The Natural Perfumers Guild is hosting a blogathon esp. for the porr suffering people of the northern hemisphere who are currently dealing with the long, cold and grey miserable months of winter. Aprt from being cold and grey, the long nights and lack of decent sun and daylight also mean long months of misery and depression for many people. S.A. D or "Seasonal Affective Disorder" is the technical term for these winter blues, and affects most people to some degree or another. It is thought to be related to serontonin production, a neurotransmitter which our body produces in conjunction with exposure to sunlight. So obviously, no sun, no serontonin equals SAD. So the Natural Perfumers guild thought it might be a nice idea to tap into the collective knowledge of their perfumers on how this can be combatted with the help of perfume. And this is my post on the subject. We all know that nice smells make us feel batter, but Aromatherapy can help us take this concept a few steps further...and those of use who work exclusively with naturals of course work with the essential oils used in Aromatherapy...and many of us (including yours truly) actually come from an Aromatherapy background......
I used to suffer terribly from what they now call "SAD" or Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the winters in Berlin were particularly long and grey.
Each year, as soon as the days became shorter, my mood would start to darken too, and I would only begin to pick up as the days lengthened and the sun came back out of her hiding place below the equator.
When I discovered aromatherapy, I of course started to research which esential oils were good for depression, and discovered that Patchouli was one the the best and longest used for this in India. It is used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat everything from melancholy to outright mania, and it's deep, earthy scent seems to have the immediate effect of making you feel safe and grounded...
So I started burning it in my little oil burner and to my joy found that I felt much more peaceful and even started to smile again....I experimented all that first aromatic winter with blends of different things, and found my best blend was a simple combination of patchouli with bright clear lemon!
Some years later when I started to make actual perfumes, I took a break from the complex floral formulas I was experiementing with, and started to think: Why shouldn't it be possible to combine Aromatherapy with Perfumery and create Perfumes that actually have therapeutic effects as well as smelling beautiful?
I dug out my notes on my favourite aromatherapy blends and rememberd how happy the patchouli and lemon mix had made me....the combination of the two is somehow so warm and friendlyas a scent, the lemon doing something really remarkable to patchoulis dark duskiness and the patchouli giving the short lived lemon a depth and warmth that is just yummy....but they didn't quite work together as an actual "perfume", so I decided to experieiment a bit more. After delving back into my herb books, I decided that an obvious choice would be Sandalwood, beloved the world over for it's soothing comforting effects, as well as one of the smoothest and most beautiful of all perfumery ingredients! Like Patchouli, it has a long history of being used in traditional Auyuveda for treating depression. It also happens to work seamlessly with both patchouli and lemon, and added an elegance and gentleness to the perfume which was just what was needed! I also added a touch of Tahitian lime to give it an extra twist and a few other ingredients to round off the scent, and "Happiness" was born.
I started taking it with me to the various trade fairs and cosmetics shows had stalls at, and was delighted to find that my customers liked it just as much as I did! It seemed to have an incredible unisex appeal, men and women both liked it and wore it, and you could see from the happy grin after the first sniff just how direct an effect it had on peoples moods!
People bought it, and came back and bought more, telling me they found it to be a great pick me up scent...they wore it to help them get going in the morning, as a pick me up after work, and one guy even told me it was the best cure for a hangover he had ever found, grin!
After nearly 20 years, it is still one of my most popular perfumes. It's simple yet elegant scent is refreshing, uplifting and just incredibly friendly! It's a true inisex scent, and one of those you can wear to the office without ever worrying about offending anyone...
But best of all, it simply works. Wearing it makes you feel better.
And what I am particularly proud of is that for me, "Happiness" proved once and for all what I have been saying for years: You CAN combine Aromatherapy and modern Perfumery. And create Perfumes that have a therapeutic effect, and are also GREAT perfumes!
If you'd like to try "Happiness", I'm giving away samples to the 3 most interesting or enthusiastic Australian and 2 Overseas customers who post a comment here!
(Winners will be chosen and announced on friday!)
(Winners will be chosen and announced on friday!)
Otherwise you can also order samples and full size bottles of "Happiness" directly from my webstore!
Or post a comment below to win a sample!
Other Blogs writing about Joy in January:
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Avalon...an adventure in mystical apples
It was late summer and there entire area is full of apple orchards...ancient gnarled trees full of wisdom and a sense of antiquity...sourounded by the lush scent of ripe apples, hanging heavily from overladen boughs.....
I climbed Glastonbury Tor one evening...and as the soft haze settled over the valley beneath me, you could almost hear the chants of the preistesses drifting over from the Magical Isle of Avalon....mystical incense, herbs and the wafting deep and fresh scent of ripe apples from the ancient trees......
When I got back to Australia, I sat down
to try and capture this picture in a perfume. Fruit notes are
particularly hard to capture with natural ingredients, as fruit (apart
from citrus) simply doesn't lend its scent to extraction the way flowers
do...Some years before I had scored a tiny bottle of apple essential
oil, distilled from whole granny smith apples in South Afrika by a rogue
distiller...it had the sharp apple topnote to it, but totally lacked
the sweet depth of an actual apple, the way many essential oils do...and
of course this tiny bottle wasn't going to be enough to actually make
any quantity of perfume....So I set out to find a way to create a scented picture of the real thing.
I
found a number of different apple CO2 extracts used in the food
industry, that gave a sense of the fresh sharp topnotes in apples even
if it lacked the juicy lushness I was looking for, but at least it gave
me a starting point. together with a few drops of my precious apple EO, I
had an apple topnote for my perfume. To this I added Rose ...the most english of flowers, and a perfect partner to the sharp apple tang. I chose to use a particularly delicate Rose du Mai, as it adds an fairy like quality to the blend, a flower blossom touch....Neroli adds further floral beauty, while I found a touch of mandarin added in the fruity sweetness needed to give a sense of ripeness to the apple top note....the perfume began to take form....The heart and base are a blend of hay, fresh mown hay lying out in the fields, drying for the winter feed... fir balsam from the trees of the forest around the orchards...and labdanum incense resin from the isle of Crete, used by the preistesses in Delphi, which seemed rather appropriate...labdanum is also such a soft, ambery sweet scent in itself, that blended perfectly with the floral fruity mid and topnotes.....re creating that sense of orchard and forest I had in my vision...priestesses burning incense in the temple of the apple isle on a late summers eve.......
"Avalon"
Scent family: fruity floral
Notes top: apple CO2 and distillate, neroli
midnotes: rose du mai, green mandarin, apple blossom accord
base: labdanum, hay, fir balsam, amber accord
Order your own bottle
of "Avalon" here:
(Orders outside Australia perfume oil only pls as we cannot ship alcohol based edp overseas!)
(Orders outside Australia perfume oil only pls as we cannot ship alcohol based edp overseas!)
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A Scented Visitor
Yesterday I had a wonderful freind drop in on her way back up north from sydney....Hanna has spent many years in the far East, and now imports a beautiful range of materials, clothing...and for me of course more importantly, Frankincense and Myrrh!
Her website "The Queen of Sheba" is full of amazing photos and stories about the places she has visited and where the resins and oils come from....tales about the people and the breathtakingly beautiful country...the secret locations where the ancient frankincense trees have been growing for hundreds of years...Her website also has pictures of the colourful pottery incense burners the women make by hand, and the gorgeous handwoven fabrics...This is Fair Trade in it's truest form! Hanna herself is a truly adorable radical greenie after my own heart...and we spend hours debating how to run businesses that are both ethical, and ecoplogically true, as well as making us a living!
We always end up swapping booty, so I've got some of the amazing frankincense she gets from Oman ...it's so different from the Somalian stuff I've been useing for years...it has a fresh almost lemony scent to it that is truly luminescant...it's so different as an essential oil that I didn't even recognize it as frankincense at first sniff...and burnt as incense it's just amazing.....
This time she brought me a huge lump of pure styrax resin (which is what you can see in the picture next to that beautiful handcrafted traditional incense burner). We must have looked like drug dealers, sitting there on my verandah scratching small amounts of wierd powders off it with a penknife, grin! It has a strange burnt rubbery after smell when you burn it, so I'm not sure I like it as incense...but I tinctured some of the crushed resin in alcohol and Oh boy, what lovely stuff! It's sweet and vanilla and ambery and pretty dam luscious! totally different to the styrax essential oil I have....which is sharp and rubbery foremost and only has the soft luscious ambery scent right at the back....So I'm delighted to have this new ingredient to play with! Hanna left with more samples of my perfumes (She's in Love with "Sense of Honour" at the moment!) and a little bottle of the Styrax tincture...Sometimes I really do feel a bit like a drug lord...swapping little bottles of strange tinctures I've cooked up in my lab for lumps of interesting smelling resins in brown paper bags....no wonder Australia post opens so much of my mail at the border, grin!Anyway, check out Hanna's website! I'm pestering her to add more of her stories about her adventures in Oman so hopefully you'll find more there soon! But you can see the amazing photos and browse her wonderful wares! The Queen of Sheba
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
New bottles for Spring!
Finally found the right bottles to package my perfume oils in!I've been looking for a while...
I love the round perfume atomizers I use for the alcohol based eau de parfums...and the smaller ones for the full size bottles of perfume oils...but I just wasn't happy with the little oil bottles...and a lot of people seem to like the idea of small bottles...
Plus we can't ship alcohol based perfumes overseas, so we're selling more and more of the oil bsed perfumes...and people do like roll on bottles....but the simple black lidded ones just don't look elegant and beautiful enough to do the content of a high end natural perfume justice...and the little cute ones I was useing, apart from not being roll ons, where very pretty, but didn't really match the range...and I do like consistency!
And then I found these.....and of course have now filled them with flowers and spices fitting to each scent!
Happy happy happy!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
For all lovers of Orange Flower
 |
| field of bitter orange trees |
A Fahkry & Co, an Egyptian company that distills and sells an amazing collection of essential oils and absolutes, including a special organic collection the widest range of orange flower, neroli and petigrain versions I've ever come accross! The website is pretty impressive in it's description of it's various organic endeavours, from new organic farms to seed saving and gentle extraction methods...and it's so refreshing to see companies outside of Europe adopting green approaches! I'm always a bit suspicious of companies I've never heard of before, esp. those that make organic claims, but these guys are very forthcoming with information and sent me an amazing collection of samples along with sheaves of accompanying paperwork with detailed analysis sheets for all the oils! And I'm rather impressed with the quality too, no cheap synthetic knock offs here!I'm going to review the oils I've got here in groups, because there's simply too many to cover in one post!
What really blew me away was the range of citrus products! Ive never seen so many forms of petigrain and biregarde in one place before!
I know that this is a particular love of many perfumers, so I thought I'd write about them in more detail with my own scent impressions!
Petigrain bigarade absolute This one I particularly love! It has such lovely fresh twiggy notes along with the petigrain freshness and a wonderful tea note!
neroil egyptian a tangy neroli
mandarin petigrain wow, a petigrain with a touch of mandarin sweetness! It's also got that fresh twig sappy feel to it....a real natural sorta woodsy mandarin touched scent!
key lime petigrain and then a real tangy, citrus petigrain...almost lemon verbena notes!
biregarde flower extract this is a zingy floral, lighter than the orange flower absolute
petigrain bigarade earl grey notes...very elegant
bigarade green notes of green mandarin
bigarade rouge this is softer than the petigrain mandarin...it's just lovely...softly mandarin sweet fresh green....
Key Lime distilled I want to bathe in this one! Lime lollies on steroids! I've loved lime essential oil for a long time, but this key lime has an added tang, almost like a touch of grapefruit and lemon verbena...I'm in citrus heavan!
My nose is dizzy just from reviewing them all one by one! So much vareity within a simple theme...absolutely lovely!
They also have an impressive range of herbal oils, as well as some really nice rose and jasmines....which I'll be reviewing later on!
All up, I'm delighted to have found these people!
They also have one of the holy grails of hard to find oils: CAROB essential oil! They were out of stock when I contacted them so I'm still waiting impatiently!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Alchemy for Wytchy Ways
Suzanne came up to my workshop to consult with me about creating two massage oils for her online store, and it was a true delight! I had met this wonderful woman previously, when I took part in one of her "Soul Collage" workshops and had been impressed by her warmth and knowledge as a counsellor, and was delighted when she approached me about designing the scents of her new products! We spent an hour gossiping on my sunny verandah before we got down to work, catching up on stories of all the people we know, and our lives as middle aged women teetering on the edge of menopause...
Custom design is my favourite thing to do. It's always fascinating to see which scents a person is drawn to...to me it's almost as intimate as having a peek in their personal diary, and the session with Suzanne was decidedly fun!
She had two very different scents in mind: One for use on Sabbath celebrations, one for Esbats. For those non-pagans amongst you, Sabaths are the Solar celebrations in the Pagan calender, such as Eostre/ Easter, Samhain/Halloween and Winter Solstice/Chirstmas. The Esbats are celebrated on the full moon. So we are basically working on a solar and a lunar scent. Suzanne had brought a few of the oils she had already bought with her, including a delightful smelling benzoin, which proved too thick to work with this morning, even with the help of a warm water bath...but we came up with a few rather nice blends...on the solar side, Suzanne had something foodie and luscious in mind, seeing as good pagan celebrations always have great food and a feast as a central part of them....what we ended up with is a rather scrumptious warm spicy sweet melange which will work to stimulate and awaken all the senses.....ginger, cinnamon, fruit and more all combined to give it life and zing in a totally delicious way.....the lunar Esbat blend is much softer...elegant clarity built around the Rose of the Goddess, and the deep, sacred beauty of frankincense. She has also chosen a really interesting smokey base to underline the incense notes, which gives the blend a true "temple" feel...Each bottle will also have one drop of pur herbal oil of mugwort or wormwood, which Suzanne has magically charged during ritual herself, to give the oils an even greater effect.
But they are going to be pretty special!
'Twas all up a very nice day...Alchemical Scent Magic at it's best!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Pan's Midsummer Night Dream
What I find really beautiful about this project, is the artwork the reviewers used to accompany their reviews! So I've reposted not only the reviews themselves, but also the paintings that accompanied them!
You can read more about my offering to this project "Pan" here:
"The Story of Pan"
and you can order samples of it in my webstore
Carol from WAFT wrote: LOVE THIS !
 |
| Sir Joseph Noël Paton - Evening |
An intoxicating patchouli scent that could fit just as easily into the
summer of Patchouli love , but this was created in honor of Puck = a
tamer , gentler version of Pan in our Shakespearean play....PAN the
scent is wildly gorgeous - a green earthy Rosemary and Patchouli scent ,
deepened with oakmoss and embellished with cinnamon , nutmeg and
thyme....lordy lordy this is wonderful . Long have I searched for the
perfect rosemary scent ( that doesn't remind me of lamb stew
)...Dominated by rosemary , PAN is my favorite scent of the summer !
Earthy , resonant , spicy and just outright sexy in the best way .
The Windesphere Witch writes:
"I can't resist a perfume that claims...."If you don't want to get laid, don't wear it". Pan
is a perfume that I think could definitely live up to that challenge.
It's very masculine, the horned God himself and the muskiness mixed
into the delicious blend of rosemary, thyme, marjoram and Indian
Patchouli is delightful and exquisitely sexy in a sort of "roll around
naked and sweaty in the tall grass sort of way" and it smells incredible
on my husband, better than it does on me and I think that this one
takes a man to unleash it's potency. Pan is quite herbaceous but there's
also something in it that reminds me of my horse Henry when we've been
galloping around in the dense woods for a bit and he's fairly sweaty and
so am I. It's that fine line between animal passion and human
playfulness that I think that she's captured here and she's done it very
well. At first sniff Pan seems simple and then suddenly you're enslaved
by his lovely flutes. Follow him anywhere but at your own
risk.....unplanned risky delightful sex in a bottle this one is:)
"I can't resist a perfume that claims...."If you don't want to get laid, don't wear it". Pan
Donna from Perfume Smellin'-Things wrote:
"My next adventure was a frolic with Pan, the very naughty brainchild of
Ambrosia Jones, proprietor of Perfume By Nature near Sydney, Australia.
Pan is a wild fellow indeed, but as with many purportedly “masculine”
fragrances, many women love to wear them too and this one really won me
over. Pan reminded me of the more rustic perfumes from La Via del
Profumo in Italy, which is saying a lot, because those are truly
excellent compositions. It’s not as heavily animalic as my beloved
Tcharas or as green and exhilarating as Hindu Kush, but it has its own
distinctive character. Pan (The character of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream is a thinly veiled version of the mythical Greek satyr) has a
dry, sun-soaked halo of herbal and piney warmth wrapped around its
chypre base of dark oakmoss and resins. Rosemary and thyme combined with
a spicy (yet not sweet) heart make this redolent of warmer climes, and
it’s not hard to picture this mischievous being frolicking in the rugged
hillsides above the Aegean Sea, chasing buxom women and laughing the
days away. I don’t get too much of a “night” impression from this, but
surely most of the trouble Pan/Puck gets himself into occurs in the
midnight hour! He is up to no good and so is his namesake perfume, a
lusty and rich concoction guaranteed to turn heads. In fact, I received
an unsolicited compliment from a co-worker, who urged me to come closer
so she could smell my perfume. Staying power is excellent, lasting all
day with no problem at all and any confident man should really enjoy
wearing it. However, he will have to pry it out of my hands first!
Felicia M Hazard of Fragrance Belles-Lettres
I must confess, I am a fan of chypre. It gives me a deep feeling of completeness and wholeness that is actually indescribable. Thank goodness for a fragrance that speaks for my indescribable feelings. PAN from Perfume by Nature leads you into a journey of a woody citrus forest that is guarded by Pan, God of Nature. You immediately notice patchouli that sings of a deep moment in the wild. Then you are guided into a forest full of oak trees covered in moss. The tall dark trees towering over the forest with a heavy passion for dark and intense moments that arise in PAN.
Quickly PAN
dries on the skin into a sweet passion fruit state of mind. I really
enjoyed this journey with Pan, God of Nature. It showed me that nature
is better when left alone without the use of chemicals and pesticides to
ruin what is really intended for its goodness.
Now, I understand why Pan is so wild
about nature. It is a wonderful place to be and thanks to Pan, Ambrosia
Jones was able to compose a beautiful perfume with a beautiful message
through her knowledge of the God who is passionate and respectful of all
Things Living. Monica Miller from "Perfume Pharmer"
" Earthy, wild and spicy, I would say Pan would make a great men’s fragrance…but hey, PAN can go both ways, and often does. Definitely evergreen forest like, there is a camphor herbal lift and a playful, botanical and animalic, spiced apple cider- musky undertone. I say “try it!….if you dare….”
And this beautiful poem:
"Ah the Oft maligned and scorned God Pan! What has he done to deserve your wrath, O Christians, that you turn him into the Evil One? How strange to take a Pagan God, a nature spirit, and pit your hate against him, why?
Is it his sexuality you fear? His sweet pan pipe music that turns your heart to gold?
Do you fear to feel yourself as part of nature, as natural as the grass and the trees, as natural as life itself?
Fear not
the divine spirit we call PAN. He is NOT the devil as you say. he is not
dressed in red, nor does he live in a fiery abode. Unless the passion
we call desire that drives the human race generation by generation is
evil?
We ride towards our future on the back of PAN
We express joy, laughter, giggles and all things fun and good with PAN
We eat drink and make merry on our holidays with PAN
We revel, we intoxicate like drunken monkeys on fermented fruit, in a natural way..with PAN
We forget our troubles for a moment lifted by the music of PAN"
Carol from Waft is also selling sample collections from "The Midsummer Nights Dream" project through her online store The Niche Place , contact her directly to ask about this!
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