Why do they have such a faint smell?

[DawidTkaczyk]

Hi Please help me with the formula. The concentration of EO/AC in the perfume is 27%, but the smell is very weak on the blotter. This is very surprising to me. Can the strength of the fragrance increase over time? Formula:
Benzyl Salicylate 7.5%
Eugenol 4.7%
Patchouli 11.3%
Lyral 17.1%
Coumarin 2.8%
Hydroxycitronellal 2.8%
Ethyl Maltol 0.4%
Labdanum 0.4%
Benzoin 2.0%
Ethyl Vanillin 4.4%
Hedione 10.9%
Galaxolide 50% 5.4%
Alpha Ionone 0.2%
Bergamot 1.6%
Sweet Orange 1.6%
Grapefruit 1.4%
Linalool 1.0%
Linalyl Acetate 1.0%
Tonalide 1.0%
DPG 3.2%
Help please

 

[Capybaron]

Just an idea- Have you worked a lot with those materials the last few days and smelled them often? Maybe your nose has grown accustomed and blind to those smells and you need to take a break for some days in order to smell them properly again.

Aside from that, it´s difficult for a beginner like me to pinpoint which materials might dampen a blend, since the interplay between materials is complex.
I see that there´s a high concentration of Hedione, though, which smells faint and might dampen the rest of the blend. I know that there persists an attitude of "You can throw Hedione into anything" but i kinda think that this is a trap; It still has to be carefully dosed and considered.

Benzoin is also known for dampening (Although your amount is quite small). And while the opening of patchouli smells intense for me, it quickly tends to quiet down, in my experience, and your perfume is made up of 11% of it. Can´t say anything about lyral, i have never used it, but when a blend smells weak and a particular materials makes up such an huge amount of it, it should be looked at, too.

Just some thoughts.
Might be easier, though, to start over with fewer materials, and adding them one by one.

 

[David Ruskin]

The above suggestion is a possibility. The only other thing I can think of is that you have a huge amount of heavy smelling base notes, a small number of top notes, and nothing to link them together.

 

[mnitabach]

You've got almost no high-impact materials with vivid scent character. The few that you do have are "heavy" (eugenol, maltol, vanillin). How did you come up with this formula?

 

[deroudist]

That amount of Lyral is waaaay to high and is flattening everything. Also as Michael noted, this formula is to base heavy with almost no materials to give lift.

 

[Capybaron]

It´s also worth pointing out that Lyral has been banned in the EU and is heavily restricted by the IFRA in general.

 

[mnitabach]

Another thing is can you please clarify what you mean by "concentration of EO/AC in the perfume is 27%"? If you are saying that you are testing this concentrate diluted to 27% in EtOH, that is probably waaaay too high for a very base-heavy fragrance. Try it at 5% & I bet it performs much better. (This is not to say that you don't also have severe fundamental flaws in the formula itself.)

 

[DawidTkaczyk]

Thank you for your suggestions, I am surprised that after adding top notes - cyrtus and about 5% of formula Hedion, the smell became less perceptible. Hedion is a blender of base and top notes and adds projection, which is why I am surprised - especially since I added citrus to the formula - 3.0% of the formula. By adding Hedion and citrus, the concentration of heavy base notes decreased...

 

[DawidTkaczyk]

Another thing is can you please clarify what you mean by "concentration of EO/AC in the perfume is 27%"? If you are saying that you are testing this concentrate diluted to 27% in EtOH, that is probably waaaay too high for a very base-heavy fragrance. Try it at 5% & I bet it performs much better. (This is not to say that you don't also have severe fundamental flaws in the formula itself.)

Can you specify what fundamental flaws in the formula you are talking about?

 

[DawidTkaczyk]

I will reduce the concentration of the perfume to 10% at the beginning and see what changes Thanks

 

[ourmess]

Can you specify what fundamental flaws in the formula you are talking about?

...

you have a huge amount of heavy smelling base notes, a small number of top notes, and nothing to link them together

You've got almost no high-impact materials with vivid scent character.

That amount of Lyral is waaaay to high and is flattening everything.

this formula is to base heavy with almost no materials to give lift

 

[amateurperfumer]

Not sure what exact type of perfume you're wanting to go after but here are some suggestions

Like other people suggested you have a huge amount of base heavy ingredients and you need to increase the top notes drastically.

It seems you're wanting to use some citrus in your fragrance. So perhaps increase the Bergamot and the Grapefruit to around 20%

It also seems you want som sort of spice due to your use of eugenol. I'd suggest pink pepper (the co2) and perhaps some sichuan pepper oil, ginger fresh oil, or nutmeg oil. You may also add other top notes to modify the initial spray, with perhaps some green or fruity elements.

I also agree that the benzoin is still high at 2% try reducing this by 10 fold, or taking it out completely? I'm not sure what effect you're wanting to achieve from it. The lyral is definitely way too high at 17%. I'd suggest using this at anywhere from 0.1 to 5%. Perhaps in your perfume 2% would be suitable. Patchouli is fine at that level, I'd recommend clearwood rather than patchouli light, if you don't want the off-putting rubbery notes.

Try adding lift to the perfume by including aldehydes such as octanal, Cyclamen aldehyde, rosella, neonatal, octanal. Also try to add musks to add silkiness and further lift. Try using something like ambrettolide at around 2% with another musk such as helveltolide, Habanolide, galaxolide, or exaltolide at around 10%. I would also increase the hedione to 20%.

Try adding other ingredients to give the perfume some character. I can see nootkatone working well here at around 0.1%, or something like Cardamom absolute would work nicely.

You have also added ethyl vanillin but no Vanillin. Do you want your perfume to have a lasting vanilla at the end? If so add Vanillin at around the same level as your ethyl vanillin.

Other suggestions would be add some more florals to reduce the cloyingness of the fragrance. Things such as lilial, florosa, perhaps some floralzozone would be useful.

 

[Italian pigeon musk]

Possibly try adding some ambrox materials and or Iso e super... Along with other previous suggestions.

 

[mnitabach]

Thank you for your suggestions, I am surprised that after adding top notes - cyrtus and about 5% of formula Hedion, the smell became less perceptible. Hedion is a blender of base and top notes and adds projection, which is why I am surprised - especially since I added citrus to the formula - 3.0% of the formula. By adding Hedion and citrus, the concentration of heavy base notes decreased...

This is a gross oversimplification of how hedione can affect a composition. What hedione definitely cannot do is "add projection" to a fundamentally flawed composition. Regarding your citrus top materials, they are present in vastly too small amounts to confer strong top effects.

 

[David Ruskin]

Neither hedione nor cystus are considered top note materials.

 

[DawidTkaczyk]

Neither hedione nor cystus are considered top note materials.

Not sure what exact type of perfume you're wanting to go after but here are some suggestions

Like other people suggested you have a huge amount of base heavy ingredients and you need to increase the top notes drastically.

It seems you're wanting to use some citrus in your fragrance. So perhaps increase the Bergamot and the Grapefruit to around 20%

It also seems you want som sort of spice due to your use of eugenol. I'd suggest pink pepper (the co2) and perhaps some sichuan pepper oil, ginger fresh oil, or nutmeg oil. You may also add other top notes to modify the initial spray, with perhaps some green or fruity elements.

I also agree that the benzoin is still high at 2% try reducing this by 10 fold, or taking it out completely? I'm not sure what effect you're wanting to achieve from it. The lyral is definitely way too high at 17%. I'd suggest using this at anywhere from 0.1 to 5%. Perhaps in your perfume 2% would be suitable. Patchouli is fine at that level, I'd recommend clearwood rather than patchouli light, if you don't want the off-putting rubbery notes.

Try adding lift to the perfume by including aldehydes such as octanal, Cyclamen aldehyde, rosella, neonatal, octanal. Also try to add musks to add silkiness and further lift. Try using something like ambrettolide at around 2% with another musk such as helveltolide, Habanolide, galaxolide, or exaltolide at around 10%. I would also increase the hedione to 20%.

Try adding other ingredients to give the perfume some character. I can see nootkatone working well here at around 0.1%, or something like Cardamom absolute would work nicely.

You have also added ethyl vanillin but no Vanillin. Do you want your perfume to have a lasting vanilla at the end? If so add Vanillin at around the same level as your ethyl vanillin.

Other suggestions would be add some more florals to reduce the cloyingness of the fragrance. Things such as lilial, florosa, perhaps some floralzozone would be useful.

Great, that's the advice I was looking for. I'll try increasing the bergamot to 15% and the grapefruit to 5%. If pink pepper then I think 0.01% should be enough, same with ginger. How much nutmeg would you recommend? As a beginner, I'm afraid of working with aldehydes -I will try cyclamen aldehyde at 0.5-1%? Won't increasing Hedione to 20% cause a knockback effect at the start?
As for the musks, I think the combination of Ambrette seed CO2 0.5% with Velvione 0.5% and Exaltolide 0.5% seems to you at the right levels? If you give me some hints on these issues, you will contribute to a milestone in my progress as a perfumer

 

[DawidTkaczyk]

Neither hedione nor cystus are considered top note materials.

Will bergamot terpens and mandarin terpens help or not?

 

[Capybaron]

Great, that's the advice I was looking for. I'll try increasing the bergamot to 15% and the grapefruit to 5%. If pink pepper then I think 0.01% should be enough, same with ginger. How much nutmeg would you recommend? As a beginner, I'm afraid of working with aldehydes -I will try cyclamen aldehyde at 0.5-1%? Won't increasing Hedione to 20% cause a knockback effect at the start?
As for the musks, I think the combination of Ambrette seed CO2 0.5% with Velvione 0.5% and Exaltolide 0.5% seems to you at the right levels? If you give me some hints on these issues, you will contribute to a milestone in my progress as a perfumer

Likely some of the very experienced perfumers here might have some sage or personal advice, but as another beginner i feel that some of the best, albeit frustrating, advice i´ve encountered in my journey so far is- "it depends" and "try it."

Like- We can´t know whether the levels and % of your materials are too high, or too low, or just right- Because we don´t know what kind of scent you want to achieve.

Also all materials interact in so many different ways, that it becomes really difficult to pinpoint exactly whether one material is dosed too high or too low. For one perfume Ambrette Seed, Velvione and Exaltolide all at 0,5% might be just perfect, in others barely noticeable, in others again far too much.

Try it. Experiment with it. You have received a bunch of advice, some of it will be in the right direction, some of it will not. You´ll have to test and see.

That´s also while beginners like myself should start small and learn our materials instead of blending "wildly".

Whenever i encounter a big problem, like a scent not smelling strong at all, one of the most helpful things i can do is to reduce and simplify it.
Reduce my formula till only a few materials, the essence of what i want the perfume to smell like, remain, get those into a working ratio and then start to add something else.

 

[Nonno]

Hi Please help me with the formula. The concentration of EO/AC in the perfume is 27%, but the smell is very weak on the blotter. This is very surprising to me. Can the strength of the fragrance increase over time? Formula:
Benzyl Salicylate 7.5%
Eugenol 4.7%
Patchouli 11.3%
Lyral 17.1%
Coumarin 2.8%
Hydroxycitronellal 2.8%
Ethyl Maltol 0.4%
Labdanum 0.4%
Benzoin 2.0%
Ethyl Vanillin 4.4%
Hedione 10.9%
Galaxolide 50% 5.4%
Alpha Ionone 0.2%
Bergamot 1.6%
Sweet Orange 1.6%
Grapefruit 1.4%
Linalool 1.0%
Linalyl Acetate 1.0%
Tonalide 1.0%
DPG 3.2%
Help please

Same problem with similar components. I didn't know Hedione can dampen a formula. Any suggestions for top notes to use with woody/resin formulas?

 

[mnitabach]

Whenever i encounter a big problem, like a scent not smelling strong at all, one of the most helpful things i could do was to reduce and simplify it.
Reduce my formula till only a few materials, the essence of what i want the perfume to smell like, remain, get those into a working ratio and then start to add something else.

DING! DING! DING! 😹 😹 😹