Using scents in crafting: Impossible to get right

There are a lot of crafts where you work with scents. Candlemaking and soapmaking come to mind as the main examples of this, but that doesn't stop some people. I have seen scented paper projects (like scented personal stationery), and one company even makes scented yarn.

The tricky thing about scents is getting the balance just right. And unfortunately, there are no good rules for this. It's strictly a matter of trial and error. And I am here to tell you, it's more "error" than anything else. And the errors pretty much have to go straight into the trash.

One problem is that it depends on the scent. Drop for drop, some scents are "louder" than others. I have recently fallen in love with frankincense (which is very hard to find these days by the way) which is a "quiet" scent. It tends to blend into the background.

On the other hand we have cinnamon oil, which is - if you ask me - one of the strongest scents on the market. And people tend to use a pretty free hand with it, too. Even worse, cinnamon is actually painful when it's too strong. (Unlike floral and fruity scents, which are just gross.)

Sure, there are guidelines. This site says you should use one ounce of scent per pound of wax. But I'm here to tell you, an ounce of vanilla is not going to give the same effect as an ounce of cinnamon oil.

And that's assuming that the fragrance oils are the same relative strength and purity. Which I can guarantee you, they very much are not.

I ran into this problem headlong during a soapmaking phase I went through many years ago. Half the soaps I created were virtually unscented. The other half were so overly scented that you couldn't bear to be in the same room with them. Also I added a lot of stuff (like cloves and sprigs of rosemary) which ended up getting moldy inside the bars of soap. Oh man, what a disaster.

I wish I had some parting words of wisdom here. But the only thing I can offer is commiseration, and the reassurance that you are not alone.

Image courtesy Flickr/hans s