see what it will do to the fragrance.

Two male colleagues asked me to make a perfume that smells fresh, watery, fruity-apple like and it has to be a little but not too sweet. It has to smell in the direction of Cool Water by Davidoff and One man show by Jacques Bogart. Sounds interesting so I experiment with that as well.

Taste

2006-10-29T03:58:00.000-08:00

Do you recognize this? Sometimes you can almost taste someone's perfume. I remember one time I was eating diner with a whole group of people and couldn't enjoy my diner because every time I opened my mouth I could taste the perfume of the woman sitting next to me....

Have a nice Sunday!

The most sexy fragrance

2006-10-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

My most sexy fragrance is Must de Cartier perfume (not the edt). It brings back special memories to me, it's a warm sweet oriental heavy fragrance. Above all it's a warm sensual fragrance with animal notes like civet and musk, woody notes like sandal, vetiver and cedar and (of course) galbanum. But also some flowery notes like jasmine, rose and narcissus. When you smell this fragrance you don't have to wait for the reaction it will give to you, the reaction is there in a split second. Of course I have more favorites as sexy fragrances but this fragrance can change my mood in a sensual sexy mood.
What's your most sexy fragrance?

Mitsouko

2006-10-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Mitsouko (mystery in Japanese) from Guerlain is a perfume that you simply have to smell to understand. The perfume evokes an emotion to me I can't describe in words, it's especially hard to describe when English isn't your own language, but even in Dutch it would be difficult to describe. It's kind of a sad emotion in a way and at the same time it gives me an elegant and rich feeling. It's not a perfume that I would wear when going to work, it's more for special occasions, I can't imagine wearing this fragrance with a jeans but that's just my opinion. Mitsouko is a perfume of the Chypre family, it has oakmoss and I smell a lot of Labdanum absolute(Ciste or Rock rose) and a warm balsamic opopanax note. The topnotes are made of fresh citrus notes and the heart has rose, jasmine and lilac. I can smell something like thyme as well and some smokey notes that could be coming from birch tar. Guerlain started a new trend by adding a peach note coming from Aldehyde C14, many perfumers followed that trend. The peach note isn't overwhelming but ads a smooth fruityness to the other somewhat spicy harsh smokey notes. This perfume is so wonderful made that you have to smell it ones in your live.

Galbanum and apricot

2006-10-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

Because I liked the result of the experiment with galbanum I decided to continue with this experiment. To accentuate the green note of galbanum I used cis-3-Hexenyl Methyl Carbonate that gives a nice green violet leaf scent. A nice and often used combination with galbanum is hyacinth so I added that as well and some light rosy and lily notes. To give the perfume fixation I added some green woody base notes like a little oakmoss absolute unfortunately it's only allowed by IFRA (International Fragrance Association) to use a little so I used some substitutes as well and vetiver which has a incredible nice green woody asparagus kind of scent in combination with vertofix coeur that has a vetiver scent in combination with a leather note and finally some cedar and cedryl acetate to enhance the woody notes. Okay the perfume was nice in this stadium but just nice, I call that a safe smelling perfume, nice but simple with no surprises.

I smelled the perfume on a smelling strip and on my skin to study the result and thinking about what was missing. The process is all in my head, I think about notes that I can use and imagine how this note would smell in combination with this perfume. I liked the green fresh note but liked it to be more full bodied and warm, and there it was.... it needed a warm fruity note I chose the note of apricot a warm fruity full bodied note and added quite a bit together with some cinnamon and a touch of vanilla. To give the perfume some warm softness I added a wonderful orchid note and some narcissus because beside the flowery notes it has some fruity aspects as well. The result is a green fruity warm perfume with a soft feeling, I keep you informed about the experiments with this perfume.

Just played around

2006-10-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Working on a perfume and perfectionice it takes a lot of work and time, and sometimes it's better to take a break and start working on it with new energy. So sometimes I like to just play around with my materials without any goal just play with them and see if I can find nice combinations. It's real fun to work like that and give the opportunity to find interesting accords. Today I just played with my materials as well and started with one of my favorite materials: Galbanum a wonderful green material. I added some other green and leafy notes and some fresh notes. An interesting material with a galbanum note is Pharaone, the first time I smelled this material it wasn't nice at all, well I still don't find the smell nice but because of that I was getting interested in the material, it's described as having a galbanum/pineapple/angelica note. I diluted the material way down but it still was bad, so I tried the Pharaone in the Galbanum to see how it would smell in a blend. And the result is real nice.... it lifted the fragrance and gave it a fruity note. That's the strange thing about perfumery, you can't judge a fragrance material without working with it, and see how it reacts with other materials.

Perfume house Guerlain

2006-10-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

Pierre-Francois-Pascal Guerlain was born in Abbevile France. His dream was to become a chemist and went to London in 1820 to study. He worked in a shop that sold aromatic vinegar and soap to earn some money. He became the assistant of the masterperfumer and in 1828 he returned to France to open his own shop. He was a specialist in making personal perfumes for his costumers. But he also made toothpaste, soap and creams.

Soap label from 1890

Pierre became very famous and delivered perfume to the Belgian kings and the prince of Wales. He created Eau de Cologne Imperiale for the emperor Eugenie and became the official deliverer of the emperor Napoleon the third. His son Aime followed his father and wanted to make heavier perfumes instead of the fresh eau de colognes that where popular in that time. The result was Jicky. This perfume came in 1889 on the market and was nothing like an imitation of the nature or a creation of flowery smells: it was a combination of sensual notes; Civet, Coumarine, Vanilline and Linalool all synthetic products and Lavender and Bergamot. Jicky was "new", it was so new that people in that time need to get used to the perfume and only 20 years later it became a success.

In that time there where created a lot of perfumes and some of them are still around. One of them is L'Heure Bleue form 1912. The clear part of it is created by Bulgarian rose, Iris and Heliotroop, and the magical dark heart is created by Vanilla, Jasmine and Muskus. Until now perfumers use the basenotes from this perfume to variate with it to created a new perfume inspired by L'Heure Bleue.

The company Guerlain is still alive and there where always followers in the family. The last perfumer until now is Jean Paul Guerlain.
The company Guerlain created a lot of perfumes here are some of them:

Mitsouko

1919.

Type: Chypre.

Notes: Bergamot-Rose-Jasmin-Peach-Spices-Oakmoss.

Guerlinade

1922

Type: Flowery Oriental

Notes: Bergamot-Tonka bean-Vanilla

Shalimar

1925

Type: Oriental

Notes: Bergamot-Iris-Vanilla-Ambar

Vetiver

1959

Type: Woody

Notes: Vetiver-Nutmeg-Pepper

Jardins de Bagatelle

1983

Type: Flowery

Notes: Jasmin-Magnolia-Gardenia-Tuberose

Samsara

1989

Type:Oriental

Notes: Jasmin-Sandalwood-Rose-Narcis-Vanilla

L'Instant

Type: Flowery Oriental

Notes: Lemonhoney-Magnolia-Ambar

Opium + Shalimar =........

2006-10-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

I made a perfume for the birthday of my sister in law. She and also her husband my brother love the perfume Opium from Yves Saint Laurent. So I thought it would be a nice idea to make a perfume in the style of Opium. Although it' s not my favorite perfume because somehow it doesn't work on me like I have with other nice perfumes like Angel, I like the smell of it. I actually combined two styles of fragrances; Opium and Shalimar by Guerlain.

Shalimar is a sweet sensual animalic perfume that is based on Coumarin(a substance of Tonka bean), vanilla; Guerlain used the synthetic Ethyl vanillin, Linalool(a substance from Rosewood), Civet and Bergamot. I just love this perfume and I know my sister in law loves it also. I combined these notes with some spicy notes just like Opium has, like Clove bud oil and Coriander and a Lilly of the Valley note and of course Patchouli. To soften the Patchouli I used a little Cashmeran and I used a peachy note coming from Aldehyde C14. I added wonderful woody notes like Cedar, Sandal and Guiacwood, and warm amber notes like Labdanum absolute and Ambrettolide, and sensual musky notes coming from Exaltolide and Galaxolide. I added a little Jasmine and Rose to give it some flowery notes.

The result is lovely it's warm, sweet, ambery and spicy, I made it as a perfume extract, now I have to wait and see if she likes it. Tomorrow I will give it to her.....

Grrrrrrrr......

2006-10-01T14:20:00.002-07:00

While my Chypre/fruity perfume is maturing I worked on another perfume of mine the Oriental/leathery perfume. This perfume is based on oriental and animal notes. I wanted it to make a sexy fragrance based on amber and other warm animal notes like civet and castoreum but also leather and myrrh. I added some flowery notes of rose, jasmine, tuberose, orange flower and lily. This all is sweetened by a warm sweet honey note. To give it a fresh top I added some bergamot and mandarin.
It's a fragrance that touch my emotions, it's warm, sensual and pure sexy and has great staying power. I like the fragrance a lot but it's also a bit heavy and I'm not sure it's wearable at daytime. I want to make the fragrance a bit lighter than it is right now, maybe by adding some Hedione or more lily notes. I'm close but it needs some changes to make it lighter.

Photos are from http://images.easyart.com/ and http://www.inmagine.com/

Hobby perfumers

2006-09-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

After receiving an email from a lovely woman telling me that she's a hobby perfumer as well and would love to exchange experiments I thought it would be time to tell you about my group at Yahoo: Perfumemaking. It's a friendly group with all kinds of perfumers; hobby perfumers, natural perfumers and perfumers that want to make perfume on a professional basis using naturals and chemicals. We all learn from each other and help each other where we can, it's like a big family.
Perfume making is a lonely hobby in a way, and not everyone understands what you are talking about when you talk about the making of perfumes. This group is a wonderful way to talk to others about what you do and exchange experiments.
Here is the url:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/perfumemaking/

Filling up the gap

2006-09-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

Still working on my Chypre/fruit fragrance. I tried adding some notes but some of them didn't work, the character of the fragrance changed too much. I must be really careful not to change the fragrance too much. When I'm making a fragrance I also look at the way the fragrance change after applying it on the skin or on a smelling strip. I study the way the top notes flow over in the heart notes and how the heart notes finally melt in to the base notes.

Top notes are the first notes you detect when smelling a fragrance, the top notes are the more volatile notes, they have light molecules and evaporate real fast. Examples of top notes are lemon, bergamot, orange, peppermint and grapefruit.
After that you smell the heart notes that have notes that evaporate slower like rose, jasmine, tuberose and violet.
And finally the base notes that have the heaviest molecules like musk, benzoin, vanilla, civet and oak moss.

But there is more....
Some notes are between the top and heart or between the heart and base notes and act like a bridge between those notes. Using only top, heart and base notes can leave a gap between the two stages. Examples of notes that are between the top and the heart notes are petit grain and neroli they both are neither a top or a heart note they are a bridge between the top and heart notes.

That's why I have to know the time each note stay on a smelling strip, I write the time of each note down. This way I know how to use the note. If I detect a gap in the fragrance I know which note I can use to fill up that gap, so the fragrance will smoothly change over time.

Perfume without a name

2006-09-21T01:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I worked on my Chypre/fruit fragrance. I don't want to change too much because I really like the fragrance as it is I only work on it to enhance some notes or to round things of and deepen some of the notes. Perfectionicing a perfume takes the most work of the whole creation process and needs a lot of patience and time. Every time I need to study the effect of what I have done and be honest about it to myself. Sometimes I found out that I have to keep some notes out of the fragrance, even when I thought in the beginning the fragrance really needed these notes.

A fragrance need complexity but too much complexity makes a perfume without character, it's important to find the balance between complexity and character. The Chypre/fruit fragrance has fruity top notes of Mandarin, Lychee, Pineapple, Neroli and Bergamot decorated with a Brandy note. The heart notes possesses notes of Egyptian Jasmine absolute, Tuberose absolute, Watercress, Rosa Damascena and Violet. The base have notes of Cedar, Iris, Vetiver, Leather, Oak moss and Patchouli.

The fragrance starts fruity with an interesting Brandy note, the heart is fruity flowery in the beginning but soon gets darker because of the Damascena rose, right now I'm working on the rose note to deepen it a bit more, I added the wonderful materials Damascenone and Damascone Delta and I love the effect of it. The base isn't a soft sweet base but a complex woody mossy base that's not hiding in the background but making a real statement through the whole fragrance. I like perfumes that makes a statement, I don't want to make a perfume that just have a pleasant smell I want to create a perfume that triggers a reaction and emotion and I think the Chypre/fruit is doing just that. It's not a girly fruity flowery fragrance but more an adult complex fragrance.

The funny thing is that I never give a name to a fragrance I''m creating, so I will think about a suitable name for it instead of calling it Chypre/fruity.

Blind smelling

2006-09-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

I envy the way Luca Turin can translate into words what he smells. Sometimes when I smell something I can tell exactly what it smells like but sometimes I need days until I found out what it does remind me of. I think it's possible to train yourself in it, I like to smell my materials "blind" and try to find out what kind of material I'm smelling. I pick up a bottle without looking at the label or do it with someone else and ask to give me a bottle without telling me the name. It's funny to smell the material with an open mind and without being prejudged, sometimes I smell nuances of the material I never smelled before. Radio New Zealand did an interview with Luca Turin about smell, the interview is 30 minutes long and very interesting, you can listen to it here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/feature_guest_-_luca_turin

Have a nice Sunday!

Ylang Ylang

2006-09-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

The essential oil of Ylang Ylang was one of the first essential oils I buyed. The smell of Ylang Ylang oil is intense sweet, flowery, exotic and somewhat fruity. Ylang Ylang came originally from the Philippines but also growing now in Java, the Comores and other places. The Ylang Ylang "extra" is the first distilled oil and the best oil for fragrances. To obtain 1 kilo essential oil there is needed 50 kilo's of Ylang Ylang blossoms.

Ylang Ylang is used in a lot of perfumes in Chanel no5 it is an important note. It has volatile notes that easily can be detected in the top notes of a perfume but it also give powdery sweet, flowery notes in the base.

The essential oil of Ylang Ylang has a positive influence on high blood pressure and helps when you breath to fast. It helps you to calm down. A few drops in your shampoo gives you shiny hair and your hair will smell delicious. Ylang Ylang oil is also perfect to relax the muscles of your face. Blend some drops in your face cream and massage your face with it. Your face will look more relaxed and fresh. Ylang Ylang has a sensual smell and is perfect to use in an aroma burner to create a romantic enviroment. Some find the scent of the oil a bit to sweet and heavy, you can mix it with some lemon oil to make the oil smell lighter.

I like to use Ylang Ylang oil in combination with Bergamot and linaloewood or Howood(instead of Rosewood oil to safe the forrest of the Amazone), this is a classic top note combination of many fragrances. Ylang Ylang is also an important note for creating Carnation and Lilly of the Valley. I like the combination of Ylang Ylang with Sandalwood, Jasmine, Mimosa, Tuberose, Orange blossom as well and so many more, it's an easy oil to combine with other notes.

Traditional Eau de Cologne formula

2006-09-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

I would like to give you a traditional formula of Eau de Cologne one of the oldest perfumes that still exist. I always have a bottle beside my bed and use it when I have a headache. It's refreshing and uplifting.

Fantasy colognes are usually modifications of standard Eau de Cologne with floral or other notes to impart special character to the fragrance, small dosages of essential oils such as geranium, rose, ylang ylang, patchouli and vetivert may be used for this purpose. Also interesting is omitting some oils like lavender or rosemary and introducing an aroma chemical such as Lilial, Anisaldehyde, iso amyl salicylate etc. To compare you can make a completely synthetic Eau de Cologne.

Here is the formula:

Bergamot oil 27
Lemon oil Sicilian 20
Sweet orange oil 16
Neroli oil 12
Lavender oil French 6
Rosemary oil Spanish 4
Thyme oil white 1
Clove bud oil 1
Petitgrain oil 3
Clary sage oil 2
Benzoin resinoid, siam 1

Update on the surgery of my husband

2006-09-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

Well my husband had the surgery on his back last Tuesday, and it all went well. 6 hours after the surgery he was able to walk and one day later so on Wednesday he already went home!!! Can you believe it? Now he still has some pain and doesn't walk so well but that takes time. We hope it all turn out well.

Remember my question in the post about what scents could be used for perfumes and which don't? See here.
I never thought there would be a perfume made with the smell of cheese, but there is... there is a perfume called Eau de Stilton and it's based on the smell of Stilton cheese. The perfume re-creates the earthy and fruity aroma of Blue Stilton cheese. Using grape seed as a carrier oil, the Stilton scent features a symphony of natural base notes including Yarrow, Angelica seed, Clary Sage and Valerian. I'm curious about the smell of it but I can't imagine I would like it though. You can find information about this perfume on the site:
http://www.stiltoncheese.com/

To wear or not to wear

2006-09-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

A fragrance can have a nice scent but when do you want to wear it? I like some scents but don't like to wear them as a fragrance. For example I like the smell of an ice cream, melon, coconut or a candy but I don't want to smell like it, I would like to smell it on my wrist maybe just for my self. I could like the scents incorporated in a fragrance though.

When I'm making a perfume I always ask my self "I like the smell of it but would I like to wear it?". A nice fragrance is not enough, a perfume is an extension of your personality it tells something about yourself.

A perfume becomes a part of you, so it's important to find something from yourself in the perfume you're wearing. On the other hand I would like to have a scent bottle with a scent just for my self to put it on my wrist or on a handkerchief just to smell it when ever I like, because I like that smell or because it brings back a childhood memory.

I can smell again

2006-08-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

It's a grey day in The Netherlands. Our summer started so well but the last couple of weeks the weather is rainy. Today there is no sun it's raining a little spit spat but it's not cold. On my bike I enjoyed the weather even. I think it is because I've spend a couple of days at home because I was ill. It felt good to sit on my bike and feel the little tiny drops of rain on my face and smell the fresh clean air mixed with the smell of wet soil and fresh grass.

I'm so happy that I can smell again. I put on my fruity/chypre fragrance and try to find out if it's missing something. Maybe it could use some more bergamot I will try that, I enjoy the smell of bergamot oil it's a delightful smell that brings the sun in your live, something that I could use right now. I tried substitutes for the bergamot oil but nothing smell like the real thing. I like the smell of green mandarin oil as well and will see of that can enhance the fruity note of this fragrance. I don't want to change too much though because the fragrance does smell great how it is right now, I just want to see if I tried everything to make it perfect.

On Tuesday we got the news that my husband will be operated on his hernia next week Tuesday, so on 5 September. I'm happy that it will be done but I'm also very nervous about it. But we both know that he need an operation, he has had a lot of pain and can't do the things he was used to do. I will keep you informed about it next week.

Musk

2006-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Musk impart sensuality to perfume it bring volume and diffusitvity and impart warmth and liveliness. I think it's safe to say that there's no perfume without musk. Musk tincture smells animalic, sweet and ammoniacal. But the more one studies its character, the more contrasting, vibrant and oscillating it becomes: repulsive-attractive, chemical-warm, sweaty-balmy, acrid-waxy, earthy-powdery, fatty-chocolate like, pungent-leathery, resinous-spicy, fig-like, dry, nutty, and woody.

Originally the musk was obtained from the male musk deer. The internal pouches found between the hind legs had an intesely smelling secretion. To harvest the secretion the animal was hunted. To obtain 1 kilo of musk grains between 30 and 50 animals had to be sacrificed. Musk tinctures were still used in perfumery till about 1979, when musk deers were protected form extinction by the Conention on International Trade in Endagnered species of wild fauna and flora(CITES)

Musky smell refers especially from the smell of the dry-down of the natural musk tincture after the more volatile parts are evaporated and when the more warm, sensual, sweet-powdery tonality comes forward. In 1888 Albert Bauer discovered the nitro musk Musk Bauer. Soon replaced by three other nitro musks that he also discovered: Musk Xylene, Musk Ketone and Musk Ambrette. These musks became really important for the fragrances for the next 50 years.

In 1981 the nitro musks were restricted mainly because of a certain toxicity(neurotoxicity) and their phototoxicity, but besides they also caused ecological concerns due to their poor biodegradability. Ernest Beaux the perfumer that created Chanel no5 used over 10% nitro musks in his formulation mainly Musk Ketone. Musk Ambrette was used by the perfumer Francis Fabron for L'air du Temps. These nitro musks had to be replaced by other musk smelling chemicals and that's not an easy thing to do without changing the smell of these perfumes.

The first nitro free aromatic musk chemical Phantolide was introduced in 1951 by Kurt Fuchs. This was the start of other Polycyclic musks like Celestolide, Fixolide, Tonalide, Galaxolide and many more. Galaxolide was first synthesized in 1965, and already in the late 1960s used in dosages up to 40% in fabric softeners such as Comfort and Soflan and in detergents like Coral at 27%. But high doses were also incorporated in fine fragrances, for instance Tresor by Sophia Grosjsman with its 21,4% of Galaxolide. Galaxolide possesses a clean sweet musky flowery woody odour.

There is another group of chemicals with a musk odour: Macrocyclic musks. Examples of macrocyclic musks are Exaltolide, Habanolide, Velvione and others. Habanolide has a metallic character which is used in Emporio Armani white for her by Alberto Morillas as a component of a white musk accord together with Helvetolide. In Glow by J Lo it's used in an intense white flower accord.

Nirvanolide a chemical produced by Givaudan has a clean and sweet, powdery and persistent, and slightly animalic odour and is quite close to the restricted Musk Ketone. It's used at 6,7% in the perfume Forever Elizabeth created by David Apel. Another chemical with an odour close to Musk Ketone is Muscenone it possesses a very elegant and diffusive musk odour.

Musk odours could also be obtained in the plant kingdom like Angelica root oil that possesses the musk odour Exaltolide(macrocyclic) but also 12-methyl-13-tridecanolide. The discovery of 12-methyl-13-tridecanolide in Angelica root oil was really important because it showed the importance of the effect of methyl substituents on the character of macrocyclic musks. Ambrette seed oil possesses Ambretollide. When thinking about musky smells you don't think about Galbanum because it has a green note with balsamic nuances and isn't musky at all, but the isolated methyl macrolides: 14-pentadecanolide and the 15-hexadecanolide do have a musky odour.

This information I found in the books Chemistry and Technology of flavors and fragrances by David J. Rowe and Perfumery practice and principles by Robert R. Calkin and J. Stephen Jellinek. The picture of the musk pods is from http://www.kogado.co.jp/ the picture of the chemical structures is from http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2003/teo/realmusks.htm the picture of Tresor is from http://www.beautymarkcorp.com/ and the one of Forever Elizabeth is from http://www.fragrancenow.com/