Scents That Go Well With Everything

(In Most People’s Opinion)

FLORAL: Freesia, Juniper

FRUITY: Coconut, Naked, Vanilla

HERBY: Basil

LEAFY: Cucumber, Hawaiian Rain, Heliotrope, Waterlily

SPICY: Brown Sugar

WOODSY: China Musk, Egyptian Musk, Sandalwood


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Don’t Even Think About Ratios

A lot of people ask how to know what ratios to use in their scent.

“How did you know to use 10 drops of Coconut and only 4 drops of Cinnamon?”

The answer is, I didn’t know.

I didn’t even think about it, and neither should you.

When creating a scent, just go with what smells good. Add a drop of Coconut and smell. Not enough Coconut? Add another drop and smell. Still not enough? Keep adding until it’s just right.

Make sure you add a hash mark to your "My Scent In Progress" sheet after adding each drop to your glass, but otherwise, don’t even think about your ratios until your fragrance is just how you want it to be.

At the very end, look at your ratio. If it ends up being a one to one ratio for each ingredient, so what? You love your scent.

If it ends up being two ingredients with a 10 to 1 ratio, so what? You love your scent.

Once I had a woman create the perfume of her dreams and it had only two perfume oils in it. The ratio was 136 drops of one oil to 14 of the other. Another time a woman used two oils, with a 1 to 1 ratio.

Both times, they were thrilled. Their recipes were perfect in their eyes and that’s all that matters.

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Making Legal “U-Turns”

So you’re creating a new fragrance and it’s coming along great. You decide Mandarin would compliment your scent nicely as a light accent. So you add just one tiny little drop of Mandarin, smell it, and whoa!

That’s no accent, it completely took over your fragrance!

You may think the only solution is to rinse out your mixing glass and start over (and don’t even dream of adding any Mandarin this time). But go back to the reason you thought to add Mandarin in the first place – because you felt it would be a great addition to your scent.

Well, it still can be, you just need to make a “U-Turn” and back out some of that Mandarin. You can fix your scent so it’s as if you had only added a half-drop, or even a quarter-drop of that Mandarin. This works even with the most strong and powerful scents.

Always try solution 1 (below) first. If that doesn’t work, move to solution 2.

Solution #1:
The first thing to do after adding a drop that ends up too strong or just “not right” is to take a disposable dropper and mix your perfume oils right in the mixing glass. The best way to do this is to “suck up” and “squirt out” your oils several times.

Sometimes the most recent perfume oil you added to your mixing glass is sitting on top of the rest of the perfume oils (similar to how salad dressing separates and all the oil sinks to the bottom). Try this first and smell again.

A lot of times the new scent added isn’t overpowering, it’s just the only scent you can smell because it’s sitting on top of the other scents and cloaking them. Mixing your blend before smelling it will give you a more accurate representation of the fragrance. If doing this doesn’t work, and your new addition is still overpowering, move to option 2.

Solution #2:
Turn to your My Scent In Progress sheet to take note of everything you have in your mixing glass. Now add everything – your entire recipe thus far – into your mixing glass again, only leaving out the latest scent that is overpowering (Mandarin in the above example).

For example, if your My Scent In Progress sheet says you have the following:

3 Brown Sugar
1 Fig
2 Vanilla
1 Mandarin (most recently added, and way too strong)

You will add everything in again so at the end, your My Scent In Progress sheet will say the following:

6 Brown Sugar
2 Fig
4 Vanilla
1 Mandarin (because you didn’t add in extra Mandarin)

Now mix your oils together as in solution 1 above, and smell it.

What you have just done is cut your Mandarin ratio in half. It’s as if you only added 1/2 drop of Mandarin before. Mandarin will now have half the bearing on your fragrance as it did before.

If Mandarin is still too strong at this point, add the whole recipe back in again and it will smell as if you added 1/4 drop of Mandarin.

Just make sure you update your My Scent In Progress sheet with the new doubled numbers. Your My Scent In Progress sheet should always represent exactly the number of drops that are in your mixing glass.

If solution 2 doesn’t work, it probably means Mandarin wasn’t a good choice for your blend. With practice, you’ll become very familiar with mixing fragrances and you may decide in some cases that Mandarin (or the particular scent at hand) is a “no-go” and it’s not even worth it to try solution 2. You’ll get a knack for this in time.

How do you know when it's time to start all over?
When your fragrance smells like something from the janitor’s closet. Bug spray. Turpentine. This is when to realize there’s no turning back. Try your scent again without the Mandarin. (And let it be known that I have nothing against Mandarin. In fact, I love Mandarin! I just needed an example.)

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What To Do If…

You love your blend but it’s just not right. Maybe it has too much of a citrus edge. Or it’s too sweet. Too frilly. Too… whatever. Here are some tips on how to fix this before dumping your creation.

Citrus Edge
If your fragrance is so full of citrus and fruit it almost smells over-ripe, cut out that edge with Egyptian Musk or Sandalwood. This will fix the problem and you probably won’t even be able to smell much Egyptian Musk or Sandalwood (depending on how much you choose to add). Add one drop and smell. Keep adding one drop at a time until your fragrance is just ripe enough for you.

Too Sweet
We love those sweet flowers and fruits like Violet, Freesia, Green Apple, Guava Fruit, and Honeydew Melon. But put them all together and sometimes they’re tooooo sweet! You have several options for resolving this. Egyptian Musk and/or Sandalwood will pull some of the sweetness out without affecting your overall fragrance much at all. There are other options that will pull sweetness out but also change your fragrance quite a bit at the same time. If you feel any of these will change your particular fragrance for the good, try them out: Vanilla, Chamomile, Hawaiian Rain, Asian Spice, Bergamot, Fig, China Musk, Myrrh, Oakmoss.

Too Powdery
Citrus scents do the best job of combating too much powder in a scent. Here they are: Lemon, Grapefruit, Lime, Mandarin, Basil, Verbena, Bergamot. Although not citrus scents, the following will also help if your nose thinks they will be good additions to your blend: Juniper, Green Apple, Guava Fruit, Pear, White Tea, Cedarwood, Pine.

Too Musky
Is this possible? A fragrance can be too musky? If you say so! Simply add more of the other non-musk scents you already have in the blend. Add them slowly so you can stop when it’s just right.

Too Dark and Spicy
Mixing some of our darkest, deepest scents with Florals, Fruities, and Leafies can create some very beautiful fragrance blends. But when that darkness takes over, the easiest way to combat it is with more of the other non-spicy scents you already have in the blend. If that’s not what you’re looking for, Egyptian Musk and/or Sandalwood can help bring up some of that heavy darkness without dramatically changing the other great scents in your blend.


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The Mediator Scents

So, you love Allspice and you love Pear, but when you put the two together, they don’t mesh so well. It’s like they’re fighting with each other. A lot of times, they just need a mediator to help work things out. A third scent, if it’s the right scent, can close the gap between the two scents you’re trying to blend. It can act as a common ground and really blend two very different scents together nicely.

Usually a “Mediator” is needed because a fragrance has all top and bottom notes, but no middle notes. In other words, your scent probably only has a mixture of really light, delicate scents and really heavy, deep scents. It needs something “in the middle” to balance it. Here is a list of scents that act as great intermediaries – bringing two together without affecting the overall fragrance too much.

FIRST: Only add a Mediator if you:

• Like the scent you’re adding
  

• Feel it will go well with the other two scents already in your mixing glass
  

• Take into consideration how much the middle note you’re adding will affect the overall fragrance (ie, adding one drop of Egyptian Musk may affect it much less than adding one drop of Pomegranate).

FLORAL: Gardenia, Geranium, Jasmine, Lilac, Linden Blossom, Mimosa, Rose, Wisteria

FRUITY: Guava Fruit, Naked, Pomegranate, Raspberry, Strawberry

HERBY: Almond, Chamomile, Lavender

LEAFY: Green Tea, Hawaiian Rain, Heliotrope, Verbena, Waterlily, White Tea

SPICY: Asian Spice, Brown Sugar, Maple Spice

WOODSY: China Musk, Egyptian Musk, Myrrh, Sandalwood, White Musk


Not to influence your artistic creativity, but you can put it on record that McKenna’s personal “default” Mediators are Egyptian Musk and Sandalwood (with the other two Musks tying for second). Karlene's default mediator is Coconut. The reason is that these scents will help balance almost any scent combination you have in your mixing glass, whereas some of the others listed might not work in every situation.


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Want More of This in Your Blend?

You know you want your scent to be more romantic (or fresh, or sweet, or clean, or flirty), but aren’t quite sure what to add to accomplish this. Here is a family color-coded key to get you going. Want to make a powdery scent? Try adding Gardenia, Chamomile, Heliotrope, or White Musk.

(Click images to view at larger size or to print.)



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The Nose Knows

We're not saying the Top/Middle/Base Note Method of creating a fragrance blend is invalid or even outdated. It’s a great method to use. It’s just that most of the time, you will “accidentally” use this method and create fragrances that have appropriate ratios of top, heart (middle), and base (bottom) notes, without even knowing the concept exists. This is because scents including top, middle and base notes simply smell “complete,” whereas you may feel a scent is missing something if it doesn’t have notes from all three categories.

You are free to intentionally use this method, but you’ll probably find you love your other fragrance recipes just as well… and that you’re able to make great recipes faster when you’re not thinking too much about top/middle/base notes.

Rather than listing every single-note scent sorted by top notes and base notes, I’ll let your nose tell you:

• If a scent smells light and airy, and evaporates within an hour on your skin, it is a top note.

• If a scent smells deep and hearty, and lasts all day on your skin, it is a base note.

• Everything in between can be used as a heart, or middle note.

• The lines are slightly blurry between top, middle, and bottom notes. For instance our Maple Spice would be considered somewhere between a middle and bottom note. Sandalwood would be considered somewhere between a top and middle note. But Green Apple is definitely a top note, Wisteria is definitely a middle note, and Chocolate is definitely a bottom note.

The most important thing to remember though, is that fragrance making is an art. Art requires creativity. And creativity means there are no rules (except that you must write a hash mark to your sheet after adding every single drop!).

Some popular fragrances contain little to no base notes (Escada’s Ibiza Hippie) while some are extremely heavy in base notes with few top notes (YSL’s Opium).

Bottom line: your nose knows what it loves. All you really need to know are a few tips on what different perfume oils can accomplish, and how to get yourself out of a bind if your fragrance isn’t turning out just how you imagined.


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The UB Method

If a good perfume can only be developed by elite perfumers with exclusive trade secrets and years of practice, how is something like Urban Botanic even possible? A couple of reasons:

First, a typical perfumer has so much to think about when creating a fragrance. For them, it’s not only about which scents will go well together, but also the reaction of each chemical involved. With Urban Botanic, all of this is done for you. The products start out naturally balanced. All you need to worry about is what your favorite scents are and what you want to blend them with.

Second, in the case of a typical perfumer, the fragrance must sit for at least week, sometimes several weeks, in between each note or chemical being added in order to fully “blend”. This means it can take months or years before a fragrance blend is complete. At Urban Botanic, we designed our perfume oils to blend with each other instantly. You will know what your fragrance will smell like almost immediately upon mixing perfume oils together in your mixing glass, and that fragrance will stay constant.

Third, perfumers have the challenge of creating a fragrance for the mass market. Their fragrance must have extremely broad appeal in order to sell. You already know the reason UB is different in this area. You and your customers make fragrances for yourselves. You’re even pretty safe creating gifts for others. No market research needed!

Because of Urban Botanic’s patent-pending process, now anyone can be the fragrance designer, and yes, anyone can create a fragrance as complex, as sophisticated, as eloquent and beautiful as any other perfumer can. Even better, the scent you and your customers create for yourselves will be much more appealing to you than a fragrance another perfume designer created for the mass market. Your customers can only come to you for this. No one else has this patent-pending method. No one else can help your customers so easily create a scent they love. Only Urban Botanic allows the customer to be the one creating the signature fragrance.



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Perfumery’s History and the Top/Middle/Base Note Method

For a hundred years, the art of perfume has been compared to music, with different notes all combining to create a harmony. In this theory, perfumes are composed of three types of notes: top notes, middle notes, and base notes. The top notes are the most volatile and evaporate the fastest. Middle notes, which would compare the heart of a musical chord are the “main attraction” in the fragrance blend. Base notes are the deepest and are the last thing you can smell after the rest of the fragrance has evaporated or died down. Each of the notes creates is its own scent, yet blends with the others to create much more than a smell. It creates an emotion. A story. And with Urban Botanic, a direct reflection of your personality.

In order to better understand the comparison of fragrance and music, think of your most simple fragrance, made from only one or two perfume oils. Compare this to a one-handed piano solo. Now add a few more perfume oils to the creation and it becomes a full orchestra. Both are equally as beautiful, for different reasons.

In music and in fragrance, you don’t want any one note to overpower. You wouldn’t be pleased with a scent that screams “LIME!” too loudly just as you wouldn’t be pleased to hear an unruly tuba belt out above the rest of the symphony. Harmony is key, and before Urban Botanic, harmony in fragrance was only achieved by elite perfumers with exclusive trade secrets and years of practice.


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Scent Blending Tips

Each time you add a drop to your mixing glass, go through the following process to ensure your scent doesn't change to quickly as you create it:

Smell your creation and ask yourself a series of questions to help you determine what to do next.

• Do you like it?


• Is one scent overpowering the overall blend?


• Is cone scent acting as a nice compliment, but you'd like it to come through a little stronger?


• Do you want your scent to be more sweet? More dark and heavy?

If one scent is overpowering the other scent(s), in your Mixing Glass, add one more drop of the other scent(s) already in your glass. Then smell again. Continue doing this until the over-powering scent is at the strength you prefer.

If you'd like a scent to come through a little stronger, add another drop. Just add one drop at a time. UB perfume oils are highly concentrated and not diluted so your fragrance creation can change rather quickly!

If you want your scent to be more sweet, smell all the scents in your UB collection and choose one that you feel is sweet, and that will also go well in your blend. Try adding one drop to see how you like it. You can keep adding more drops of this scent until your fragrance is the desired sweetness...just remember, do it one drop at a time! This technique works with anything you want your scent to be—sweet, deep, flirty, romantic, sporty...

Swirl your mixing glass around before smelling. This helps mix the oils and gives you a more accurate representation of your recipe.

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