Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Valentine's Day Opening Party

Opening Party February 14th
Shop9/ 18 Centennial Circuit
Byron Arts and Industry Estate
(from 2 pm)

Well, I'm officially opening the perfumery to the public on Valentine's day...and I'm all a panicking! The Northern Star came by the other day and took a stack of embarrassing photos of me holding perfume bottles...hopefully the bottles will come out ok, grin. Must find out what day the article is coming out!
Theres still boxes all over the place, the beautiful handmade display tables and shelves from Nimbin wont be here for a week or so (when the guy has organized his new ute) ...I need to rewrite and print out backdrops and stories for each perfume and and and...
The credit card machine wont be here till next week of course, so it will all have to be cash only on the day! Arrgghhh!!!!
What do I need for an opening party?
I mean, my original workshop furniture has finally arrived from down south, so the perfumes are all out on display...I'm frantically bottling in our new snazzy mini sample atomizers and stocking up on "Love Potion" and "Death by Chocolate"...
And I've got music via stereo, will lay on a supply of bubbly..and have friends and old customers coming to help me celebrate...
Now if only I knew some local musos....
I've also got a stack of beautiful new "Love Potion" Bath and Body oils in their gorgeous new bottles...with 3 different labels at this stage as I cant make up my mind which ones work best...maybe I should have a competition and let my customers choose?

Actually a competition sounds great... A "Which is the most romantic fragrance" competition...with a giveaway of a bottle of their favorite as a prize!
 But it is SOOOOO cool to finally have enough space to spread out and focus entirely on making perfume! To have a public space I can invite people in to share what I do, to see and smell what I work with so they can experience how different botanical perfumes are!
Even before the official opening date passers by have been wandering in and they've all been fascinated and delighted! Its such a lovely thing to hear "I don't really like perfumes...but yours are so different! Wow!"
Bringing Mother Nature's real scents back into peoples lives, grin! My new sock of Moroccan Rose Absolute arrived yesterday too....oh how beautiful it is! New stock of "Goddess" in progress...and it came with a few new goodies to try from my favorite distiller too! Amazing Oud CO2...and some awesome Vanilla....after the opening party I will definitely finally get to work on that Vanilla perfume everyone has been asking for for so long.....





Thursday, February 6, 2014

Byron Bay Workshop..the adventure begins!

Well, I finally did it! A real public workshop! Found a beautiful small factory space in the Byron Arts and Industry Estate and am now in the process of fiddling with furniture, unpacking boxes and working out displays and workspaces. Its' so exciting to finally have space to really spread out my things again... dedicated workbenches that don't need to be cleared at the end of the day, lovely solid wooden shelves to put all my bottles and jars where I can see them instead of sorting through endless boxes trying to find what I need! Oh the bliss of coming to work and having a whole studio to play in!
It's a wonderful space, with enough room to have
a proper public shop display as well as a large workspace for filling and blending. And as an added bonus, a lovely mezzanine that I'm going to set up as a proper consulting room for custom design, where I can sit with clients and show them samples and discuss projects in elegant peace and quiet!
There's already been a few random walk in customers who came in to see what I was up to and sniff through the few perfume bottles I have on display so far in my half set up chaos....
I've printed a whole stack of rack cards to distribute all over the place, and I'm having a Grand Opening Party on Valentines Day afternoon here 9Shop 9/ 18 Centennial Circuit, Byron Bay Arts and Industry Estate NSW 2481 Australia) with belly dancing, music, champagne and of course lot's of specials....including the new and lovely mini perfume sprays I've found to give people
a cheap way of buying and trying my wares before they invest in a full sized bottle...
All up it's incredibly exciting! I'm so looking forward to being able to make small runs of special perfumes now...indulging in experimental runs of things I can only ever make say 10 bottles of because I can never get that particular ingredient again! Weird and wonderful things I can make and offer to the public without having to be able to keep them in stock as part of the regular range on the website...And now to get back to packaging "Love Potion" for next week!