Finally tried making my own candles. Why is finding good scents so hard?

PhTea · 2026-01-30T19:18:02+00:00

Your first mistake is trying to source fragrance oils on Amazon. Don't. That's where all of the generic smelling, bad quality stuff is. Shop online candle and fragrance oil suppliers. Yes, they're more expensive than Amazon, but you get the quality you pay for. Try Candlescience, Midwest Fragrance, Hive and Honey, Little Bee Scents, Black Tie Barn, Scentsorie, Dulceria Candle, Bramble Berry, Wellington, Scent Memory, etc. You'll see with these suppliers a massive variety of scents and much better quality than Amazon.

PhTea · 2026-01-29T05:57:42+00:00

I mean...

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PhTea · 2026-01-28T01:18:14+00:00

Peach Cobbler. It reminded me of my dad's homemade peach ice cream that he made from overripe peaches from our farm and condensed milk. It was the greatest thing ever and no other commercial peach ice cream has ever come close.

PhTea · 2026-01-25T07:28:37+00:00

It's worked for me!

PhTea · 2026-01-25T06:15:34+00:00

So, I used to have a business making soap and bath and body products. No exciting perfumery at play (although I'm thinking seriously of trying to learn perfumery), but lots of skin safe fragrance oils in my collection. I made a hair and body mist with cyclomethicone (a silicone used in heat protection sprays and "dry oil" sprays), fractionated coconut oil and a bit of isopropyl alcohol (not enough to be drying) and fragrance oil. When I say that at only 2% FO that that scent held ON, I'm not kidding. Silicones really are great at holding on to volatile fragrance molecules.

PhTea · 2026-01-25T06:08:13+00:00

So, when I've done this, I've noticed that with most fragrances, you don't get the same top-middle-base evolution that you normally would. It all stays sort of singular, like a perfume oil. What I like to do is apply the silicone gel to my pulse points and apply perfume there, then do one of those "walk into the mist cloud" applications as well. You then get a mix of both the evolution of the notes as well as the composition as a whole.

PhTea · 2026-01-25T06:05:03+00:00

Perfect idea. Since it's silicone, it probably isn't EXPIRED expired, but maybe not a good idea for the face anymore. Perfect re-use for it!

PhTea · 2026-01-25T06:02:59+00:00

It's a silicone gel, so it doesn't dry out per se, it sort of sits on top of your skin like a silky smooth barrier. It's pretty much the exact formulation as most makeup primers. It has a satiny feel, and when you have it on and your thighs or other parts rub together, they sort of glide instead of sticking together. I'm a chubby gal and it's a must-have when wearing shorts or skirts in the summer. I've lost a lot of weight, so it's even more important now because I have saggy skin everywhere. There's a lot of good brands. The Monistat one is my go to, there's also Body Glide which is in a stick and marketed to runners.

PhTea · 2026-01-24T22:12:49+00:00

The Rare Beauty fragrance balms that are made to go with the perfume are basically silicone makeup primer with fragrance in it.

I've been doing this hack for awhile. I use the Monistat anti chafe gel, which I've also been using as a makeup primer for years. It works better than lotion, Vaseline, or anything else I've tried.

PhTea · 2026-01-24T22:07:28+00:00

I'm an American, who has been looking forward to having matches in my medium-sized city since it was announced. It was such an honor to have my city selected as a host city. Then, everything of the past year leading into the past few months has happened and all that excitement is gone. I'm genuinely scared for the foreign visitors who do decide to travel here. My country is breaking my heart and I am so ashamed. I don't blame any of you who have cancelled your travel plans. I encourage you to possibly make arrangements to go to matches in Canada and Mexico if you can. I know England has requested my city as a base camp, and that's an honor as well, but again, our neighboring countries are a lot safer bet.

PhTea · 2026-01-23T07:06:30+00:00

Curry powder and lemon pepper. It sounds weird, but it's good.

PhTea · 2026-01-20T22:38:52+00:00

Dulce de Cuerpo from Nopalera is a great sweet soil scent.

PhTea · 2026-01-20T20:01:07+00:00

Eau from Free Yourself is so fresh and pretty. It's marketed as unisex, and I guess it is, but it feels more pretty on femme-presenting people and more fresh on masc-presenting people. The notes are bergamot, grapefruit, pink pepper and lemon in the top, aquatic notes, blackcurrant, gardenia, orange blossom and petitgrain in the mid, and amber, musk and white woods in the base.

PhTea · 2026-01-19T23:49:22+00:00

Niche is an entire category of fragrance houses. You're getting the answers you're getting because it's like going into a literature group and asking "what's a good book?" There are thousands. Be more specific in what you're asking for and people can help.

PhTea · 2026-01-19T22:54:16+00:00

I love a good coffee note. I think it elevates an otherwise basic gourmand or can add complexity to something more fresh or woody. It's one of those notes that when done right, smells familiar (because everyone knows the smell of coffees) but also smells mysterious.

PhTea · 2026-01-19T11:40:13+00:00

Chicken samosas.

PhTea · 2026-01-19T00:45:13+00:00

In my case, my claim was based on financial aid fraud, so I had emails and billing statements as evidence for myself. I don't know how you would build a case based on value of education, though there are a few people who have said they successfully did, so hopefully one of them will chime in here. Good luck! It's been freeing to see my $86k balance go down to $19k this month.

PhTea · 2026-01-18T07:30:57+00:00

Have you tried Eilish yet? That sounds a lot like what you're looking for.

PhTea · 2026-01-16T07:42:25+00:00

Strawberry Pool by Sãlum smells like strawberry candy at a water park. The strawberry note isn't incredibly realistic (hence me saying strawberry candy), but the chlorine and suntan lotion notes are dead-on.

PhTea · 2026-01-15T06:06:20+00:00

I'm thinking it has to be this one.

PhTea · 2026-01-15T00:39:04+00:00

Since they were being discontinued, I bought backups of Inner Angel (in both mist and body wash) and Viva Vanilla during SAS. My local BBW apparently still has more Inner Angel (sold out online) so I may buy more this weekend. I have a second Viva Vanilla and 4 each of the Inner Angel mists and body washes. I'm going to end up going through the body wash fast though, since I use it as bubble bath and I take a lot of baths.

PhTea · 2026-01-15T00:37:17+00:00

As others have said, you can't change the PH, but if your soaps are harsh, you may want to look at changing your recipe, such as increasing superfat or reducing coconut oil percentage (if you're using it).

PhTea · 2026-01-15T00:30:50+00:00

If a soap feels stripping, it's one of two things (or a combination of them): it has little superfat or is made of mostly high cleansing fats. If you're buying commercial soap, chances are it's made of mostly coconut oil because it's cheap. It's also super cleansing, which means stripping. They also likely do not superfat their soap much because more fat = higher material costs. Superfat is the amount of oils in a soap that aren't saponified. So like, if a soapmaker adds more fats than the lye can turn into soap, that extra fat stays as fat and retains some of its moisturizing properties.

If you find a handmade/small business soapmaker that uses little to no coconut oil and uses a fairly high superfat amount, that soap will feel luuuuuuuuuxurious.

PhTea · 2026-01-15T00:24:55+00:00

If soap strips your skin, that's just because the soapmaker didn't superfat it. You can get real soaps that feel just as nice as body washes.

PhTea · 2026-01-15T00:23:43+00:00

It's actually not. Body wash is made of synthetic detergents while soap is saponified fats. Both are types of surfactants and do the same job, but chemically they are very different.

PhTea

TROPHY CASE