creating scentsmaking of

perfume, in a soap

Today’s picture shows you a quick, slightly out of angle shot of the tauerville balance, one of the tools that you end up needing when mixing and creating scents.

“volumes are not additive”, that’s what we were told in our chemistry class, years ago, and it is still true. Basically, it means that mixing 100 ml  of liquid A and 100 ml of a liquid B will not always result in 200 ml of the mixture AB. That’s why you need to mix grams and make weight based dilutions. 100 gram A and 100 gram B will always result in 200 gr. mixture AB.

So we got this new balance, ordered some when in November, and it has been in heavy duty use since it arrived. For the techies: range is 420 gram. And accuracy is plus/mins 1 mgr. I could hook it up to a printer, but won’t do so. I prefer to write my numbers down, on my excel print-outs.

Today, I will mix 10 gram of a mixture consisting of 10 ingredients: A new version of a TUBEROSE SOAP scent. I will use two concrètes that I got a while ago: Rose and Jasmine concrètes. The difference to the tuberose soap scent that I did (one batch) for the holidays is not too big. But I will try to render it a touch more bloomy (flowery), a bit more radiating even, using methyl antranilate, and with Jasmonyl that comes with a special creamy, lactonic, mushroom-like effect. And, as Givaudan nicely says on their website: ”  It enhances and improves the diffusion of most fragrances, particularly in perfumes designed for soap.” So we hope for best….

To be honest: I love coming up with scents for soaps. I find it very rewarding and it comes with an instantaneous gratification. Mostly.

Soaps are difficult, from a commercial point of view:Expensive to ship from Switzerland to abroad. But if my plans to come up with a shipper in the US become reality, I could at least ship in the US and Switzerland.

So you see: I play with my balance and think about soaps. It is a bit a distraction from my shipment worries. It is an anti-deluxe packing for handmade soaps that are very luxuriously scented. Actually, the scent in my soaps is the most expensive part. It’s a perfume, in a soap.