The Flamingsword Method of Scent Building

[flamingsword]

How I build a scent:
• I get an idea of the relative strengths of the components by putting one drop of each base ingredient into a 2ml glass jar and smelling them together over the course of a couple of days while they blend.
• add or subtract any scents that fill in and round out the scent if needed.
• adjust the relative strengths of the ingredients by slowly adding more drops of the same things and writing down changes over the course of a day or two.
• I dip the end of a test strip of paper or paper towel into the blend and smell it every couple of minutes to see if there are any gaps where the scent does not come out as strongly so that I can make sure the notes cover the whole application and dry down process.
• I add alcohol or a carrier oil to the ingredients to get a blend that can be applied to skin, and then apply it, smelling every couple/few minutes for the first two hours to three hours and then every ten minutes after the dry down is mostly into the longer-lasting base notes.
• continue fiddling with the recipe of the blend until there’s better coverage and less strength variance over time.
• I make the final blend of ingredients, let sit in the final container for three days, add the carrier substance, and then either keep it or wrap it in bubble wrap and cardboard for mailing.
• (Some people use plumbers tape around the tops of bottles to decrease the amount of scent particles that escape, which I cannot be arsed to do, bc I can never find the plumbers tape.)

I will today and tomorrow be messing with a scent for silk_dragon_zen that sounds like it will smell like forestry petrichor, and then messing with a knock off of Bachelor’s Grove for my friends Bat and sabotabby. I do need to grab some roller bottles and such for finished scents to go in sometime soon.

Comments

[ex_flameandsong751]

[I hope you saved the formula for the scents you just sent me, because I will eventually want more and would be willing to kick you $ via Paypal to make it happen when it's that time.]

[flamingsword]

I do have them written down! And as long as I can source the ingredients, it’s not a problem to make more. The Godafoss will be slightly harder, as it has bases that are themselves blends by other perfume houses (Sucreabeille’s Sunshower and Demeter’s Thunderstorm). But I tend to use perfumes very slowly, since I have so many of them, so these will be make-able for a good long while.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Yeah same, I'm sparing about perfume use. I still have bottles of Frederic by BPAL [which is only released once every Leap Year], as an example. I just thought I'd ask, though.

[sabotabby]

Oooh I am EXCITE

[flamingsword]

I know Bat will want a scent oil, do you want an oil base or an alcohol base? I vaguely remember someone wanting oil bases so they would have a smaller throw and not bother people with sensitivities as much, but I’m not sure if that was you.

[sabotabby]

I don't know the difference (I mean I know the difference between oil and alcohol, but I don't know what it means for perfume).

[flamingsword]

Okay, so remember the Cookies Baking scent I made you … a while back? I think we did that one in oil, since it was going to have a small amount of cinnamon in the blend, and those are safer for the skin to do in oil carriers. The alcohol evaporates faster than the esters that comprise the scent, so the scent evaporates more quickly, and thus covers a lot more of your local airspace. That’s called “throw”, btw, how far across a room the smell extends at a detectable level. Alcohol parfums have a bigger throw than oil based ones, and can’t use a few sensitizing oils and synthetic scent chemicals since the alcohol helps transport them deeper into the skin than the oil bases do.

[sabotabby]

i do not understand that at all but less throw sounds better?

[flamingsword]

Then oil based it is! I will probably be done with these by the end of the month.

[sabotabby]

Excite!

[silk_dragon_zen]

Wow this is fascinating! I don't remember if you and us talked about the difference between oil vs. alcohol bases, but if still possible we SilkDragons would prefer for it not to have much throw either. We love to experience scents but definitely want to minimize the potential of irritating other people with our scents.

— Sage

[flamingsword]

Yeah, I think I recall you saying you wanted less throw bc your housemate and care worker might be allergic or have sensitivities? It goes along with my picture of you as someone who tries to walk with only touched hearts and gentle footprints left behind.

[silk_dragon_zen]

*deep SilkDragons bow*
🙏🙏🙏🙏

[semperviridis]

Thanks for the rundown! Great info.

I periodically mix some scents, but I haven’t waited long enough, scent-sampling them, to round them out to their best advantage, I think.

[flamingsword]

It does take a fair few days of repeated getting out Ingredients, smelling things, mixing things, putting everything away and repeat. But at the end you have something really good! I’m not Elizabeth Barrial from BPAL, but someday I want to create something really amazing for my people, so I keep trying.

[rosedelavictoire]

Oh wow, I didn't realise there were so many steps to creating smellies.
I collect smellies.

It is very interesting to see more of the work that goes into scents.

Thanks for sharing!

[flamingsword]

This is, admittedly, the way I do it and not the way big perfume houses do it, as they can afford a bunch of stuff I can’t. But if smelling things a lot and taking your time can take the place of sterile clean rooms and organic chemists and process engineers … well. I’m going to go with what I have access to, and not create “solar” perfumes that last 90 minutes and then vanish.

What kind of smells do you you like?

[rosedelavictoire]

I like a huge list of smells, myself: Petrichor and damp earth, loam, dead leaves. Coffee, evergreens and moss. My cats smell delicious as long as they aren't fresh from the poo box. Herbaceous things like sages, yarrow, mugwort, and juniper berries. Goldenrod, asters, purple deadnettle, hay. It's hard to choose just one scent, which is why I collect *L* (I could go on forever... don't let me *snort*)

Do you have favourite smells? I fkn love smells. Well... good smells. I mean, I work in a place where there can be dreadful smells and I have what people think of as a very acute sense of smell, so sometimes it's an unfun job. Imagine having to open cases and cases of fish very literally to smell them and coming across a dud.

[flamingsword]

I like sticky, resinous scents like myrrh and Copal, sticky floral scents like orchids and lantana (why has nobody used lantana in a perfume?). I like clean scents like cotton blossom and lemon and clover; I like gourmand smells like chocolate, coffee, vanilla; boozy smells like rum and oak-barrel scented whiskey. I like woodsy smells and green smells and dirt smells. I like aquatic smells like thunderstorms and gardens after rain. I like dark smells like blue yarrow and ravensara, and bright smells like apple and amber. I like so many smells that my brain is tripping over itself trying to talk about the things I love, and the infinite diversity in infinite combinations of those things.

I don’t really like lavender-heavy blends, anything with gardenia, and I only like rose and coconut in tiny amounts.

I should put my recent blends into my smellgoods collection spreadsheet, with the wishlist and scent making stuff. If there’s anything you want a decant of or anything that is marked in red on that list that smells terrible on me, feel free to just ask for it, and next time I send stuff your way, I will put an envelope for you in there.