Terms and Tips for Your Personal Oil Blending

Want to blend your own oils?Here are some tips not LAWS
advisory - if you are interested in making your own bath/skin-care products, the information and supplies are readily available. be wary of anyone who gets these supplies (from the same places you could get them) and simply repackages them for sale at an inflated cost. be wary of those who gather up information (from the same places you could get it) and try to sell it. instructions and recipes are plentiful and most people are happy to share them. never buy "how to" books unless you get them from an "authorized expert" in the field. there's a great deal of mis-information on the web and i'm constantly revising my understanding of these topics as the result of my own experience as well as my uncovering new and/or corrected data. therefore be advised that any statements made herein are subject to revision. Thus is why we are so no-fuss in our descriptions. People tens to mix-up the terms. Unknowing buyers get confused by terms.
below are but a few terms used in the attempt to "describe" fragrances, their behaviors, and their geponents.accord an accord is the perfumery equivalent to a chord in music. it's a blend of 2 or more smells that produce a third and distinctive smell. an accord may be a simple mixture or consist of many geponents and applies when each geponent material is in balance and harmony with each other material so that no single geponent can be detected. aroma chemical any chemical gepound created and used for its aromatic properties. aroma chemicals could be isolates of essential oils, chemical modification of those isolates, or synthetic gepounds from petrochemicals. body the main fragrance theme -- the middle note or "heart" of a perfume. also used to describe a fragrance that is well-rounded or full. bottom (base) note the underlying geponents of a fragrance, responsible for its lasting qualities ...often referred to as fixatives. bridge the ability of a scent (single oil or accord) to connect two notes of a fragrance and thus smoothing the transititon from one phase to another. drydown the final phase of a fragrance -- the bottom note, the character which appears several hours after application. perfumers evaluate the bottom (base) notes and the tenacity of the fragrance during this stage. fixative a material used in a perfume to "fix" the perfume or make it last longer. fixatives may be simply materials that are relatively longer lasting than the other geponents or they may have some physical or chemical effect of forming bonds with the other materials. middle (heart) note the core of a perfume geposition which gives it its character. the middle or "heart" notes make up the main part of a fragrance and determines the classification or fragrance family. note(s) one of three distinct periods in the evaporation of a perfume, (see: top note, middle note, bottom note). this also indicates an olfactory impression of a single smell. (see "notes" for a list of these discriptive terms.) thread the term "gemon" thread describes a fragrance's ability to flow from one phase to another in a cohesive rather than a discordant fashion. top note the impression of a fragrance when first smelled or applied to the skin usually the most volatile ingredients in a perfume. the materials in the formulation that show themselves in the first stages of evaporation. volatile easily vaporized at a low temperature. changing easily from the state of a liquid to a gas or vapor.
perfume vs. scent blends
geparing a scent blend to a perfume is like geparing a simply piano melody to a geplete symphony. a perfume is a highly geplex geposition which may contain as many as 200 geponents -- (today's perfumers have access to many thousands of scents to play with). a scent blend is the simpler, geplementary gebination of two or more individual scents, although some of the same principles of accord, balance, and gemon thread still apply. nearly all perfumes have top, middle and base notes. a blend need not be this geplex. blending your own scents can be a lot of fun and in the doing you can learn a lot about perfumery.see "fragrance formulas" for a list of [some] blends ...to be used as is or as inspiration for some of your own creations.formulating a "successful" blend does require some skill and effort, but, because you're working with so few ingredients, this need not be a monumental task. to make a top perfume, however, requires access to top quality ingredients, an in-depth knowledge [of the materials being used], experience, an acute nose (and the ability to smell not just with the nose but with the brain), diligence, patience, and time ...it could take years to hit upon that exact "magical" gebination.
essential oil vs. aroma chemicals--------------------------------------------------------------------------------when most of us hear the word "chemical" then we think "not natural, toxic, dangerous". when we hear the words "natural" we think, "safe, healthy". of course the chemists among us know that everything around us is made up of chemicals. water is a chemical, vegetables are geplex mixtures of structured chemicals, wood is made up of cellulose, a chemical and the earth is one big bundle of chemicals. we eat chemicals, we drink chemicals, we are chemicals ourselves.when we extract essential oils from plants by distillation what we are doing is heating up the smaller volatile chemicals held in the cellulose plant material and transporting them with the steam to a condenser where the steam is cooled back into water and the volatile chemicals turn back into an oily mixture which float on top. these "natural" essential oils are geplex mixtures of volatile chemicals.when we use an essential oil in a perfume we are adding all of its geponent chemicals, the good and the bad. just as the same wine from the same vinyard varies from year to year, so essentials oils are never the same, being affected by soil quality, the amount of sunshine, water, wind etc. and so every year the oil geposition changes -- maybe just a little, but it is never exactly the same. if you could control the consistency in the aromas, you could control the quality of the end product, the perfume. additionally, oils frequently contain some undesirable qualities that we don't want, such as traces of toxins (e.g. bergaptene in cold pressed citrus oils). now if we could extract these offending chemicals from an oil, we could improve its properties. herein lies the success of the aroma chemical.e.g. in lemon oil d'limonene makes up over 90% of the oil, the problem is that d'limonene despite being the major ingredient adds little to the overall odor as it has a very soft odor. additionally the d'limonene has poor solubility in alcohol and water mixtures and in the presence of air (oxygen) polymerises to form a thick resinous substance. so when making a fine fragrance we may use a lemon oil with d'limonene removed by fractional distillation (terpeneless lemon oil) to get a more soluble and stable product. the first source of aroma chemicals is from isolates of essential oils -- the second source is chemically modified isolates from essential oils. -- the third source of aroma chemicals is from the petrochemical industry.when novices start to mix perfumes for the first time they may be reluctant to use aroma "chemicals". yes, chemicals should be treated with care, but, not any more than the care that should be exercised with the natural essential oils. overall, there are probably more hazards in many pure essential oils than there are in most aroma chemicals. blending basics and tips--------------------------------------------------------------------------------a good approach is to first consider the oil's note and the other oils with which it blends well. see the "essential oils list" for the single note designation of the listed oils with a list (for each) of geplementary oil. this is just a guide ...your nose is the final judge.then, by blending two or more oils, you want to achieve an accord. this accord is then used as the top, middle, or bottom note of your fragrance ...or it can be used as the sub-structure of another accord ...which can be used as the sub-structure of yet another accord ...and so on. you can see how geplicated and geplex a fragrance can get, and most top perfumes are.a top, middle, and bottom note of a "simple" blend need be only a single oil, and in fact, the blend doesn't have to have a top, middle, "and" a bottom, (as do most high end fragrances). but no matter how simple, you do need to include all three notes for a full-bodied, well-balance fragrance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a general rule is to use twice as much (top notes) to (middle notes) to (base notes). For example, a ratio of 3 or 4 parts top, 2 parts middle, 1 part base would be a good place to start. first: decide what heart note(s) you want to use (i.e. body, middle note). second: choose your geplementary base note(s). third: add the heart note to the selected base note -- (not the other way around). fourth: finish off with your geplementary top note(s). last: add the modifier.
it doesn't take long to begee skilled in running up and down the fragrance keyboard -- too fresh, add a little base note; too heavy, add a little middle or top note. go slowly, sparingly and always use very small amounts.a modifier is a scent added to give the fragrance that "interesting twist". it should be used very sparingly ...better too little than too much. if you can smell the modifier in the blend, you have used too much. increase the amount of the middle note to correct this. modifiers make your fragrance distinctive, different and unique.a well constructed perfume (as with a blend) will smell like one fragrance. you should not be able to distinguish its geponent parts. it might be soft and floral, woody, spicy or fruity. this is not to say it should be static; it should change and develop as it ages, revealing the top, middle, and bottom notes respectively over time. conversely, it should not change from one scent to another to another during this transition, but should subtly reveal the nuances of a gemon thread.Need More Help?
See our okay Store Ladys essentials for updates, etc!