Teach Soap

Hello everyone. I'm new to M&P soapmaking but I have learned a lot just reading your posts. This has been somewhat covered before, but I am not very good at buying scent on the internet. I only make soap for myself and friends, so cost is an issue. I bought 4 fragrance oils from BB. As it turned out, I didn't really find "it". For example, I thought "Jewelled Citrus" would be a good summer scent. But it is absolutely not me. "Blue Bonnet" is iffy. "Spearmint" was a good choice. I have put new fragrance oils in my basket and then taken them out. Any Advice?

Personally, I've found the descriptions at BB to be spot on ... I've never bought one and though "oh that's not at all what it sounded like".

When I first started I found the samplers to be a great way to get a bunch of scents economically to try out. Plus when you smell them and compare to the written descriptions you can get a better feel for correlations that make sense to you.

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Sweet bathing!
Erin
www.bathcake.com

Ditto on what Erin said - Brambleberry's descriptions of their FOs are pretty accurate. When I first started buying from them, I tried out their FO samplers first then ordered the regular sizes of the scents that I liked. I've typically found that Cybilla's FOs are typically sweeter or more vanilla-heavy than BB's FOs.
Have you also checked out BB's fragrance oil main page? It can be found here - . On this page BB describes how you can request for sniffy samples and they also have a "Frequently asked fragrance oil questions" section which I found helpful especially with those scents I'm not familiar with.
Lauri of sgsoaps suggestion was also pretty good - the scents that you might not care for your friends might like. I live here in Hawaii so I have to be careful of what I order especially with BB's no return policy for FOs and the high cost of shipping.
Good luck and Happy soaping!

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Armi

Thanks everyone. I feel like I am walking in the dark sometime. And I do realize that my favorite could be your "hated it". I notice on some scents there are blend recipes. I wish I saw more of that. That may give me, and others, some ideas of what to do with oils we already own that is not our favorite. Adding another FO may change it to make it something fabulous.

For any of the 'foodie' scents, you can get champagne and turn them into sodas... for instance I made "vanilla soda" by blending the vanilla select with champagne. I've done the same to make chocolate soda. I tried to make a mimosa out of orange EO but I got a little afraid of how much orange I was using (it can be difficult on sensitive skin) so I bailed on that experiment. I would definately try it again if I had an orange or citrus FO though. Oh, a general citrus could probably be blended with it to get "sprite"!

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Sweet bathing!
Erin
www.bathcake.com

Or you could post a list of your FOs here on the forum and ask for suggestions on what to blend them with, just be specific about what you like/dislike about each. If you don't like BB's Jewelled Citrus, what do you like other than their Spearmint? Citrus scents are typically great blenders with other scents, like if you mix it with something vanilla you get a creamsicle-like fragrance, with a fruit FO you get a soda-like fragrance like Erin suggested, or mix it with a floral to cut the sweetness/heaviness of both -- there have been past suggestions here on the forum of holding the cap from each FO next to each other to see if they smell good together or you can stick a cotton swab in each FO (use a new swab for each FO so you don't end up blending your FOs in the bottle!), place in a plastic sandwich bag to let the two scents blend together, wait several hours then smell the resulting blend that way you don't waste time or FOs mixing them without knowing ahead of time if you'll like the blend or not. Anne-Marie and a lot of the moderators here on TeachSoap forum are great resources for stuff like that.
If you contact BB's customer service, they sometimes have these printed flyers for recommended blends with specific FOs too. And Anne-Marie sometimes posts blends on her blog, .
Hope this helps.

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Armi

Hmmm. I never thought of making a cream-soda type scent. That maybe worth a shot. Cutting in a floral I could do now because I have something that may work. Thank you!

[color=indigo]I had a wonderful experience with Brambleberry :
First I read ALL the descriptions and made a comprehensive list of the FO I would like. Keep an open mind, and try to make a diverse picking, for example, I classified them in 5 categories (floral, fruity, delicious, orient-spice, unisex-zen), and ordered around 10 for each category. Make a large enough list, since what one person likes another might find horrid! And we also have to make leeway for scents that sound fabulous but smell awful!!
Then I contacted Brambleberry and talked about the possibility of ordering sample sizes for the FO I had chosen (approx. 50!), and they said YES!!! They sent me pricing for these special sizes, and I received the cutest little bottles which were perfect for trial sampling.
Then I had a smelling party and recorded everyone's opinion on these samples... it was an interesting result. As I mentioned, fragrances which I thought would be great sellers, weren't. [/color]

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Celeste Sahya
The way you approach the issue is the issue!

What a great idea! Any excuse to have a party! and yet a very useful party! Brilliant!

Another little suggestion:
When smelling different fragrances, it is useful to smell coffee grains when changing from one FO to another.
It really helps clear the nostrils of the FO aroma!![/quote]

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Celeste Sahya
The way you approach the issue is the issue!

A Smelling Party. You'all are full of ideas that never crossed my mind.

I have a funny story about coffee!

Once when I was doing a show in Kona, Hawaii ( yes, home of Kona Coffee!) I put a bowl of coffee out so that people could cleans their "sniffers" in between sniffs of my products , and many, many people came straight up to the table and grabbed the coffee and ate it! They thought I was giving free samples of some kind of food!
I can't believe that so many people would stick something in their mouths if they didn't know what it was!

(Now I put a very large label on the bowl.)

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Armi

Armi, you are right. The smelling party sounds fun, but financially not realistic. I just ordered Black Amber & Lavendar, and Vanilla. I am looking forward to receiving them and having fun! I decided I was spending way too much time worrying about making the right decision, so I just took a stab at it. Who knows. Maybe one day I'll actually bring in a little money along the way.