Basenotes › Basenotes Forums › Fragrance Discussion › Fragrance DIY › Adding Musk To Existing Fragrance?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Adding Musk To Existing Fragrance?

post #1 of 11
1/20/10 at 10:01pm
Thread Starter 
I am really into the "skanky" style musk fragrances ( MKK, Musc Ravageur, Mona Di Orio Nuit Noir, Etc.) and am going to try adding musk to one of the non musk fragrances I really like (CK Obsession Men). I ordered a new bottle of the CK, some civet, ambergris, castoreum, and ambrette seed tinctures. This is my first such venture and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea how much of any of the ingrediants to add and was wondering how much of the stinky stuff I should add. I am planning on making a 1 ounce (30ml) mix to start and maybe a couple of 10ml experiment sprayers to help find the right strength. Any help, thoughts, suggestions, comments, ridicule are welcome! Thanks.
Reply
Reply

Features on Basenotes

Basenotes Reader Awards 2013 - Finalists Announced.
Greatest Hits: Annick Menardo
Petals Falling From The Sky - A Report From The Cote d'Azur's Bataille De Fleurs
post #2 of 11
1/21/10 at 12:01am
If you haven't smelled pure civet before, you'll be in for a shock. You'll probably want to keep the bottle inside another container, and you'll have to dilute it before using in a mix. My suggestion would be that you start out with some small batches (5-10 ml each) of the CK, adding something different to each to see what the effect is. Get some calibrated pipettes so that you know how much you're adding. Keep a record of what you're doing, and label each bottle. Remember, you can always add something, but you can't take it out once it's in, so be conservative at first. Once you find a formula that you like, you can go ahead and make a larger batch. Have fun with your experiment!
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 11
1/21/10 at 12:24am
Well, figure that the Obsession is probably about 10% perfume and 90% alcohol, so if you've got a 100ml bottle of it, there's only 10ml of juice.

So, you're going to have to dilute your essences quite a bit. I'd dilute them down to 10%, and then you can figure about 20 drops per ml.

So lets say you want to work smaller and you spray out 2ml of your obsession. This is about .2ml of juice (approx). Now, each drop is about .05ml of diluted essence. So in this case, one drop of the civet would be .05/.2 = 0.25 = 25% of your juice!

Ok, so that's at 10% dilution. If you dilute the civet further down to 1% dilution, each drop will be approx 2.5% of your 2ml juice. Of course, if you instead were working with 5ml of the Obsession, then each drop would be 1%.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 11
1/21/10 at 12:50am
First make dillutions of the musk and animalic substances. Dillute until you think it is about as strong as the perfume you want to mix it with. Then take a bit of the perfume, say 20 drops and add drops of the musk until you like it.

It could take some experimenting to find out what you like most.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 11
1/21/10 at 5:01am
Hmm, I agree, It'll be a hard process considering the perfume is much stronger and needs to be diluted, thus A broad percentage of any perfume is mostly ethanol to mute it's strength, Do try The mathematics as Sculpture says, He seems keen. Oh and good luck! WoW CK Obsession musky style will sure be an interesting prospect!

Keep up the good work!
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 11
1/21/10 at 6:05am
I would dilute a small fraction of each musk single note, first to 10%, then to 1%, and see what you like. Smelling these will tell you if you have to go down to 0.1% to get anything you (or those around you!) can stand to smell.

Also, put just one drop of your lowest dilution on a piece of paper towel. Leave it in a closed room for an hour and then come back. Musks are fairly famous for their tenacity.

Your ideal final concentration could be very different for each of the musks you've bought, so you have to do this experiment with each one.

Once you have a target final concentration for a musk, use that as a center point for your mixes with CK Obsession. That is make different batches that have 1:2, 1:1 and 2:1.

Notice that this process call for lots of small batches. You want lots of small bottles. Because of the musk tenacity, you probably don't want to reuse them. Does anyone know a good source of 10 ml containers with tight caps for under 1 $US each?
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 11
1/22/10 at 5:05pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you all for the advice. I will update this post when I get my supplies and get to play mad scientist ( well, mad perfumist ). This is going to be my Frankenstein... and I will call it Muscs Kublai Klein. Maybe I'll send a sample of the perfected juice with the recipe over to CK... they can even us the Muscs Kublai Klein name. Should be their biggest seller. LOL!
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 11
1/22/10 at 5:19pm
I'd actually recommend blending only 1ml or at most 2ml at a time. 5 or 10ml of your obsession is a lot to waste, and believe me, you'll be pouring a bunch of them out! I often mix perfume blends (granted these are of all natural oils with known dilutions) at about a half ml size (that's accounting for the 20% dilution, so I'm actually only using about .1ml of juice), and even that is enough for a wearing or two. Enough to see if it's worth blending more or not!
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 11
1/23/10 at 5:09am
Where can one purchase the civet, ambergris, castoreum tinctures?
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 11
1/23/10 at 7:18pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Man_from_Shalimar View Post

Where can one purchase the civet, ambergris, castoreum tinctures?

I bought mine from a website called "The Perfumer's Apprentice" based out of the Los Angeles area. There is another place based out of Italy that I know of, but I don't recall the name.

My order arrived today and I must say that the civet isn't as bad as I was expecting. Fecal yes, but it's the same smell I get from MKK ( just stronger of course). The Ambrette seed oil was the biggest surprise. It reminds me of vanilla if you remove the sweet part and could cut the fragrance note in half.

Now I'm just waiting for the decanting supplies and mini funnel to arrive... then the fun begins!
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 11
1/23/10 at 8:14pm
Nice. Keep us updated.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Fragrance DIY

Features on Basenotes

Basenotes Reader Awards 2013 - Finalists Announced.
Greatest Hits: Annick Menardo
Petals Falling From The Sky - A Report From The Cote d'Azur's Bataille De Fleurs
Basenotes › Basenotes Forums › Fragrance Discussion › Fragrance DIY › Adding Musk To Existing Fragrance?