DIY Making your own perfume PWP Product
27 October 2024 / 27 October 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Halloween is one of the most magical and atmospheric times of the year. The crisp autumn air, the golden and scarlet leaves, and the darkening evenings all set the stage for Halloween festivities. But there’s one sense that can elevate Halloween from merely spooky to truly enchanting: scent. Scents have a unique way of capturing […]
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ingredient interviews Making your own perfume news Pell Wall in the media the Perfumery
5 January 2016 / 26 April 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Happy New Year! Episode 10 of the WondAroma podcast features the Pell Wall perfumer Chris Bartlett talking to Christine Daley of Perfumer Supply House about: how Pell Wall came about the process of composing a fragrance and a handful of interesting ingredients including Geosmin, Green Tea Givco, Skatole, Theaspirane and Zenolide. The audio quality starts […]
DIY education ingredient Making your own perfume natural
14 March 2015 / 27 July 2023 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Tolu Balsam is a very useful natural fixative as well as a lovely base-note in its own right, but it isn’t the easiest of materials to handle. It comes from the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum. It is used to fix materials such as juniper, petitgrain, spices and florals of many kinds and frequently forms a […]
DIY ingredient Making your own perfume special offers from Pell Wall
12 March 2015 / 26 April 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Clearance Bargain Ingredients – only one of each! From time to time people order perfumery ingredients from me and, either because they say they are in a hurry or just because I’m trying to keep ahead of things, I make up the order before they pay . . . then sometimes they don’t pay, either […]
DIY ingredient Making your own perfume new products news
10 March 2015 / 26 April 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
The March issue of my Ingredients List is now online and the list now features some 300 materials, both natural and synthetic, with some very exciting new additions and a spectacular price reduction on one material thanks to some help from a friend in the US. There are two versions of the list on the […]
Disambiguation DIY education ingredient Making your own perfume Sticky Leather Sky
10 January 2015 / 27 July 2023 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
I thought it might be useful to do another in my occasional series of disambiguation posts about perfumery ingredients with easily confused names or equivalences. This time I’m looking at a group of similar ingredients used to create an earthy, leather note in fragrances: No quinolines in Sticky Leather Sky Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 65442-31-1), of which […]
DIY education Making your own perfume workshops
12 December 2014 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Following on from my post last month, I’m now able to confirm dates and location for the workshops. There are two workshops Introductory and Advanced – there are still places on the Introductory but only one place left on the Advanced: Some ingredients for the Introductory Workshop On Saturday 7th February I’ll be holding a […]
7 December 2014 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Just one place left on this workshop! On Saturday 31st January I’m running another in my series of perfume making workshops, this one is in association with the Perfume Lovers London Meet-up Group and follows on from a talk I’m giving the previous Thursday on the use of incense notes in fragrance: you don’t have […]
DIY education equipment ingredient Making your own perfume Pell Wall in the media
13 August 2014 / 26 April 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
The spread at the beginning of the article as it appeared in print on 3rd August 2014 If you want to make perfume yourself and are looking for help to get you started, this is the place. Here are links to methods, sources of ingredients, recommended equipment and advice: everything I wished I could find […]
education entertainment event Making your own perfume
17 May 2013 by Pell Wall | 3 Comments on Perfume Making Evening in Shropshire
If you are in or near Shropshire in June, how do you fancy an evening of making your own perfume? I’m running a gently educational, but mostly fun evening putting together your own fragrance on Tuesday 11th June from 6pm. At the Craft Café 2, Wellington Road, Newport, Shropshire With the Pell Wall Perfumer Three and a half […]
ambergris animal Disambiguation DIY education Making your own perfume natural synthetic
29 April 2013 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
I’ve written already about natural ambergris (also called Ambra) and mentioned there that most perfumery uses synthetic substitutes. Here I’m setting out some of those substitutes (mainly synthetic, but including some naturals) and trying to sort out some of the confusion resulting from the fact that there are so many different products with very similar names. […]
choosing and classifying fragrance DIY education Making your own perfume PWP Product synthetic
25 March 2013 by Pell Wall | 1 Comment on Introduction to Aroma Chemicals Kits
Aroma-chemicals Blending Kit by Pell Wall I’ve been asked a few times whether I have perfumery materials, especially the synthetics, available in small amounts for amateur perfumers and indeed for perfume collectors who want to learn more about what makes up the notes in their favourite perfumes. I’m often asked what I would recommend for […]
aldehydes Disambiguation DIY ingredient Making your own perfume synthetic
7 February 2013 / 26 April 2024 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
One of the fragrance ingredient groups that many people with a bit of knowledge of fragrance have at least heard of is the Aldehydes. Made famous by their inclusion in Chanel 5 they have been in widespread use in perfumes since the 1920s. When we talk about aldehydes in the context of perfumery what is […]
choosing and classifying fragrance Compliance DIY IFRA ingredient Making your own perfume
1 October 2012 by Pell Wall | 1 Comment on The 26 Ingredients
Whether you look at the labels on fragrances you buy or make fragrances yourself and hope to sell them, an understanding of what is on the label and why can be useful. Below I’m listing a lot of materials that you may see on a label. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because these […]
DIY education equipment FAQ Making your own perfume
1 September 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about what materials I recommend to start with and I’ve also talked about the single largest investment for most starting perfumers, which is good scales. What I have not covered is all the other things you are going to need in order to be able to experiment effectively with […]
animal DIY ingredient Making your own perfume musk natural synthetic
14 August 2012 by Pell Wall | Leave a Comment
Musk is one of the most common elements in perfumes – some form of musk is included in virtually every fragrance on the market, but which form varies a great deal as there are a great many options. At one time, musk came almost exclusively from various species of Musk Deer but this has almost […]
DIY ingredient lilac Making your own perfume natural synthetic
18 July 2012 by Pell Wall | 3 Comments on Bitter Almond Oil
Bitter Almond Oil is one of those curious perfumery ingredients that isn’t at all what it appears to be: it almost certainly won’t have been made from almonds, bitter or otherwise, isn’t bitter and may be natural or synthetic. Bitter Almond Blossom What is called Bitter Almond Oil and was originally and is still occasionally made from bitter almond kernels – Prunus amygdalus Amara […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 – […]
