The Mystery of Musk-A Competition

Well, my little blogpost  "The Search for the Ultimate Musk" actually sparked a competition! It seems another well known perfumer actually read it, and then suggested to Anya of the Natural Perfumers Guild that it would be a nice idea to actually run a competition to find the best natural musk perfume to celebrate the 4th birthday of the guild!


The project launches today, with samples from the participants going out to 10 different perfume review blogs, a number of reviewers from basenotes and others....all to be reviewed in the first week of july!
There'll also be giveaways of full bottles of the various musk perfumes, samples and more.....
And ultimately....one of the perfumes will be chosen as the winner....

And I've been invited to take part!
Oh the excitement....
Oh the joy!
Oh the total blind panic!!!!!!!!


As those of you who read my blog know, I've been working on musk perfumes for quite some time....but that doesn't mean I've actually found exactly what I'm looking for!
And now i have the challenge to actually choose from all those many "perfumes in progress" under the musk section of my shelves, and submit one of them to the wider world!
Now for some like me, this is beyond scary....I like to fiddle with my perfumes till I'm completely happy with them. Some of the perfumes I sell in my perfumery took years to develop. 
And even worse, I have to offer up my creation to a wide selection of perfume critics, perfume bloggers and my fellow natural perfumers from the guild!
(Ohmygawdohmygawdohmygawd.....)


(Taking Deep Calming breath.....OMMMMMMMMM..........)

OK, so which perfume did I eventually choose? I was so torn.....should I go with animalistic? Follow the popular choices you find in shops and offer my own Vanilla Musk? Or maybe a sultry Oriental one with a touch of incense? So many choices.......(looks again at all the little musk version on that shelf).
I sat down at my workbench and started to list what Musk actually mean to me:


Musk is about:
-sex. 
-pheromones
-attraction
-makes me feel safe
-makes me feel like I'm wrapped in a soft warm blanket
-makes me crave things
-Cravings
Cravings eh?......cravings........now theres a good name.....and a concept.....
What do I crave?
Going back to my "musk in progress" bottles, there it was...I'd been mixing all the things I loved, smells I craved, things that made me want to reach out and snuggle into them.....
So I sat down at my workbench, and started to assemble all the ingredients that I "craved".
Now I'm a multi dimensional hedonist. I love all things physical, sex, cuddles, soft sumptuous clothes, food.....

So to make my ultimate musk perfume, I needed ingredients that covered all of these...something so yummy, so luscious that it made you want more....

I've made a few perfumes that have that sort of touch in them...."Love Potion" has a deep musky base with an oriental touch....."Goddess" has a completely different sensuousness to it..."Pan" is the ultimate Wild invocation to passion and then there's "Death by Chocolate", my own private offering to the Gods of food addiction in perfume form.....

What I needed to do was find a way to combine the sensuous spirit in each of them, the sexy musky character of each of them into one perfume that combined the ultimate "muskness" of them all!


And "Craving" began to be born.


I'll be posting more about this over the next weeks.....

And in the meantime, let us all know:

What do you Crave?