After yesterday’s post on logistics and some differences in shipment, that are not really bothering as there is always a way around and out: Today a short post on raw materials again. And gardenia. And bases built to reproduce a good part of the head space of gardenia. And on how to build a scent out of all of it. Or rather: On the state of work of the gardenia sketches.

The picture of today: It shows you a illustration that I am working on, still unfinished. Missing the interpretation, missing some green areas, but we are working on it. I think I uploaded it a while ago on facebook.

About the fragrance:

It is definitely not easy. While cycling, sweating along the hills of northern Spain, I was from time to time wearing the latest gardenia trial. The regular readers of this blog know that I have built a gardenia base, with my nose stuck to a gardenia pot, blooming regularly. The gardenia still blooms, but it has some bugs (some sort of coccoida, that I try to get rid of with an insecticide that you put into the pot’s earth). So I built the base and it features among other molecules methylbenzoate, tigliates, linalool and salicylates. I also use jasmine absolute and orange blossom absolute in the base to add depth. But bottomline of this gardenia base is: It is a head and heart note base, not a body note base. Meaning: It won’t last forever. Thus, on my skin, at least under heavy duty conditions in Spain, the gardenia effect did not last too long.

Adding more will not make it last longer.

The base notes that I used in the latest trial are sandalwood, some cistus, hints of patchouli and some amber gris. They blend in nicely, but the fixative power is too little and the base is too week. In other trials the base was dominating. Thus, the challenge now, to go from version 5 to 6: Fixation.

Fixation means to make the head and heart notes stay well in a scent, without dominating the entire composition by sticky base notes.

Fixating is not easy. There are glue like molecules, like for instance Okoumal, that might work there. In the end, it might boil down to shifting and adjusting the base notes, without introducing new lines. I will work on it when back from Europe’s north: Today, I will fly to Helsinki, in a scented mission.