collecting perfumes education FAQ ingredient
22 June 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
A question that often seems to come up is What’s the best way to store my fragrances? So I thought I’d give some advice and the logic behind it here. Open shelves might not be the best choice to store your fragrances Heat and light are the enemies of fragrance longevity, but a bit of temporary […]
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events news
20 June 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Pell Wall Perfumes will be at Fordhall Farm for their Summer Fair on Sunday 24th June. We’ll have some special deals for visitors to our stand and the whole day promises to be a great family day out too. There will be tractor and donkey rides, sack racing, face painting, wildlife activities, pizza making, clay […]
choosing and classifying fragrance education ingredient Making your own perfume natural synthetic
13 June 2012 by Pell Wall | 1 Comment on Books about Perfumes and Perfumery
There are quite a lot of books about on the subject of perfumes, perfumery and the making of perfumes and many of them are not all that helpful, so I’ve tried to gather together here some recommendations for books I’ve found to be particularly helpful or interesting. Some books from the Pell Wall Perfumes bookshelf […]
cocktails Gin and Lime off topic
9 June 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
In honour of World Gin Day 2012 I’ve decided to publish the recipe (formula if you are a perfume person) for a rather wonderful variation of the classic Martini. Here for your delectation is The Hereford The Hereford Martini To make The Hereford you will need: One quarter of a Lime Four Measures of Williams […]
blending dilution DIY FAQ Making your own perfume
7 June 2012 by Pell Wall | 15 Comments on A method for blending
In this post I’m setting out the way in which I go about making a blend – including how to dilute the materials first to facilitate blending. This is because these are two questions I get asked by people starting out in making their own perfumes quite often. First I dilute all my ingredients in […]
education ingredient Making your own perfume
28 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
I thought this video presentation from Yann Vasnier was a fascinating insight into the way one perfumer came to join this odd industry and also gives a very clear idea of what it is to create a new fragrance. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
education ingredient Jacinth Pretty in Pink
27 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
The weather has been glorious for the last few days and the late Spring flowers are busy scenting the garden. But it was this first rose that was the surprise and makes it feel even more like summer has come early to the Pell Wall garden. It won’t be long before I’ll be able to […]
off topic pheasants the Perfumery
15 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
I’m very lucky in my working environment. The perfumery itself has a large patio door overlooking the front garden, which in turn overlooks the quiet lane and fields beyond. Occasionally that results in some interesting visitors and last week as I sat at the Perfumer’s Organ working on a commission for a client, up pops […]
education nature of smell
14 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
This article from Red Orbit discusses some new research that suggests odour detection in the olfactory bulb and brain may work in a different way from that previously thought. From an evolutionary point of view this new theory seems to make good sense – it will be interesting to see whether further research supports it. […]
choosing and classifying fragrance education
10 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
For those interested in wearing and using fragrances, rather than making them, and curious to know more about the industry and how to get the best out of it I would recommend Michael Edwards’ ‘Top 100 Perfume Questions’ as a great place to start. Michael himself is charming as well as highly knowledgeable about all […]
DIY education equipment FAQ Making your own perfume the Perfumery
5 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Perfumery involves the blending of very large numbers of ingredients – a fine fragrance might contain hundreds of individual elements by the time it’s finished. Pell Wall Blending Bench Many amateurs coming to DIY perfumery start by counting drops of oils as they blend and working everything out in terms of the volume of the […]
off topic the Perfumery
3 May 2012 by Pell Wall | 2 Comments on Business Cards by Moo
I thought these new Luxe business cards by Moo were so impressive I had to include a picture in the blog: Each card has a picture of some of my products on the back and my details on the other side, with a clever line of colour visible in the cut edge as well. As […]
DIY education hyacinth ingredient Making your own perfume natural nature of smell Persian Prince Spring Flowers Collection
2 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
What’s actually in the scent of a flower? It’s probably not a question most people ask, but if you’re interested in the answer I’m presenting here a discussion of the components of the scent of hyacinth flowers. Hyacinths in flower in the Pell Wall garden Most of these individual chemicals are available to the perfumer […]
education nature of smell news off topic
1 May 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
This remarkable half hour interview with Nobel Prize winning scientist Richard Axel, starts with a discussion of the nature of smell and wanders on into gene splicing, the discovery of the mechanism by which the AIDS/HIV infection works, touching on the sex-life of snails and opera. Along the way we get a wonderful insight into […]
DIY FAQ ingredient Making your own perfume natural synthetic
1 May 2012 by Pell Wall | 10 Comments on Starter Kit for DIY Perfume Making
One of those questions I get asked quite often by people planning to start making their own perfumes is what to buy to get started. To help answer that I’ve put together some lists of both natural and synthetic materials that I think are good to start with. Pell Wall Perfumes Blending Bench My own […]
Disambiguation DIY education ingredient Making your own perfume natural
28 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Perfumery ingredients often have fascinating names, sometimes confused by different usages and this is a case in point, in this case there are three different ingredients, all fixative base notes, that are easily confused: Benzoin, used alone, or prefixed with Sumatra, usually refers to Styrax benzoin (also called Benzoin resinoid*), whereas Benzoin Siam is usually used to refer to Styrax tonkinensis – […]
DIY IFRA Making your own perfume news
27 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
At the European Parliament Expo on Trade Secrets, earlier this year, IFRA decided to publish a full fragrance formula ‘for the first time’ and copies of the formula and the fragrance made with it were given to politicians as part of a lobbying campaign to raise awareness of the importance of trade secrets to the fragrance industry.That […]
Compliance DIY IFRA Making your own perfume Standards
25 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
IFRA Standards International FRagrance Association I’m always being asked, by people starting out in the make-your-own-perfume business what these are and how they apply to fragrances. Most people not in the industry seem to find the IFRA website a bit difficult to navigate too, so I thought I’d make up a summary list for quick reference. This […]
DIY feedback new products news product St George’s Day
24 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
It’s the day after St George’s Day so I have a year to gather ideas, build a design and make it ready to release a fragrance for St George’s Day 2013. This idea started when a friend of mine bemoaned the fact that St George’s Day isn’t much celebrated and wondered whether corporate sponsorship might […]
Crowdsource daffodil Deep Purple hyacinth news Persian Prince Spring Flowers Collection violet
14 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Pell Wall Perfumes has launched a new collection of three fragrances each based on one of the classic Spring flowers of the English country garden. The Spring Flowers Collection Persian Prince is based on Hyacinth Crowdsource is based on Daffodil and Deep Purple is based on Violet
feedback hyacinth Persian Prince product PWP Product Spring Flowers Collection
9 April 2012 by Pell Wall | 1 Comment on Persian Prince – The Spring Flowers Collection – PWP Product
This is a smooth, subtle interpretation of hyacinth – this naturally rather brash flower is here tamed and made easier to wear – in composing this scent I imagined blue hyacinths though even within one colour of flower the scent varies with the variety grown. I couldn’t get the fragrance to go blue without bunging […]
Deep Purple feedback product PWP Product Spring Flowers Collection violet
9 April 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Deep Purple by Pell Wall One of the great classics of perfumery violet perfumes have been popular since the 17th century for the distinctive, sweet, floral aroma. Violet is combined with other scents in many, many fragrances but here I wanted to allow it to shine alone. You’ll recognise immediately the ‘parma violets’ character of the scent, though […]
Crowdsource daffodil feedback product PWP Product Spring Flowers Collection
I’ve been wanting to capture the scent of daffodils in a fragrance for a while now and the project has proved quite difficult – over a year after I started the research, I’m finally satisfied that I’ve got it right: the key test was when I presented my Mum with a tester of the fragrance […]
events the Perfumery
28 March 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Pell Wall Perfumes will have a stall at the quarterly Farmer’s Market in my local town of Market Drayton again on Sunday. Do come along and visit – quote this blog entry and get a 10% discount – and a free smile! The picture below is from the pre-Christmas market – it was incredibly windy […]