Some of you may know that in addition to web graphics, I have a few other creative hobbies/endeavours. Amongst them are cross-stitch, jewellery making (overlaps with beadwork & polymer clay beadmaking), bridal headpiece/veil design, photography, perfume making (also overlaps with aromatherapy at times), cooking, and gardening. I also freelance as a fashion show coordinator and wedding & event planner for some local organisations. It is nice since many of my "hobbies" are also now how I make a living, so I am doing things I love and things that allow me to express myself. Very healthy.
What I wanted to ramble about today is my perfume making.
Firstly, I need to thank
naveli for turning me on to
Seventh Scent and their companion community
seventhscentlab. The owner makes really unique perfumes and I am getting ready to place an order in the next few days. (Am having a hard time deciding just which scents I want!) And no, not to compete with them, but for the sheer joy of it, me being a scent-a-holic. :-) Seventh Scent makes rather "goth" type scents, an area that dovetails with some of my newest ravewear/fantasywear jewellery & millinery that I am creating, but holds a niche that is different from my perfume making projects. (Mine tend to be based on aromatherapy principles, and geared toward the bridal market.) Anyway, if you've not checked out Seventh Scent- do so. I will let you all know what their perfumes are like after I order next week. I am excited!
This week I am finally compounding three scents that I've been toying with for a while. My process in this is slow. I get an idea, let it ferment in my mind for a while, and then start slowly by making notes. I think of possible ingredients, then research the best ways to combine- looking out for tips & tricks from more experienced makers on how things go together. (There are all sorts of amazing ideas out there for compounding that I'd never have thought of on my own- and I've been tinkering in this hobby for about fifteen years now.)
My next step is to evalute each ingredient on it's own- smell it, live with it for while, see how I feel and how the scents react on me, on others, and in the bottle. This usually leads me to further ideas of combinations and an overall "mood"- the idea becomes more solid. This process is repetative, but it does enable me to have an ongoing "relationship" with each individual ingredient. It's part of the fun.
Next I start mixing- in tiny quantities- a bit of the scent, and live with that for a while. I tend to use it as a general room scent, changing & adpating it 'til I find something unique that expresses the overall composition that I am aiming for. This is a fleshing out stage, equivalent to a doing sketch before painting or creating the actual design on the sketch. Changes in ingredients often occur between this step and the next.
The next step is compounding the scent. I decide what form it will take- oil based perfume or alcohol based? (This depends on the type of ingredients I am working with. Some EO's don't blend into alcohol as well as others, plus alcohol tends to produce a "lighter" scent- I like it for my summer perfumes and cooler perfumes.) I then start with the oil or alcohol base, and add my ingredients one at a time, starting with the base notes. With each ingredient I blend, and then test it in the bottle and on the skin over intervals of time. Then I add more ingredients, one by one, day by day, noting results. All of these steps, every ingredient down to each drop is logged in a diary I keep for this purpose.
Once I come up with a scent that fits my criteria (does it create the mood or image I was striving for, does it last, does it blend right, does it look appealing, etc.) I then bottle & label & market. It's a lot of work, but it is fun.
Right now I am working on three scents. The first is one just for me, utilising many of my favourite oils- some of them being neroli, a certain citrus oil and black pepper, and a particular wood resin. The second scent is an alcohol based perfume with a benzoin base with rose & other floral overtones. It comes out a lot lighter than it sounds! The third is an oriental blend, which seems almost like a food recipe- very spicy-citrus with a touch of floral. It is unlike anything else I've ever made; I really like it. Incidentally, in making this particular blend I discovered just what it was in the commercial perfume "Poison" by Christian Dior that made my stepmom say it smelled to her like "grape juice and Raid" (Raid is the brand name of a bug spray in the US). That "Raid"-scented element seems to come from black pepper & coriander, both of which I love, but others aren't always so fond of.
Anyway, that is what I am up to on the perfume side of things. :-)