r/DIYfragrance

I've been looking for some kind of aroma chemical or combo to recreate an "apple orchard" type of scent. If you've ever gone apple picking, that sort of sweet smell you get from the fallen apples on the ground and ripe apples on the tree. Not Jolly Rancher, tart, green, or dry, and definitely not apple pie. There are obviously a lot of options, but as you know, you can't just go by the descriptions online, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has experience using something like what I'm looking for.

I search ingredients for soapy, clean musky scent like Blanche by Byredo. For freshness I would to use Dihydromyrcenol, Linalool and Linalyl Acetate, for floral accent I think about PEA, Hydroxycitronellal, Alpha Terpineol, Hedione. As aldehyde I plan to use Aldehyde C-11 Undecylenic, and for musky body I would to use different musks: Galaxolide, Globalide, Romandolide, Ethylene Brassylate, Zenolide etc. In base will be my sandalwood accord. What do you think about this?

P.S. Sorry for my bad english =(

Hi! Do you know where I can purchase fragrance formulas to start learning how some well-known perfumes are made? I'd love to see the breakdown of a scent like Bois Impérial to understand how it's put together. Any tips?

Can someone please let me know how these two materials compare? Can I sub butter C2 in a formula to get a similar effect? Especially if it is in small amounts in the formula. Thanks!

Hello! My friend’s birthday is coming up soon and she’s really into perfumes and scents and whatnot, so I wanted to get her a perfume making kit of some sort. I’m willing to spend about $100 give or take, and I’d like it to have a decent variety and be of relatively good quality (just nothing super cheap). Does anyone have any good recs?

Also: if there are any books you’d recommend, that would be nice too. The $100 is for the perfume kit, so the book would be an added cost in top of that.

Thank you!

There are people interested in purchasing a one-of-a-kind fragrance from me, as they know that this is something I study and am invested in. What do you think I should charge for a custom fragrance? Let’s say there are two price points- one version where they tell me what they like and they receive nothing but the final product, and another version where it’s more hands-on, and the customer can be more specific and receive multiple trials before we agree on something they like.

Hey everyone. I’ve been lurking here for a few months and mixing very basic accords, but I wanted to try something more complex.I recently got my hands on a document named "tuberosys". It’s a formula for a Chypre Floral fragrance, and the structure looked amazing: top notes of Orange Blossom, Bergamot, Tangerine and Petitgrain; heart notes of Tuberose, Jasmine, Sandalwood, Virginian Cedarwood and Rose; and base notes of Oakmoss and Ambrette.

Here is my problem: The full formula has nearly 30 ingredients. My beginner organ is tiny. I don't own things like Zenolide or L-Laurinal.

I spent my entire Sunday trying to use a spreadsheet to re-balance the formula using only the 20 ingredients I actually own. Every time I removed a material, I had to recalculate the percentages for the musks and florals to fill the gaps, and I kept messing up the math. I was getting incredibly frustrated.

I googled around and found a site called dupehacking. I just pasted the original formula in there, checked off the materials I had in my box, and let it auto-scale the batch to 100 parts so I wouldn't have to deal with Excel anymore.

It gave me this adjusted formula. Before I waste my expensive Jasmine Absoluteon a 10ml trial, can you guys tell me if this still makes sense?

formula:
My Adjusted Formula:
Kharismal® (IFF) - 41.60
Ethylene Brassylate - 20.00
Calabrian Bergamot Oil FCF - 6.00
Sicilian Lemon Oil FCF - 5.50
Yellow Mandarin Oil - 5.00
Muscone (Firmenich) - 4.50
Linalyl Acetate - 3.50
Ambrox® Super (Firmenich) - 2.60
Cedarwood Virginia Oil Rect. (Firmenich) - 2.60
Australian Sandalwood Oil - 0.50
Lavandin Grosso Oil - 0.50
Jasmine Absolute - 0.25
Geranyl Acetate - 0.25
Methyl Anthranilate - 0.20
Petitgrain Bigarade Oil - 0.20
Tuberose Absolute 50% - 0.10
Orange Blossom Absolute 50% - 0.10
Ambrette Seed Absolute 50% - 0.10
Evernyl (Givaudan) - 0.05
Dimetol (Givaudan) 10% - 0.03

Will the Kharismal completely overpower everything else since I had to cut so many modifiers? Any advice on how to handle missing ingredients when following professional formulas is super appreciated!

Before the times of spray bottles, when stopper bottles sometimes even had a dauber, you'd often see "pour le mouchoir" on high-concentration perfume/extrait labels. Did they drench the handkerchief with the perfume or just apply a few drops? I'm quite intrigued about this, since many people don't like fragrances on the skin. But all I come across is spray-bottle perfumes for the skin.

I bought a Polysantol, Sandalore, Santaliff (Sandal Butenol), Bacdanol, Ebanol and Javanol. I want to create a milky and light sandalwood, which will be perfect for clean scents.

Hello everyone, I wanted to ask if someone know what material is responsible for this light airy not lipsticky violet note. I’m asking bc I like the powderynes of like Prada lhomme and wanted to get the same effect in my blends but not Shure how to do that. Can someone help me out?

Working in fragrance

Hieveryone! it’s ellie again. i’m 16 years old and i’m totally blind. i’ve been blind since birth, and for the longest time i struggled with figuring out what i wanted to do later in life.

but recently i’ve realized something really important to me: fragrance is what i want to work with.

if you look through my post history, you’ll probably see it pretty quickly 😭 i’m really active in the bath & body works and victoria’s secret community, and i talk about scent a lot because it’s something i genuinely love.

to me, fragrance feels really elevated and personal, especially when people share “scent of the day” posts or layering combos. it’s something i actually understand in a deeper way.

last year i took chemistry, and i honestly found it really interesting. we didn’t really learn about “body chemistry” in the fragrance sense, but i was learning about science at the same time i was getting into perfumes. since i use a screen reader, i started reading the ingredients and notes on bottles, and i kept recognizing words from chemistry class. that part was actually really cool to me because it connected school with something i already loved.

i also really enjoy layering scents. i wasn’t always good at it, but over time i’ve built up a collection of around 100 body mists total. fragrance is something i genuinely wear for myself and not for anyone else.

i do own one perfume, and my mom has a few as well that i sometimes try, but overall i’m really drawn to body mists and everyday scents.

lately i’ve been thinking a lot about what it would look like to do something in fragrance professionally. i don’t really know where to start, and i’m not even sure if my parents would fully understand or support it yet, but i still want to try figuring it out.

sometimes i feel like my taste is “simple” because i love drugstore scents, especially sweet, warm, and comforting ones. but at the same time, those scents are the ones that feel the most meaningful to me.

i’ve also been thinking about creating something one day, like a body mist line or a signature scent inspired by memories and experiences. scents are really tied to memories for me, and i feel like a lot of people relate to that too, especially in different cultures. i love hearing about other people’s favorite smells or traditional treats and wanting to try them too.

i don’t know if this is too big of a dream or if i should start looking into how to actually get help or guidance in fragrance, but i really want to start somewhere. even just learning more about how perfumes are made or how people get into the industry.

i also feel like i’m pretty good at layering scents now, and i just posted a layering post recently, so this is something i’ve been really deep in 😭

if anyone has advice on how to get started in fragrance or who i could reach out to, i would really appreciate it.

Thought this might be a good lighthearted thread. We can all share our silly mistakes without judgement.

Mine: the very first time I mixed, despite having a background in food, I didn’t quite comprehend cross contamination (I know) and used the same pipette that I lightly wiped down in Jasmine Sambac as I had just used in Orange Flower Water.

We listen but we don’t judge…

What size of trial batches do you all usually work in? I’ve got most materials at 10% dilution, a few at 1% and most fixatives at neat. I’ve been messing around with drops of different materials to what works well together but I usually end up with mud after about 8 different materials. My small trial batches are less than 2ml. Is there a better way to go about this? Complete newbie here.

Hi! I’m new to perfumery, but I wanted to get into it to recreate a scent from one of my favorite characters from a c-drama. I’m also currently pursuing a biochemistry degree, and I may be interested in pursuing a career in fragrance chemistry!

This is how the scent I want to duplicate is described:

- orchid (specifically ghost orchid)

- hints of jasmine

- soothing middle notes

- milky

-light and sweet

I’ve been browsing The Good Scents Company and so far I’m thinking that creme fleur (2-[(E)-hex-2-enyl]cyclopentan-1-one) might be a good option, but I’m still unsure about what other compounds I should use and how to get started. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I have started about 2 months ago, after an obscene obsession over controlling what ingredients are used in my perfumes, but there is this weird feeling when I apply my perfumes on my skin, it leaves my skin greasy but not slippery. Surfaces and some clothes over time develop a grease layer which is both disgusting and unattractive.

Currently when I make my perfumes, the ratios are usually:

Essential Oil: 30% ~ 40%

Iso E Super: ~ 2.5%

Hedione: ~ 2.0%

Alcohol 96%: The rest of the way.

Just a little background I haven't started compounding any perfumes yet but have developed a horrible addiction to collecting colognes about 220 bottles now. I watched some videos on YouTube that showed how to make colognes like green Irish tweed which is my favorite and others then I went down another rabbit hole where vendors would compound your colognes for you on the street in Jordan. Do any of you have experience with that?

Hey all,

So I’m learning and evaluating materials in context with each other and wondering about evaporation curves, volatility and projection.

I get these all play a part of more “projection”, and as another user posted asking about how to make the perfumes more “perfumey” as in full, lively and diffusive.

I guess my question is, without learning and reading about molecular bonds and how everything interacts with eachother: does it just click? When you add a few components in the right ratio will it just explode and have a bunch of projection because everything sits in the right place in correlation with each other?

Of course i want to learn about all of this, but that takes time (which i’m okay with, learning is the fun part!). it’s just a question that’s been on my mind, i intend to dive deep into molecules, bonding, ratios, blending and all that good stuff.

Also, is the best way of learning these connections with type formulas? Or simply trial and error.

Thank you in advance.

If the label on the material says "room temperature," will anything happen if I keep it in the fridge? It would be an easy way to save space, since I really don't know where else to put these materials. Would it be okay if I waited about 30 minutes to an hour after taking them out of the fridge before opening them? (I'm not talking about resins or powders.)