Scent-ual Experiments

[omorka]

Got a chance to play around with a couple of my "inspired by" scents today. For a change of pace, I'm using these tiny little amber glass bottles with these itty bitty corks; makes the whole think look cuter than it really is. (Maybe "chibi" is the word I'm looking for here. Chibi corks. Sounds about right.)


The first one was more or less directly taken from BPAL's description of "Phantom": myrrh, dark musk, rose, and ylang-ylang. Confession: I am truly a girly girl when it comes to ylang-ylang. Love the stuff. It's one of the major ingredients in my "me" blend. I guessed at the quantities, and came up with:

1 t jojoba oil (base)
5 drops myrrh oil
7 drops dark musk oil (artificial, obviously)
3 drops rose oil (artificial - didn't want to use the real stuff on a trial)
7 drops Ylang Ylang (probably should have been five, but I've already confessed my weakness)

In the bottle: Ooo, I'm liking this already.

On me: Wow, I totally see what starcat_jewel meant about the "soapy" overtone. Fortunately for me, it reminds me of something that my grandmother used to keep in the downstairs bathroom. I can barely smell the myrrh at all; I probably should have reversed the quantities of myrrh and musk.

Thirty minutes later: the musk has calmed down considerably, and so has the rose; this is mostly myrrh and ylang-ylang now. I kind of like it, but this'll definitely be a "when I'm in the mood for it" scent. If I decide it's worth re-doing, I'll swap the myrrh and musk quantities and use the real rose, but that'll be way, way down the line.



This was a very simple-sounding scent - BPAL's description of "Three Witches" is cinnamon, clove, and "white pepper." Now, I don't think white pepper oil is in fact any different from black pepper oil, and I couldn't find anyplace that sold "white pepper" as an essential. I was sort of nervous about this, as everyone knows my relationship to Fire, and these are all three fire oils. I was worried this was going to irritate my skin, so I used less of each one than I normally would in a three-note blend.

1 t jojoba oil (base)
5 drops cassia cinnamon oil*
5 drops clove bud oil
3 drops black pepper oil

*True cinnamon bark oil is really expensive; I have cassia and cinnamon leaf. After waffling a couple of times, I decided the cassia was closer to the intent - slightly woody instead of slightly green.

In the bottle: Very "hot" smell, generically spicy. Still worried that I'm making a mistake.

On me: Well, I've had it on for about 45 minutes and it hasn't burned me yet. It's also not sticking around. I can barely tell I still have it on. I'm going to have to add something as a base note, if I want this to be something I can wear for any length of time. Frankincense, maybe?


So, one qualified success and one "It's not working as-is, but maybe I can make something of it." Not too bad, I guess.

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[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

In the annual Chocolate Decadence cleanup/reshuffling, I discovered something I'd forgotten about: a long-ago-purchased bottle of ginger oil! It's still got some oil in it, and it's still very ginger. Now I'm going to have to get some base oil and mess around with this and BPAL's Bliss, which is a pure milk chocolate scent, because chocolate-covered ginger is my favorite treat in the whole world...