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Mixing.... help!

post #1 of 6
10/29/12 at 12:47am
Thread Starter 
I am brand new to this DIY thing. I have one successful fragrance, but that's it. I think the problem is technical.
I have seen different approaches posted.

Is it best to mix pre-diluted Abs, or to mix your tiered notes together and then dilute them?

Thanks in advance for any help!
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post #2 of 6
10/29/12 at 1:17am
I suggest you read, read and do some more reading. It is all here and everyone does it differently. Look at the very first sticky on the DIY section and then ask questions in the right hand search box.

There are no laws with this. It is a personal preference thing. I'm a 10% dilution blender, others are 20%, others are neat and then dilute. It depends how much you want to use up of your valuable essential oils and abs whilst experimenting. I think things smell better on the nose at lower dilutions when blending, but that is only my opinion.
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post #3 of 6
10/29/12 at 2:22pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks Mumsy! How long do you let your newly diluted oils settle before blending? And how long do you let blended frags set before adjusting?
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post #4 of 6
10/29/12 at 3:01pm
Your newly diluted individual oils can be used straight away. They don't benefit from any maturation time. Once blended, however, it's a very different story: you will notice they improve greatly with age. Blends with a lot of complex natural basenotes change dramatically over weeks and months. Classic chypres, ambers and fougeres really improve with age. Not so dramatically though if you're using synthetics.
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post #5 of 6
10/30/12 at 2:41am
Good advice here already, but if you want a step-by-step guide, I've described the way I go about dilution and blending in a blog post called A Method for Blending, from which you can also download a spreadsheet to help with calculating how much of each you've put in even if you are using different dilutions.

Hope that helps.
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post #6 of 6
11/2/12 at 11:46am
Thread Starter 
Thanks Chris! That was the breakdown I was looking for. @Chris Bartlett, is there a reason everybody blends by weight and not volume? Is it the variation in natural oils that make it more accurate by wieght due to density?
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