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You're missing amber from the equation. Add some labdanum or fixateur 505 or something similar to the moss and see. You also need a little musk.

Remarkably, it's also missing from Paul's basic...

What makes you think that?

1. You have got your answer twice
2. One of the people who answered you has been a professional perfumer for a good number of decades.

Bye! And good luck.


[edit - missed the two last replies]

You are right. We are not forced to spend our precious time here to help people out if we can.

Ahem. Get that chip off your shoulder, young man.

It is not going to get you any help..



..and this goes to show just how much you need it.

I keep wondering where people read about adding solvents (or worse!) to their perfume as a fixative.
Who spreads such nonsense? It's just very persistent.

Yes.

But it's a secret formula.


Ok

I'll reveal it to you.

If you can somehow get hold of vodka that's 90% or so that would still be alright. I suppose 80% would be the very lowest, but that would leave little room for perfume materials. I mean that things...

What is Doctors brandy exactly? I suppose drinkable but very strong? How strong?

ahem. :)

Try to get 95% pure (or more, but not necessary.) No added smell; the ethanol odor itself is not a problem (some fixatives and masking notes (that is, your perfume) will deal with that) but there...

Ethanol. :)

Know that there are different Ylang Ylang oils (fractions). Ylang Ylang I-III, Ylang Ylang extra, and Cananga oil, all five from the same source. They are all different. I suggest you evaluate them...

Yes, musks.

No, that's not just you. Those watches!!

In fact I even dislike smaller logos. Unless they are my own.. but I never took the effort to design a monogram for myself (well, once, half-an-effort...

I haven't read much into the thread (just the first few messages) but what about fixateur 505? Should be a closer match than Ambroxan.

Black musk, white musk, red musk, and so on are fantasy names without much fixed meaning. These names are not commonly used by perfumers, and probably cooked up by people who create cheap fragrance...

That's good to know.

Bulakenyo, your question gets answered in this very thread! That combination (old box, new bottle) was produced from the mid nineties up until 2005 or so. Before that was a different bottle (and...

Chris, Arctander used to describe any material that works like that as 'a true fixative'.

Yes, but I wouldn't essentially use aromachems for that.

true must haves for fougere are a couple of musks and coumarin. and then whatever takes your fancy. :)

Http://www.hexapus.nl/ sells it. Not sure if they ship pure ethanol to other countries though, but quite possibly within EU. Their 'cosmetic hairwater' really is a valid substitute (easier to ship...

it could be several things. for one instance, what eo's are you using? many oils contain linalool, several quite a lot of it. if you mix a couple of these, and then add extra synthetic linalool, it...

ha! that's much better. i've been recommending people to use google (site:basenotes.net) instead of the internal search for years. the old site search was dysfunctional, and i'm glad something has...

from a dutch website,

Methylbenzoaat, benzylbenzoaat, methylanthranilaat, benzylalcohol, boterzuur, geranylacetaat, nerylacetaat, methylsalicylaat, eugenol, nerol, farnesol, geraniol, tuberon.
...

Yes Paul. You're lucky! These vintage Fahrenheit bottles, I never see them around anymore. I have only a few ml of the good old stuff left. There were some threads elsewhere on this board about the...

interesting. and i think you are right, because he consistently used an international, and not a dutch, word; it's most likely a technical term. that said, he definitely meant it in a good way, it...

thank you, chris. that's interesting. so it's really a finer version of iso e super, the same but better?

i'm glad they resisted to calling it iso e super-duper! ;)

oops, sorry, my bad. must do some research on timbersilk, then.

huh? i've bought this stuff there some years ago.

I make my own icecream, and have been including materials i had bought for perfumery more than once. of course this thing had my imagination racing. i do not know whether my castoreum givco is food...

actually, is also has been on the late show, not such verbose research as on the dutch show, just a few seconds announcement by jamie oliver, you can watch it here,...

castoreum is an interesting one. a friend of mine recently told me of some kind of minor scandal, apparently she saw it on dutch tv; it involved consumer outrage over castoreum being used in...

here's an most interesting quote for you from arctander,

The vanilla note can be modified or supported by
materials such as zingerone, castoreum tincture,
cassione, vanillin, ethylvanillin,...

you can expect it to smell just like vanilla sugar. it's powerful and far less complex than vanilla tincture or absolute. which is actually an advantage, as this translates to being both more clear...

ethyl vanillin is not a type of vanillin. it is a different molecule. vanillin is vanillin, there are no 'types of' vanillin. i hope this clears things up.

there is a whole array of materials that...

it doesn't work that way. vanillin is the most important odor molecule in vanilla. vanillin is vanillin, period. the vanillin in bourbon is the same molecule as the vanillin in tahiti. impurities...

oh no, what have you done? this thread will be locked now! ;)

btw. paul, that's an interesting development.

Not really, it's the nature of these oils (wax actually because jojoba is a wax, not an oil) they're not volatile. alcohol is very volatile, if you want the properties of alcohol, use alcohol. :) Oil...

Robertet! <smashes forehead> How could I forget?

no, not in the western world, not for a long time.

have you found a pump spray that works well with jojoba?

personally, i think your marketing researcher actually gave you valuable feedback. ;)

hahaha. :)

it's a strange phenomena though, isn't it? seems as if the nose needs to learn or adapt to detect it.

i can't think of sights or sounds that work this way. can you imagine?
...

I am under the impression that a couple of well-focussed smelling sessions, with maximum utilisation of the memory, will speed things up significantly. This kind of training is best done in an odour...

I don't remember, only the most famous one, Laboratoire Monique Rémy. View their contact info at this site.

If you have lots of time you could try and talk to the farmers, if you can find any....

Not that I know of, though i'm no expert on the subject.

But sometimes it feels as if the nose first needed to be trained to properly smell certain molecules. Some stuff seems to be weak and...

There is a big difference between the perfume town Grasse and the touristic (perfume) town Grasse. The real perfume trade of the old days is mostly gone, and what's left is basically invisible (parc...

hello deborah,

since you mention violet leaf, the absolute is a well known and well used perfume ingredient, and i can recommend it. it consist a rather peculiar green note, intensely strong, and...

is it the pure (near solid) resinoid or the made-mobile stuff (where solvent was added to make it more fluid and easy to handle)

the stuff i have is 50% benzoin in mpg. i'm not sure why dpg was...

yes it's possible. it's called reformulation and unfortunately it happens all the time.

i only have a color coding for strength. blue is pure, yellow is 10%, and so on. the strength is written on the labels, too, and i keep the full-strength bottles in a different drawer than the...

isn't prunella sort of the replacement for prunol?

you do that, first of all, to evaluate your materials. smelling them at 10% or something that emulates the strength in a final perfume. that's important.

then, with experimenting, using dilute...

auto-mutilation, anyone?

i think these lists are presented by the perfume houses. tester bottles used to have (maybe still do) a sticker on them with these notes. i've seen such lists on official websites, too. never found...

"10. Black Violet Leaves"

what? how can something i've never heard of be at the number 10 spot.

i can see such a note pop-up, say in tom ford's black violet marketing blurb; but high ranking...

use a scale.

for example, 1 gram vanillin with 9 gram alcohol will give you around 10ml of vanillin 10%.

and vanilla will obviously make things even sweeter.

or find yourself some prunol. ;)

go to a barber. see what he is using. if you're looking for quality, then that's what you want.

i use and recommend moser, they are solid no-nonsense machines, and they cut very well. it's just a...

when they happen to be on bottles that i've bought, they will be removed and disposed of immediately. same goes for child-lock caps.

that is to be expected, no? but i found the opposite (to be) truth.

intuition is my pilot.

this is possibly the silliest thing i've ever read, but perhaps i'm taking it a bit too literal. :)

- - - Updated - - -



yes. that's my point.

this question has been asked before a couple of times, i suggest searching this forum with google in the following format,
site:basenotes.net search query

also check out the sticky diy suppliers...

good luck.

the amount of bizarre ideas of how perfume is made sometimes makes me scratch my head. i wonder who comes up with this stuff, and why do these people think they need to share their nonsensical ideas?...

no glycerin..

where do you get these ideas?

eh..

who told you that? it's plain nonsense.

eo's are actually made out of the same molecules that we use as synthetics. for instance, we have the synthetic linalool. but linalool is part of...

that could work, because there is only a very little water. but do not use vodka!

it will be short lived. that's just it's nature! what you have are all topnotes, it does not matter what they...

no water. water doesn't mix with oil.

the recipe is simple: lavender eo, ethanol 96%. a 1:9 ratio (10%) is a good starting point, maybe a bit less, say down to 5%. i would prefer it to be gentle...

any recipe that tells you to mix alcohol and water 50/50 or something similar is bogus and should be redirected to the waste bin and never thought of again.

skip the isopropyl alcohol, too. forget...

they both work wonders in chypre type perfumes, although the jasmine best as a light (but still slightly animalic) type. try (small) part jasmine abs and part jasmine molecules like hedione, and...

what first springs to mind are herbs. notably including lavender and mint. some coumarin, too.

I'm not so sure about some of the the aquaeous elements that chris mentions for traditional shaving...

i have to admit that i'm a bit curious about the skunk scent. the only skunk scent i have ever smelled is the one wafting from the so-called coffee shops here in town.

if you were to make creams,...

i'm not sure at all what you mean. who gives these rates?

sometimes it's easier to work with pre-diluted stuff, i would not like to deal with pure civet for instance. so it might be stated in a...

that link! next time you'll go camping near a swamp, or in the tropics, please don't bring those leather perfumes! or you will be eaten alive.

;)

you got it.

but also note the other point, larger scale work, only slightly less on topic. caron pour un homme is a good example. it's dominated by basically two ingredients: lavender oil and...

excellent answers so far. there is another facet that's not touched upon. it can sometimes be better to just use one chemical, or just a few. for the larger structure, the single-mindedness of single...

I was coming back to this thread to update my list of civet hx and castoreum givco with tonquitone, but i see that paul has beaten me to it! Tonquitone is a musk tonkin (deer musk) base. Unlike most...

i suspect you are not looking for dirty as in 'smells like dirt (soil)' but rather the animalic type?

in that case, civet and castoreum are vastly different and both excellent ideas to start with....

dilute them 10% in ethanol, put a drop on a smelling strip and take notes. make use of your memory and don't smell too often, or you will lose your perception of them. study these materials...

actually, i might not have had my facts straight either. i am not entirely sure if the royal fern (fougere royale in french, in many languages also referred to as the flowering fern) indeed has a...

excellent answer from david, with one slight error. there is a fern with a scent. it's called.. the royal fern.

those aren't the ingredients. i think these lists are usually issued by a marketing department. in any case these pyramids don't have too much value.

touching. my condolences, chris.

i used to simply select the musks based on the other materials, based on what i wanted to accomplish, the general idea or shape of the creation. some shades of musk go good with this or that, some...

that's just a bit lazy really if you ask me. they are all mentioned right here in this very forum?

bht is often already included in the stuff you buy, and i am not sure whether adding more over time is helpful or not. is it?

to learn more about them, i suggest using the tgsc search. just enter the name (see above) into the box and follow the link provided. once at the tgsc site, read the information under the various...

i am also saddened by this. i think decisions have been made that were uninformed. i have put quite a bit of time and effort into the diy forum over the years, and this is comes as bit of a...

if you ask me then that is a bit ridiculous, really. this kind of thing has been done before on basenotes and it's great, one of the virtues of being a group. if basenotes resist and bans group-buys,...

you need to learn a lot before you can make perfume. i you have a question on a certain subject, use this way to search: enter site:www.basenotes.net/ query into the google search box, query being...

toss it, or use it if you like, but there's nothing you can do to fix it. and it might turn rancid at some point. as you probably understand by now, the problem is that there is too much water in...

that's just proof that you can't trust the web. but you can trust david ruskin. :)

hydrasols. they don't keep too long, and they mix only to some extend with alcohol (and not with oil at all).

btw absolutes tend to last longer than the eo from the same source material. you will find that there are many absolutes that are basenotes, but not so many essential oils. the product from...

it's funny you mention lavender. the absolute is considered much closer to the real plant, the eo is traditionally considered the typical perfumery lavender note though.

the other thing you...

what david says. entering "vintage old spice cologne" in ebay search should do the trick. make sure you don't get an empty bottle, though. ;)

i've been using a moser for about a decade. they're not cheap, about a 100 euros, but do a much better job than the frustrating cheaper ones. these are somewhat decent, anything else i've tried so...

i have a bottle and a shower gel of dirt, it's funny stuff. i wonder if it would work as a repellent? it's interesting in tiny doses as a room spray in any case.