I got a wonderful sample of bay leaves essential oil and enjoyed playing with it and other raw materials on my desk. Nothing serious, though.

Just a playing round, and do not expect any launch soon. But it was time to start playing again. The bay leave oil, by the way, has like two sides. Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. First it is incredibly campherous, think “Vaporup ” or Eucalyptus. The certificate of analysis says so, too. A lot of cineol, also known as Eucalyptol is in there and  later in phase two, the eugenol comes out, and it smells lovely of dried clove buds with a woody undertone. All raw materials that I use come with a certificate of analysis of my supplier(s). Usually, I buy my raw materials from Essencia, a company serving Switzerland (only). These certificates are important to check for allergens, for Ifra limits and of course! in order to make sure that the raw materials are not adulterated or simply diluted.

An example: Rose absolute contains naturally about 50-70% phenylethanol, a cheap molecule if you buy it from Sigma Aldrich Fluka. Thus, you better check your phenylethanol in rose absolute and make sure that the Bulgarian quality does not exceed 70% phenylethanol, otherwise, you pay a lot for nothing. Thus, iIf you buy your botanicals (from any supplier) always ask for a certificate with at least a few quality determining data, a GC etc. if your supplier cannot provide you that then something might be wrong.

Vaporup is not an ideal note for a fragrance, though, and -if ever using bay leaves oil – it would need a careful hand and quite some camouflaging of phase 1. But then, it might be a nice note for a masculine eau de toilette fougère … And camouflaging is half the rent in perfumery anyhow.

Other playing activities this weekend: all ipad related, much fun!

And looking out into this coming week, I see these highlights:  Besides my “usual” bottle filling (Orange Star), we are supposed to get a new delivery of flacons (the red-brown 30 ml sized Homage line flacon, and more of the blue flacons). And we are in waiting position for all the Tableau de Parfums labels and stickers: I managed to finish them all and send the order out and now we wait. And we are not good in waiting. And yes, Milano’s calling for a quick meeting. It looks like a good week ahead.