Perfume by Nature: Natural Perfumers Guild

Saturday, June 2, 2012

My First Love

My first essential oil Love, was Australian Eukalyptus oil!

My mother is an Ozzie, who grew up on a farm out in the bush some hours from Sydney and one of my earliest childhood memories is her drizzling eukalyptus oil onto my pillow when i was sick as a dog during one of the typical grey wet and miserable English winters.
the effect was immediate... the strong clean nip of the oil began to cut through the foggy muck in my nose and chest, and I began to breath more easily...it also cooled my aching head, and cleared my fevered brain a bit too...
from that point on, eucalyptus oil equalled healing and memories of being soothed and looked after by my mother for me....
It's what my grandfather used to do for her as a kid too, and the scent followed me through my childhood.
When I eventually came back to Australia in my late teens, the scent wafting from the eucalyptus trees at the airport welcomed me like a long lost daughter, and I felt immediately at home.....

Eucalyptus trees cover the whole Australian landscape. They grow pretty much everywhere in this vast country, from tropical rain forests in the north to the dry arid desert areas in the centre where I'm currently writing from.
The leaves from the many varieties of eucalyptus have been used by the indigenous people for many centuries...they use them for healing colds and coughs by inhaling the vapors from the leaves both simply crushed and also steamed in hot water.
but they also use them in spiritual "smoking ceremonies" in a similar way to the use of white sage and cedarwood in American Indian "Smudging".
This is done in conjunction with many kinds of ceremonies, to cleanse the body and spirit of "bad energies". I went to a women's conference here a few days ago, and the local elders made everyone walk through thick clouds of smoke before entering the building and beginning the conference. it is used as part of "welcome to country" greeting ceremonies nowadays before many kinds of official meetings, opening new buildings etc, to acknowledge local traditional ownership and out of respect to the ancestors....

The energy and effect of Eucalyptus is cleansing...the oil is antiseptic, dissolves mucous in clogged up airways and is also cooling...
the scent is clear and astringent, with similar notes to mint, rosemary and pine.
It's one of the most useful and commonly used of all essential oils in the average household out here. All supermarkets stock it, and it is used for everything from the traditional few drops on your pillow for colds and flu, to dissolving that annoying leftover bit of glue from labels on wine glasses.

Australians love to suck on eucalyptus lollies during winter to clear their noses and soothe sore throats...but like many essential oils, apart from the tiny amounts used in lollies, it's better inhaled than swallowed. Taken internally, it can drop blood pressure dangerously, esp in small children, so be sure to keep it out of kids reach!

My favorite eucalyptus is from a lemon scented gum, that has a tangy citrus overtone to the cooling menthol clarity....
I often combine it with things like lavender, pine and lemon oil, and add a few drops to the water I use to wash down benches or mop the floor with.
It seems to impart a lovely clarity to the air of a room, as well as being a marvelous natural disinfectant.

Wonderful stuff!

The photos below are

a) two beautiful gum trees growing in the dry creek bed of the Todd river in Alice springs and
b) a small ghost gum at Kunjurra, near Tennant Creek

Both in Central Australia

Below is the list of Guild members taking part in the My First Love project, Do check out their sites for more first love stories!

Sophia: http://africanaromatics.com/int/my-first-love/
Anya: http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-first-love-sixth-anniversary-of.html
Charna: http://www.providenceperfume.com/blogs/news/6108854-my-first-love-jasmine
Christi: http://www.matriarch.biz/blog/2012/6/My_First_Love
Elise: http://bellyflowers.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-first-love-vetiver.html
Emily: http://www.roseenbos.com/my-first-love
Isabelle: http://lesparfumsdisabelle.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/iris-root-powder-my-first-love/
JoAnne: http://joannebassett.com/natural_perfumes/2012/06/01/my-first-love/
Liz: http://oneseedperfumes.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/when-i-fell-in-love-a-npg-blogging-event/
Noelle: http://ellenoire.blogspot.ca/2012/06/my-first-love-sixth-anniversary-of.html

Monday, January 16, 2012

Joy in January

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......

One of the very first perfumes I ever made was based on an essential oil blend I used to use in Germany to stop myself from wanting to slit my wrists during the long dark miserable winters.

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!)

Otherwise you can also order samples and full size bottles of "Happiness" directly from my webstore!

Get yourself some "Happiness"!

Or post a comment below to win a sample!