The ABCs of Essential Oils: Coffee

C:

Coffee (Coffea arabica L.)

There are so many good essential oils that begin with C, it's hard to choose just one. Cinnamon, cardamom, and clove are wonderful spice notes. Cedarwood, be it Virginian, Atlas, or Himalayan, is a great addition to any perfumer's tool box. And then there are cocoa absolute, cypress, and clary sage (or would that be under S, for sage, clary?). I would recommend most of these to a beginning perfumer over coffee.

So why coffee?

Because it demonstrates the importance of sampling oils.

Chances are you know the scent of coffee, whether you like to drink it or not. And many people who don't like to drink it do like the scent. For me, coffee has many positive associations and memories. Getting my first coffee in high school (and by coffee I mean something with a bit of coffee and a lot of calories) and going to Starbucks somewhat regularly by the time I graduated. In college I spent some time volunteering at a late night coffee bar, where I learned to make a few drinks. On my honeymoon, my husband and I visited Seattle and tried coffee from as many places as we could. I eventually learned to drink my coffee black, and now I enjoy all its subtle nuances. And trying all the fussy coffee machines at my previous job, and learning which floors had better coffee.

The day before my wedding I got coffee with my friends. Coffee=Happy Memories

The problem with coffee essential oil? It's often pretty lousy. Essential oils often don't smell exactly like plant, but the problem with coffee EO is that it smells kind of like coffee, just not coffee that you'd want to drink. Sometimes I'll see it sold as coffee oil, a fixed (or carrier) oil pressed from green or roasted coffee beans.  Fortunately, coffee is also available as an absolute and CO2 extract, which gives you more options.

While I recommend sampling before buying large amounts of any essential oil, sometimes the difference in cost between a sample and an ounce is small, it seems worth it to buy the larger size. But with coffee, it is important to sample, because having a bottle of unusable essential oil is sad. Try purchasing samples of each type (essential oil, CO2, absolute) so you can compare how they smell. Buy the one you like best, or that best suits your needs.

What do you do with coffee? It's great in bath and body products, including lip balms. Add it to a soap or body scrub with some coffee grounds. It's easy to blend it with other foody scents, but experiment with other essential oils as well. Before mixing it in the bottle with something unusual, take a blotter with your coffee and one with the other scent and smell them together. Some oils are stronger than others, so build up the notes slowly. In perfumery you can use small amounts to modify the perfume without creating a coffee fragrance. A drop of coffee can dirty up a blend and add some interest to an otherwise bland floral.

And if you do end up with a bad coffee oil? Mix it with a few other essential oils and make a big batch of soap.

Previously:
Bergamot
Anise

The Lab # 5 Lavender

This started out as an idea for a lip balm flavor- lavender, anise, and vanilla. When I did my flavor tester (I made a zillion of those), I wasn't impressed. I took the scent blend and put it in some soap, which was rather lovely. It did make the soap turn dark due to the vanilla in it, so it wasn't the prettiest soap, but it did smell nice.

This scent is an expansion of that idea- vanilla at the base, lavender at the middle and top (lavender absolute and essential oil), and anise at the top. Vetiver, patchouli, and clary sage bring some earthiness to it, and black pepper spices up the top. I also added some yuzu absolute to brighten it up- that stuff is hard to find and rather pricy for a citrus note, so once this fragrance is sold out, there will be no more of it. Perhaps a slightly different version, but unless I can get my hands on some more yuzu absolute, I won't be able to make any more.

The Lab #5 Lavender is available at Ivre de Fleurs and Etsy for $15.

4 Day Bath & Body Boot Camp at The Nova Studio

I attended the 4 Day Bath & Body Boot Camp at The Nova Studio back in October 2010, and this week I'm returning to volunteer as a teacher's assistant for the perfumes portion of the camp. It looks like it's changed a little, since they're now teaching lip tints and gloss, but for the most part the same classes are offered. You don't learn to make soap, but you learn to make a wide variety of bath and body products, plus information on packaging.

You can take individual days if you're not interested in everything, but if you're traveling, it's a great way to learn about a lot of products in a short time. Some are pretty easy, and you can probably make as soon as you return home, like bath salts and salt scrubs. Lotions are a little more complicated, but seeing them go through it step by step will hopefully give you the confidence to try it on your own.

I had shied away from making perfumes after first taking the class- many of the essential oils cost a lot, including those wonderful floral middle notes. When they needed a teacher's assistant for the class about a year later, I agreed to do it, since it is a fun class. After that, I pursued perfume whole-heartedly, first with Mandy Aftel's workbook, and then attending her classes. I recently took my fourth class with her, and I now have a Level 3 certificate- I was really excited to receive it. I'm working my way through her second set of workbooks now- quite the undertaking I must add.

The perfumes class at The Nova Studio introduces you to several top, middle, and base notes, and you walk away with three new perfumes. The stand alone class is a bit different now, but in the bootcamp you make one each of oil-based, alcohol-based, and solid perfumes. The perfumes class this Thursday can be taken alone, or as part of the boot camp. It's a great class for anyone interested in learning to make natural perfumes, or for aromatherapists who want to make their blends smell nicer. If you're creating naturally scented products, you can also apply your perfumery knowledge to creating unique scents for your products.

Patchwork Show this Sunday!

As stated on here and a few other places, I will be selling at the Patchwork Show in Oakland this Sunday! I will have all of the products featured on my website and my Etsy store. We have six flavors of lip balms, including the Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balm featured in Conscious Box this month. Our five floral balms will also be available, along with our foot balm.

We are also launching three new products at this show! These will be available online once the show is over.

New Products:
Pumpkin Seed & Cocoa Body Butter- Limited run for November, this is a decadent body butter that is solid in the tin, but melts easily in your hands. While it is made only from oils and butters, it doesn't leave you feeling greasy.

Hair Oils- We have four scents- Lavender Herbal, Geranium Floral, Soft Woods, and Ylang Ylang & Sandalwood. Containing argan oil, camellia seed oil, and shea oil, these oils nurture you hair without the use of any silicones.

Everywhere Oils- Available in Rose Otto, Lavender, and Ylang Ylang. The oils are lightweight, and can be used on your face, hair, or body. The primary oil used in these is camellia seed, a rejuvenating oil filled with antioxidants.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Conscious Box Giveaway!

Last month I made 5000 Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balms to be distributed in November's Vegan Conscious Box. It was a lot of work, especially since I had only made 50 lip balms at a time in the past. But now the boxes are being mailed out, and we're giving away three boxes, so you can win a box with the Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balm along with other eco-friendly samples.

Our Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balm is a sophisticated take on orange, and features the same premium oils  as our other lip balms. It uses the essential oils of blood orange and juniper berry for its flavor.

Want to buy the lip balm? For November, Ivre de Fleurs is offering the lip for $7.50, 25% off the normal price of $10. We offer this along with our other lip balms in our new shop- checkout the Ivre de Fleurs Website to buy directly from us.

Want to try Conscious Box? For 25% off your first month, go to Conscious Box and order your first box. You can choose between the classic box, vegan box, or gluten free box

a Rafflecopter giveaway

New Products, New Stores

I have two new lip products that will be available for soon- a moisturizing lip gel and a lip butter.

There's very little wax to the lip gel, so it has a soft texture and no waxy feel to it. It comes in a little pot with a silver lid. It uses sunflower wax, meadowfoam seed oil, castor oil, and extracts of evening primrose and orchid. I flavored it with fresh ginger and ylang ylang essential oils, giving it a spicy and exotic flavor.

The lip butter uses rice bran wax and mango butter, but otherwise uses the same extracts and oils as the lip gel. This one is flavored with rose geranium. It's softer than a normal lip balm, but not as soft as the lip gel- basically a nice middle ground between the two. It comes in little pots as well.

Unfortunately, the lip butter pots were overfilled, so all the tops got squished down once the lids were put on them. This brings me to the new stores part- I will be opening a seconds shop on Storenvy this weekend, where I will be selling products with packaging issues at reduced prices. I will be selling the Rose Geranium Lip Butters there. While the lip butters themselves are great, I'm not satisfied with the way the tops look after I put the lids on them.

I will have several Mocha and Lemon Cream Lip Balms for sale on Storenvy, since the original packaging doesn't really work- the labels on the boxes don't stay down, so they don't look that nice. There will be one Rose Otto Lip Balm available, since the box on that one has a small scratch, and one Jasmine Balm where there's a small dent on the lid.

I will also have products for sale on my website soon, as opposed to buying through Etsy. I will still have some products on Etsy, just not as many. Once my new website is up, I will be introducing two new promotions- one product will be sold for a reduced price, and a monthly limited edition product.

For the month of November I will have Blood Orange & Juniper Lip Balms on sale for $7.50- it's a new lip balm flavor, a sophisticated orange. The limited edition product will be pumpkin seed body butter. It won't smell like pumpkin, because there is no pumpkin essential oil, but it will have pumpkin seed oil and extracts, providing your skin with a plant based Omega-3 boost.

San Francisco Bazaar Holiday Show

It feels like I haven't written in so long, but there's so much that's been going on! Part of it is a secret for now- I'll write about it in a week or two, once everything is set. For those who know- shhhh.

One of the big things for me is that I got accepted to my first craft show- I will be at San Francisco Bazaar Holiday Show, Dec 7-8, at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco. I went there last year and bought almost all of my Christmas presents. It's a really great show, and I'm thrilled that my application was accepted.

I plan to have several lip balm flavors available, body balms and butters, and some hair oils (possibly face and body, too), and hopefully some solid perfumes. It's going to be a lot of work for the next few months, but I'm looking forward to it.

Favorite Essential Oils

While I love buying a wide variety of crazy essential oils, there are some I really love, and wish to add to everything. Below are a few of the ones I turn to the most.

Top Notes:
Yellow Mandarin: This is a softer, slightly floral citrus. It blends beautifully with many other essential oils. A lot of citrus oils have scents that are kind of obvious- orange, lemon, and lime, for example. There are many varieties of orange, and I love playing with those, too. But yellow mandarin is my go to for a citrus top note.

Cinnamon CO2: I keep wanting to add this to a lip balm. It smells so fresh and sweet- exactly the kind of cinnamon I want. A lot of cinnamon essential oils don't smell that great to me, but this one I could sniff all day. Unfortunately, it's very strong, so adding even a little to lip balms might result in stinging lips. I'm still experimenting though, and hoping to find a level that will give a nice cinnamon scent without the ouch factor.

Cardamom CO2: I added a little of this to my Wild Orange & Lavender Lip Balm, which adds a subtle twist to the flavor. I love cardamom, and it's one of my favorite spices for cooking and baking. I also have some rare cardamom absolute, but that's a little pricy to be throwing around everywhere. Cardamom essential oil is nice as well, but the CO2 has a cleaner scent.

Pink Peppercorn: My favorite pepper. I also have white and black pepper, but use them less. The white pepper isn't exciting enough, and the black pepper can be a little harsh. It adds a little excitement to blends without overwhelming them.

Middle Notes:
Orange Blossom Organic Extract: Different than orange blossom absolute, which can be heavy and sometimes a little too dirty. It's not the same as neroli either, though probably closer to a neroli scent than an orange blossom absolute scent. The scent is light but not weak, and is a great addition to any orange blossom collection.

Moroccan Rose Absolute: There are so many roses, and so many extractions for them. While I don't have the money to try them all, Moroccan rose is so far my favorite absolute. I use a Turkish rose otto for lip balms and skin care. It has a nice odor profile, and while still expensive, it is cheaper than Bulgarian rose otto. I have also tried a rose otto from Moldova.While significantly cheaper than even the Turkish otto,  I was not impressed with that one.

Jasmine Sambac Absolute: I prefer this to jasmine grandiflorum, though I use both. While jasmine isn't necessarily a filler, it blends in nicely with a wide variety of fragrances. I need to be careful though, since I tend to use it with too many other white flowers, ending up with an overly indolic fragrance.

Ylang Ylang: A sweet floral scent, and it's cheaper than many other floral essential oils. I like "complete" and "extra" best, though the other grades might work well for soaping.

Base Notes:
Vetiver: I didn't like it much at first, but I love it now. While it doesn't work with everything, it's become one of my go to base notes.

Sandalwood Absolute, New Caledonia: I love Mysore and East Indian sandalwood, but it's becoming rare and I worry about the ecological impacts of buying them. I've tried a few other sandalwoods, but the absolute is my favorite.

Opoponax: I love the absolute, but I do like the essential oil as well. The absolute is a nice sweet base note, with an interesting warm balsamic fragrance.

Beauty and Patents

While a cosmetic maker by night, I am a research assistant by day. Most of my research is on techy patent cases. I was joking with a coworker that I could make your lip balm and research lip balm patents. Of course I had to search for lip balm patents after that.

First off, my search strategy. Skip this paragraph if you don't care for the nitty gritty details. I used Free Patents Online for my search, since I've been using them for a long time and like their search function. The USPTO has their own patent search tool, and there are many other patent websites out there, as well as paid databases. I searched "lip balm" in the title fields and abstract fields separately. A general search for "lip balm" comes up with over 3000 results, which is far too many to sort through just for fun. A search for lip balm without quotes has almost 5000 hits- not as many as I thought there would be, honestly.

Most of the patents with "lip balm" in the title were design patents, and I didn't look at any of those. Many of the utility patents were about the packaging/casing as well, and so I skipped over those as well.

While I adore chemistry, I didn't want to puzzle out the ingredients some of the patents were discussing. I've listed the ones I find interesting below, but there are definitely more out there.

Botanical butter stick lip balm, Patent 7695727
This one puzzles me. I'm not sure how it's novel- is it the jojoba esters? I have some jojoba esters, but haven't used them in anything yet. I was mostly curious as to what they were like. Using candelilla, carnauba, botanical butters, and liquid oils hardly seems novel. Using a small amount of beeswax in such a recipe doesn't seem too strange either.

Hypoallergenic cosmetics, lip balms and lip sticks, Patent 4793991
This one's a bit older, and kind of interesting. Basically you used single plant origin beeswax, combined with that plant's oil (or an oil that is similar). I know of single plant honey (I see lavender and orange blossom in stores), but never thought about the beeswax.

Compositions and methods for delivery of caffeine, Patent 7560465
Caffeinated lip balm- specifically, dissolved caffeine added to a lip balm base. Given how much lip balm I apply in a day, that could be dangerous. I do use coffee oil in my Mocha Lip Balm, but that probably has minimal caffeine.

Nicotine replacement applique, Patent 7105173
Caffeine, nicotine...I guess you can try to handle all of your addictions with a little lip balm. I'm fairly certain this would be regulated as a drug, though I'm not exactly sure in which way- it has a drug in it, and the drug itself is an active ingredient in a cosmetic. Maybe the inventor of this patent and the caffeine patent should meet up and try to make one new super patent.

Land mine, Patent 5423266
So this patent has nothing to do with lip balms, but it came back in my search results for "lip balm" in the abstract. Because this land mine is about the size of a lip balm. Kind of scary and sad.

My job is to pull patents and to look for ones that meet the attorneys' specifications. I do not interpret patents, so these are just my musings. Patent litigation is expensive, so please do not consider these as a jumping off point for your products.

Coming Soon! The Ivre de Fleurs Etsy shop is opening this weekend!

Easy to apply and easy to love. Pamper your feet with a blend of lavender, tea tree, and peppermint essential oils. This balm in a tube glides over your feet, softening them with natural butters and oils.

Dreamy lip balms, currently available in sweet Lemon Cream (pictured) and tasty Mocha. Other flavors to follow!

Floral body balms, available in Neroli (pictured), Jasmine, Rose, Tuberose, and Mimosa. Use for cuticles, rough skin, or even as a light perfume.

Experimenting with Lip Balm

One of the problems with lip balm is that it's very hard to make enough for base/flavor for just one tube. A single tube is .15 ounces, so making enough base from scratch for even ten tubes isn't easy. An accurate scale helps, but measuring .15 of this and .05 of that is kind of difficult. At the same time, I don't recommend making big batches, since then you might end up with 40 tubes of unusable lip balm. After making too many big batches that were no good, I needed to figure out a way to test bases and flavors without wasting too much. I use fancy carrier oils, so having those go to waste is not only sad, but costly. And while lip balm tubes are cheap, you don't want to throw more plastic in the trash than absolutely necessary.

For flavors, I figured out a decent way of testing them. I start by creating or melting down a small batch of base. I use the tiny disk clamshells from Majestic Mountain Sage, because it has a lot of room to stick labels with notes on them. I think something like these might work as well- they're cheaper, but don't have as much room for notes. I add a few drops of my flavor to the clamshell. In my case, single essential oils or essential oil blends, but this could work for testing out flavor oils, too. I add a small amount of base, and stir quickly to mix them in together. I then move on to the next flavor. Try not to have the base too hot- it might start melting the clamshell, and it could also weaken the flavor of essential oils with low flash points.

Testing out a base is trickier. Once you have a good idea of what you want, make the base, perhaps adding less of the ingredient you're unsure of. In my case, I'm trying to use candelilla wax instead of beeswax, because I want my products to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, including vegans. Since candelilla wax has a higher melting temperature, I don't need as much of it, but I'm not sure exactly how much I need. So I started with about half as much as beeswax, and the base into a single tube. Once cooled, I tested it, and determined it wasn't harder enough. I added a little more candelilla, and tested again. This time it was better- firmer, but not so hard that it's unpleasant. Once you have it right, you're free to flavor and pour into your remaining tubes.

Jasmine Lip Balm

I love jasmine, both the flower and the fragrance. It works so wonderfully in perfumes, and I really want it to work in lip balms. But the indolic quality of jasmine that makes it sexy in a perfume makes it kind of gross as a lip balm. I've tried two combinations, and they weren't bad to me, but my tester did not like them. I'd like to track down a jasmine that's less dirty and try it out, but that might take awhile. So in the meantime, no jasmine lip balms.

Fortunately, other flowers work fine in lip balms. They might not be to everyone's liking, but as someone who loves floral teas and candies, I think they can make nice flavors.

Cinnamon Lip Balm

I've been trying out some of the flavors I made samples of, and for the most part I really like them. The cinnamon one is a bit of a problem though. I love the cinnamon I have- it has a pure sweet cinnamon scent, without the woody earthiness a lot of cinnamon essential oils have. But I put way too much in the sample I made, and it made my lips burn. I'd still like to develop a flavor around it, but I'll have to cut back on how much I put into it. I want to make products that make people feel good, not ones that make them go "ouch."

I also like seeing how the different blends work in the lip balm base. Some of them smelled a little weird straight out of the bottle, but the base softens it up. It changes on the lips too, probably since it's just a thin layer. When I'm making perfumes, I usually start with either diluted materials, or I add the essential oils drop by drop into the alcohol, so I really don't get to smell the fragrances in non-dilute form. Seeing how a blend transforms in the lip balm is pretty interesting for me as a result.

Lip Balm Flavors

It's been a rather busy night for me. I've had several lip balm flavors I developed last month, and I've been so worried about which ones would actually work well. I didn't want to create borrowing flavors, since that would be too easy. I finally decided to just go ahead and make little samples of each. I had 12 flavors planned, and I added a few drops to a sample container, and then added some lip balm base I had whipped up. I had some extra base, so I went and created two "single note" flavors- rose otto and carrot seed. The flavors are all still cooling, but I'm excited to see how they work out.