A general and versatile strategy to prepare melamine-formaldehyde (ME) microcapsules encapsulating oil-based fragrances by combining solvent evaporation and in situ polymerization was proposed in this work. The oil-based fragrance was pre-encapsulated by an inner polyacrylate membrane via solvent evaporation, followed by in situ polymerization of ME precondensates as an outer shell. The polyacrylate membrane is used as an intermediate bridging layer to stabilize the oil-based fragrance, and to provide driving forces for in situ polymerization of ME precondensates through electrostatic attractions between carboxyl groups and ammonium ions. It was demonstrated that ME microcapsules containing clove oil were prepared successfully. The amount and the composition of the intermediate polyacrylate bridging layer were critical. Smooth and sphere-shaped ME-clove oil microcapsules were prepared when the weight ratio of polyaaylate to clove oil was over 60 wt% and the concentration of acrylic acid (AA) increased to 10 wt% in polyacrylate. In addition, MF microcapsules containing sunflower oil and hexyl salicylate were prepared by using this method. The work suggests that this new approach can be potentially used to encapsulate various core materials, tuning the shell properties of microcapsules such as thickness, mechanical strength and release properties. (C) 2018 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.