Friday, April 12, 2013

Testing Fragrance 1

Well, I finally got to start my testing for the Bramble Berry Fragrances.

From my last blog you read that for Fragrance #1 I was getting some type of citrus scent.  Nice and light...well, it's obvious that my nose needs to get checked out since I took the fragrances to work with me and everyone was getting "apples"..."crisp apples".  No citrus.

Well...funny thing, when people start hammering things in your head all of the sudden "citrus" turns into "apples".

Now here I am with my mystery fragrance #1, which I am calling "crisp apple" :)...
(I will laugh very hard when this fragrance is revealed and there is NO APPLES attached to it!!!)

I have been brainstorming how I am going to do these test, and then Jenny (from I'd Lather be Soaping ) gave me a great idea.  Show the results of changes in color due to the fragrance.  So I figured I would split the soap in half.  Use the same design and color scheme, but use fragrance in one side and not the other, to compare.  This also allowed me to use 1/2 of the fragrance oil, which was even better since I plan to do something with no colors.

Since I was thinking of "apples" I figured I tried green and red.  Except that I did not have any red, so I went for Ruby Rose Mica.  For the green I used Golden Green Mica. 

I decided soap at a temperature of about 95-100 degrees.  I am happy to report that it did exceptionally well! No acceleration, or ricing what so ever.  I even spent additional time mixing in my micas (at least trying to...turns out I needed to do a better job!), and the mixture behaved really well. 

Now I was not able to create the flowing swirls, since I accidentally stick blended my mixture too much and ended up adding the fragrance almost at medium trace. 

Here are the results:

Now, what I find interesting is that as I was pouring the mix into the mold the portion with the fragrance was a little deeper in color than the side with no fragrance, but once I cut it was the opposite.  The side with the fragrance turned lighter and the other side is a little darker.  I did gel this soap and the fragrance held up pretty well in the process.  It still has the pretty nice, crisp scent.  I used the amount of .8 oz per pound of oils. 

I enjoyed working with this fragrances, and it really does have a very nice crisp scent :)

Here is another pic up close...please ignore the fact that I used too much green mica . I don't think I blended it really well :O!!!



Next up is Fragrance #2...that's another story :o|

Thanks for checking out my blog! 

Happy Soaping!!!
Roxana

7 comments:

  1. Great design and colors! I know exactly what you mean about how those scents will change on you!

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  2. It's really interesting how the colors changed over time. It even looks like the fragranced side was crackling a little bit? I can't wait to hear your feedback on the rest!

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  3. Wow,Roxana, you are a master of swirls, they are so pretty!
    Your experiment is very interesting, can't wait to see your feedback on the other fragrances.

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  4. Gorgeous swirls, Roxana, and I love the colors you chose! I'm glad that you settled on a way to test so that you can do some pretty techniques and still see how the FO affects the color. I had the chance to sample some SOAP FOs last year when Laura was a panelist. It's funny how once you know what a fragrance is supposed to be, that's what it totally smells like. But when you don't know what it's supposed to be, your nose plays tricks on you, and two people can interpret the scents so differently!

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  5. That is very cool, what a great way to test the fragrances! Love the soap too, by the way, such pretty colors! Will they let you know what the fragrances were at some point?

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  6. Great choice of design, I really adore those colors together. I'm so happy that you are having so much fun testing the mystery fragrances. I can't wait to see what you are going to be doing with the next one. =)

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  7. Thanks everyone for all the wonderful comments! I must say that I was a bit nervouse to blog about it. Need to make sure I do a good job!!! :)

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