Before budding perfumers find BaseNotes DIY, they are subjected to the worst kind of "expert" advice on assorted forums and blogs. The more experienced perfumers here have to try to be kind to the unenlightened.
Why would you? Glycerin is a humectant, does your perfume need a humectant? Jojoba oil is essentially liquid wax, why would you want that in your perfume? Sweet Almond Oil is an emollient, is that necessary in your perfume? And why add water? I just never understood that. Why do people add things that clearly aren't necessary? Unless you are trying to develop some type of new-fangled product, don't add these things!
You can add jojoba oil to an ethanol fragrance if you want to achieve
a floating layer / droplets of jojoba on top of your fragrance.
Question why you want the ingredient in there, and find out what
it normally used for that purpose. Don't just add water because
a silly article said to.
In my opinion, this advice requires a bit of comment.
A small proportion of water is useful to soften the top notes and reduce the harsh smell of alcohol in the first whiffs. Around 5% is what most commercial perfumes use, and a good starting point. Some or most of this water can be already present in the alcohol you use. 96% alcohol, usual in some countries, already contains 4% water.
Same goes for other substances, like DPG or IPM. They are commonly used as solvents for many aromachemicals and essential oils, and thus already present in many formulas that use diluted components. In case they aren´t in your formula, you can find that a small proportion of them can round the fragrance and soften their roughest edges. I have never used glycerin; I suspect the effect can be similar in low proportions, and perhaps more suitable to all-natural perfumers.
As for jojoba, fractionated coconut or almond oils, better leave them out of alcohol based fragrances.
I know this isn't the thread topic, but I'm new to perfumery DIY and have made all mistakes that the original threader said not to do lol. Are any of you familiar with how I can get my scent to last longer? It seems that the scents I create only last an hour tops. Is there an aromatic chemical I need to add? Some type of musk? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
The key reason why you don’t want to add any of these things to your fragrance is that they are likely to cause solubility problems, resulting in either cloudy or separated liquid.
Jojoba, sweet almond oil and glycerine are not miscible with ethanol.
Water is completely miscible with ethanol but, unless your fragrance is very low strength or you are using anhydrous ethanol in the first place, adding water is likely to force some of your fragrance materials out of solution, resulting in clouding. Even if your fragrance does not cloud when you make it, it may do so when it reaches a low temperature (such as in the unheated bathroom in Northern Europe in winter).
Cloudy fragrances, particularly those containing a lot of water, are also vulnerable to bacterial growth which can make them hazardous to health unless additional preservatives are used (in general 20% ethanol is considered sufficient to prevent significant bacterial growth in most mixtures).
Sadly the reason we need to say this at all is because there are websites around, purporting to be written by experts that claim, despite our attempts to have them corrected, that any and all of these things are needed to make perfume: they are not.
Apologies if this is off-topic: I've been wondering what preservatives are used in 'water perfumes.' I guess solubility would not be the main priority, since you've already got a cloudy product. Then again, the preservative would have to remain distributed throughout the mixture pretty well if it's going to do its job. Microbes are amazing at finding microniches to inhabit.
When I first started mixing for myself, I used both jojoba and glycerine with the intent of producing more of an oil application than spray. Bad results. Aside from the aforementioned solubility issue, those with jojoba eventually became rancid and those with glycerine felt almost sticky and quite unpleasant. All were tossed.
A lot of those "how to make your own perfume" sites tell you to add some water, shake and then filter the resulting mixture. I wonder what the purpose of that is for??
Why would you? Glycerin is a humectant, does your perfume need a humectant? Jojoba oil is essentially liquid wax, why would you want that in your perfume? Sweet Almond Oil is an emollient, is that necessary in your perfume? And why add water? I just never understood that. Why do people add things that clearly aren't necessary? Unless you are trying to develop some type of new-fangled product, don't add these things!
Beginners don't know what's necessary in their perfume. Why add things that clearly aren't necessary? Because these things might be clear to you, but to a beginner who is trying to get started, online tutorials are about all they have to go off of and if those say "add 5ml glycerin" they're going to because they don't know any better yet.
That's why I'm really glad to see so many of these important topics as stickies here! All of basenotes in general is pretty amazing in my opinion.
Read, read and read. Then just have some fun. The stickies will tell you just about everything to begin with. Make some 'mud' and then you will be fired with some questions. Add your country on your profile so the flag appears and then we know where to direct you to for max help and supplies.
