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the world of fine and pure essential oils | |
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Blending of fragrance notes in essential oilsA certain kind of synergy is created when different essential oils are blended together, since you may wish to add some therapeutic properties of one oil to another when putting together a massage oil or creating your own essential oil cream. This is then basically the Gestalt theory at work, where the sums of the individual items are larger than the individuals on their own.
Although you may simply be looking at blending therapeutic oil, the fragrance should still be "balanced" and in harmony and this is where the fragrance notes come into play. On this page: For more on the rate of dilutions to be used when working with essential oils in aromatherapy, please click here. A Frenchman called Piesse classified the odors of essential oils in the 19th century according to musical scales, and this is where the top, middle and base notes originated. As a rule of thumb, the combination between top, middle and base notes should be in harmony and the following formula is normally used. Select oils from all three categories but use less of the top and middle notes than that of the base note. There are some "rules" that people like to mention, and these being that a well-rounded fragrance will normally be composed as follows: Top notes 15 - 25% of the blend. Middle notes 30 - 40% of the blend. Base notes 45 - 55% of the blend. For example - you would use 4 drops of Geranium (middle note) with 3 drops of Eucalyptus (top note) and 5 drops of Ylang Ylang (base note). Even with such "rule of blending" being bandied around, the most important factor to keep in mind is that you, or the person on which the oil blend is going to be used, likes it. If for instance you wish to create a massage oil in the winter, you may want to add peppermint to the blend, but since peppermint is a cooling oil, you would need to balance it with other oils, such as ginger and sandalwood. A good blend is normally compiled by mixing oils from all three classes of oils - that being top notes, middle notes and base notes. It is however very important that you are happy with the aroma and fragrance of the blended oil, since it has to be pleasing to your senses to achieve the maximum effect. The list below is what we have compiled, and may contain errors, since there is much division on the classification of the top, middle and base notes, but we hope that the list below would give a fairly accurate view of the division. Top notes
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