Monday, October 5, 2009

Synthetic aromachemicals

Spent a happy hour and a half or so this afternoon diluting powdered chemicals so that I can use them later. Most of them are vanilla-esque because, shhh, I am trying to create a lush vanilla fragrance for Mom for Christmas.

Heavenly. I suppose I should have worn a face mask, especially for mildly toxic Coumarin, but I would have missed out on the love.

Vanillin - pure, sweet, piercing vanilla without its woody/boozy aspects. Ethyl vanillin is the same with additional depth, according to Pat -- I was nasally stunned by the time I got to it and could not detect much difference. Coumarin - like tonka beans, rich and sweet, somehow creamy-dreamy. Heliotropin - I know a lot of people hate this vanilla/almond/cherry pie aroma, but I think it's beautiful. Ethyl Maltol - perfumistas almost universally revile its cotton-candy sweetness, but it is precisely its beauty that gets it included in every juvenile-market and celebrity vanity scent out there... it's an olfactory trip to the ice-cream shop, surrounded by heady heaven. And Cetalox... look, it's not a foody vanilla scent like the others, it's an unabashedly synthetic cedar/violet/plum scent that is ravishingly pretty and I am thinking very versatile.

I have a number of liquid aromachemicals too from this order... those were just the powders that required muscling into an alcohol dilution this afternoon.

I am on a vanilla scented cotton candy cloud. Don't be hating -- you know you're jealous.

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