Perfume Story

I would like to tell you our perfume story. The Savvy Soap has recently developed a new product line - natural, handmade perfumes! 

The story goes something like this .... somewhere along the line, probably in the middle of the night or while driving to work, or walking the dogs, it occurred to me that I wanted to learn more about making fragrances. And thus the online research began. 

Most of the free online information available about making fragrances was lacking sophistication and true knowledge. 

Hello Amazon, my good and faithful friend. 

Just two books and two weeks later I found information and sources for my perfume supplies and started developing a plan. 

It takes about four weeks for a perfume mixture to "cure", or mellow; for the ingredients to get to know each other and decide if they like each other. 

We started out with six prototypes. Of these we kept three. Our success rate increased. Jim likes almost all of them. I don't care for the bitter notes and just assume toss those but he likes them. 

Smells are really hard to describe. 

Geranium and chamomile smell bitter to me, but they are heavily used floral perfumes. So I compromised and got some Rose Geranium oil and I like it much better. 

There are different ways to categorize aromas. 

Earth ... Woody ... Foodie ... Floral ... Citrus

or, by family:

Citrus ... Floral ... Oriental ... Fougere ... Chypre

And the aromas that make up the aroma families overlap with each other. Very confusing. But necessary when it comes to categorizing and describing the fragrance, especially in an online marketplace where you can't provide a smell strip. 

Most of our perfumes are unisex, because that's just the way it is nowadays. Even the florals - one of my husband's favorites is a floral. It's because the ingredients are so much more complex than what we use in our soaps or lotions. 
Whereas in a lotion or soap we use one to three essential oils or fragrances, in perfumes we use up to ten or twelve aromas including base, middle and top notes, balanced in some form or fashion.

After time, the base notes will be the ones to linger longest.

Top notes waft away quickly, which means using a natural or synthetic fixative comes in handy. 

I love finding a complementary mixture of base, middle, and top notes and tend to really dig the base notes, such as vetiver, patchouli, cedarwood, vanilla ... 

Base notes are so important because they grab on to those lofty top notes (florals and citrus; the ones everyone likes) and help them stick around a little longer. 

Lots of foodies in the middle ... rosemary, thyme ...  as well as exotics like ylang ylang and rose. 

Currently we offer 1/3 ounce bottles, which are super handy for traveling. Just stick in your carry on and no worries about that big bottle of perfume or cologne breaking and spilling all over your luggage when they ever not so gracefully toss or throw your bag onto the conveyor belt at the airport.