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About perfume notes and blends
Maree's note on perfume notes
Here are the notes I got on how quickly an essential oil or absolute will evaporate in a room:Top Note: 20 minutes -e.g. lemon
- highly volatile (evaporate quickly)
- refreshing to the mind, stimulating to the body
- keep for approx. 2 years
- reacts with plastic
Middle Note: 20-60 minutes -e.g. geranium
- moderately volatile
- work well on the body functions and system
- good stabilisers/balancers for the mind and body
- keep for approx. 7 years
Base Note: 1-4 hours -e.g. sandalwood
- evaporate slowly
- longer lasting, smell lingers for up to 2-3 weeks
- most sedating, relaxing and strenthening oils
- keep for approx. 40 - 70 years
Ersilia on fragrances and blending
The idea about mixing before hand, is to allow the fragrances to settle and meld with one another, and depending on what was used in the combination, you will find, that some are top, middle and base notes.
It is the top notes that will or might fade, leaving the remainder combination as the scent that it develops into. Furthermore, the combination of the oils themselves will change into something else, sometimes providing a better scent, sometimes not.
When doing it for aromatherapy purposes, they call it a 'synergy'. The chosen oils once combined and left to stand produce a synergistic effect together as a whole rather than what each oil would have been capable on its own. Again, by combining a top, middle and base essence is a way of getting a fragrance where each oil compliments each other.
Here is an example from someone who doesn't like Cedarwood. Diane doesn't like Cedarwood on its own and has mixed it with the lemon.
Upon an initial sniff, there are equal parts of scents of lemon and cedarwood or whatever was the percentage of each you started with. Or one can say Diane was able to detect both the lemon and the cedarwood.
However, after a period of at least 4 days, the lemon (being a top note) faded away, but was able to mellow the cedarwood (which is a middle note) giving Diane a completely different scent as the outcome, the outcome being a much more acceptable scent of cedarwood to Diane :-))
A base oil is one that gives endurance and depth to a scent. So once the top note has disappeared it leaves the middle note as the heart of the scent, a more balanced note from the acquaintance of the top note. At the same time, the base note is what will hold and deepen the middle note.
The idea as pointed out by others, to mix in small droplets only, allows for one to 'see' what that particular blend would make together, this done with the idea that if you dont like the resultant blend, you have not wasted resources and money in achieving your experiments.
On another list, Cat Turner, advised to do this with dipping a toothpick into each oil and binding the picks together in a little baggie or maybe little jar, sniff later after the 4 days or so have lapsed. Be sure to write down how many drops or toothpicks were used of each oil, so you can recreate it should it turn into something nice.
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