This is my attempt at helping others to learn from the mistakes I’ve made and hopefully to help anyone who is interested in making their own oil based composites. Thanks to Steve for the ICM mixes he released to the forum as well as thanks to nbully for releasing his calculators to the forum. I’d have NEVER tried this without it.
I have spent a lot of time, money and energy to find what works and what doesn’t work for me. By no means is this meant to be the definitive guide to how to make an oil based composite. Just my explanation of my experiences. Others may have different experiences with oil composites.
Part of the reason that I was interested in working with the oil based composites was because I’d had great luck with Scent of Eros and especially with A314. Both just seemed to last and last on me where I’d sweat off any alcohol sprays within a few hours.
Some things to consider…
Time and Patience
I discovered that when making a composite it really needs to sit for at least 7-10 days once everything is mixed together. It takes a lot of time for everything in the bottle to get to know each other and start to work together (I could give you the technical reasons but you can look that up elsewhere). One way that I found effective to determine how far along things are is to see how clear the mixture is. When you first put your pheros into the oil, it will be very cloudy. Over about 7-10 days it will slowly lose the cast and turn clear. It is ready to add any cover scent you may want. This is where the patience part becomes especially important as I’ll explain further down.
I should mention that I’ve tried it both ways as far as when to mix the pheros. I’ve tried putting individual phero ingredients into an oil base and I have tried putting the pheros together in the original alcohol base to composite and then after 7 days combining them into the oil. In my experience, all things being equal except when the pheros were combined with the oil, I believe I was getting ‘better’ hits from the composite where the pheros and the oil were all brought together at the same time.
Phero Strength
This is going to depend largely on the pheros that you’ve chosen for your composite. For the ICM mixes that I was compositing into oil form, I found that 5x concentration worked very well for both, with one exception. When I’d made my first batch of ICM 1b I used 5x the original amount of P83 that I put into my spray version of ICM 1b (12.5mcg) which is more than the 5mcg in Steve’s original formula. This was borderline OD territory and I had to use my oil sparingly. Made it much less user friendly but very effective when dosed correctly. This batch was not the easiest to dose correctly.
This is where trial and error will come in handy. More is not necessarily better in some cases and adjustments may have to be made to a formula because even at slower diffusion rates, too much of one ingredient can force your mix into OD territory. Balance is something that can be difficult to achieve when you are turning something that is supposed to be quicker diffusing into something that is mean to work for the long haul.
Don’t be too interested in trying to make a 10x batch. If you can get good diffusion with the oils, you don’t need nearly as strong a batch of pheromones. Having said that, in my experience if it is cool/cold outside, your pheros aren’t going to do anything when you have an oil on. As soon as you get inside however, that is where the fun begins!
Viscosity
I discovered that for me (I was using roll on bottles for most of this) that an ~1-1 blend of alcohol phero mix to oil worked very well at first. Eventually, I discovered that I liked the 25% pheros to 75% DPG with plant musks and cologne oil even better when I had a very well diffusing scent. The viscosity at 25% pheros to 75% oil was also very good.
Diffusion, Diffusion, Diffusion!
This is something that I found to be every bit as important as getting the phero strength correct. You could be using 100mcg of every ingredient, but if it doesn’t leave your skin you might as well be phero free. Androtics offers DPG with Plant Musks as well as DPG with Plant Musks and ylang ylang oil in a 6.6% concentration. I’ve tried both and found that when I was patient and let the mix composite that they both worked VERY well to improve the diffusion of the pheros. The cover scent that is chosen also makes a big difference.
When I first started with the DPG with plant musks, I didn’t let it sit long enough for the plant musk smell to composite out. After 2 weeks of compositing, the plant musk smell was basically gone. Unfortunately, so was the 6% Akuto scent I’d thought would carry my pheros. If you want to use a scent that goes in at the very beginning, get a strong scent such as the 20% cologne strength that Androtics offers. Otherwise it will composite out of the finished oil.
When adding a scent at a later time, wait until the oil is clear and free of a cast. Even if you are using the ylang ylang oil which does cover the plant musk smell very well hold off adding any other scent or it will composite in with the ylang ylang (unless that is what you want- I didn’t). Waiting the 7-10 days before adding a cover scent will ensure that you don’t smell the ylang ylang but you will get some of the benefits that it seems to have. It is almost as if it opens up the nasal passages and paves the way for the pheros.
The better your cover scent diffuses, the better your pheros will work. I was blown away by how strongly people reacted to the Common Scents version of Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille. It has exceptional diffusion and lasts forever on my skin. I was seeing hits that reminded me of the spray version of ICM 1a/1b from 10’ away while wearing this.
I’d also made up versions with just the phero mix in an alcohol base and a DPG cover scent (covered in the journals on the ICM oils). I found that even with the excellent diffusion characteristics of the Tom Ford, the DPG alone didn’t diffuse nearly as well as the DPG with plant musks and the DPG with ylang ylang did. My suggestion is to get it with the plant musks even if you choose not to get it with the ylang ylang. I was happy with it with and without the ylang ylang so that is more of a judgement call.
I should also mention while on the subject of diffusion that I’d made 2 batches that contained 25% of my original (5x) phero mixture as opposed to 50% like everything else I’d made. I was getting better hits with the 2 batches at 25% original strength than I was with the 50% strength batches. Some of this could be attributed to a potential slight OD but I believe the difference to be the diffusion. The diffusion was so much better that I could see hits from 3-5’ further out than I was with the other composites. Check out the ICM 1a pseudojournal for a record of one of those tests. November 16th report.
My process
Basically, my process from now on (unless someone comes up with something much better than what I’m using) goes something like this…
