And i'm Jeff Standley from Standley Handcrafted. We're going to be teaching
you everything you need to know about fragrance.
Fragrance is fun, it's exciting, and it's experiential.
We have our Fragrance Discovery Kit here from The Wooden Wick Co.
which is a great entry into the world of fragrance.
Jeff tell us a little bit about how you go selecting a fragrance.
Like Charlotte said, fragrances are actually very fun in
an exciting way to kind of really set yourself apart when candle making.
When i start looking for oils i definitely look for unique, some of the
stuff that's not out there and really just go through, and you want
to find a quality oil so it's good to reach out and,
I kind of test different oils. Absolutely, so there's a variety of olfactive
families when it comes to fragrance, from citrus, woody, floral, aquatic
or green, there's a variety of different types of fragrance that you can explore,
so look for a category that you love and if you're building out a whole
collection of candles, it's great to have one or two from each different scent
family to kind of build your line in a fragrance. There are
top, middle, and base notes. So top middle and
base notes are basically the different parts of fragrance notes that you smell
over time. So the top notes are those that you're going to smell
right away. The middle notes you're going to smell next,
and the base notes you're going to smell once the fragrance has fully
settled. To evaluate your fragrance you can use something called a fragrance
blotter strip. A fragrance blotter strip you dip into
your fragrance oil until about half an inch of the tip is
submerged in the oil, and then you're going to wait about 10
to 15 seconds to evaluate it. That's going to give you a nice read on
your fragrance. Additionally, an important piece of
information to know about your fragrance if you're using it
for anything other than candles, is what is on your
IFRA document. Jeff, can you tell us a little bit about what's on an IFRA
document? This is the document that basically
tells you exactly what percentages you need to have as far as candles,
lotion bars, soaps, or anything like that, and there are percentages that
you want to pay attention to because they can really alter
or affect the end product. So with a candle you're typically
looking at 8, 10, 11, 12, 20% depending on what you
do, whereas with like a lotion or soap,
you're much lower - you're like three, four, six percent maybe, depending on the
lotion or something like that. But definitely something you want to pay
attention to and that information will be on that IFRA sheet.
Perfect, so anytime you're working with a fragrance for
products that are going to go on skin, are going to be used in another
application, make sure you get a hold of that IFRA
document - it'll lay out each category and let you know
what's the safety percentage for those. So the next piece of documentation that
you want to have when working with fragrance oils is
something called an msds. the msds is going to have a piece of
information that you definitely want called your flashpoint. So the flashpoint
if you're using any Wooden Wick Co. fragrances,
is listed always on the back of the bottle.
The flash point is going to be the temperature at which your fragrance can
actually combust or catch on fire so you never
want to exceed your fragrance beyond the flash point
in terms of the temperature, and not only just for
safety precautions do you want to be aware of this, but also
your fragrance can actually change its composition
when you heat it beyond the flash point. So never add your fragrance
into a wax that exceeds that fragrance's flash points.
Jeff, tell us a little bit about some of your
favorite types of fragrances - are they florals, are they green, are they woody?
What do you really love? I typically go, like a real base i
like a spice or a cinnamon in anything it's just
one of my favorites. But i tend to go a lot more bright, tropical, fruity -
I definitely like those a lot. I like all scents but definitely a lot more
towards tropical and fruity. Where do you get your inspiration for
fragrance because you're a really creative person.
I know you love to use really unique fragrance oils
to help set your candles apart. How do you decide what resonates
with you or narrow it down to which ones you want to use?
I pretty much just go out there and start trying absolutely everything. If i
see something in a store that i think sounds good, or
just go through all the different oil websites and, like your guys in
particular, just go through and see something that maybe sparks -
like see clove or something like that - and then start looking more for clove
because i like that scent, and that really just start grabbing some
oils and really testing them, and then of course just seeing stuff out there you
can see combinations of stuff that you think you like. Yeah absolutely,
so the Fragrance Discovery Kits are a great way to kind of put into practice
what Jeff is talking about because you can get a fragrance discovery kit,
you can smell a lot of different types of fragrance and just get a baseline
understanding of which types of fragrance you like,
which scent notes maybe work for you, and then from there you'll have a
baseline to put your entire fragrance collection together.
So start out by exploring, start out by having some fun
because there's all sorts of fragrances out there.
Definitely, and it's a place to be really creative with your candle making. It
absolutely is, and it's another way to really extend your knowledge into
candles. And these kits are really great because
you can test a bunch of different ones, and once you start to smell like this
one 10 or 12 in a row, you start to really pick up differences
in some of the oils which kind of makes you a little bit more choosy and
it gives you a lot more knowledge when
you start picking other oils, and you can really learn to pick up different scents.
And like you mentioned, the base notes, which can be a little bit more subtle
sometimes, you'll definitely pick those up in other oils.
Yes so you can really start to train your nose, absolutely.
And as you smell more complex oils that have a wide variety of top, middle and
base notes, you're going to learn, okay this is what
patchouli smells like, this is what sandalwood smells like, and
you'll start to have a bit more of a sophisticated nose
and understand what these different ingredients smell
like. So fragrance is super fun! We encourage you
guys to explore it. If you're using any of the Wooden Wick Co.
waxes we suggest using our fragrance oils
at eight to twelve percent fragrance load, and
in our next video we're going to walk you guys through how to choose the best
candle wax. We'll see you there!