Perfumery Workshop in September

Since a number of people couldn't make it to the June workshop, I'm running the same format on
 September 5th
here in my Byron Bay studio!

We're going to look at the basic way a botanical perfume is created:

 -the difference between aromatherapy and botanical perfumery
 - the different types of scented ingredients (essential oils, absolutes, CO2 extracts, alcoholic tinctures)
 -the different bases used and how to choose whether to work in oil or alcohol
 -how a perfume is actually made
 -the basics of scent design
 -what top middle and base notes are
 -how to classify different oils

  and most importantly:
 -how to evaluate individual oils to see how they will work in a perfume

As part of this,we'll be looking at a number of commonly used ingredients and I'll be talking about the botanical and aromatherapy effects of each oil, their historical and spiritual uses, as well as their qualities from a perfumers point of view.
And we will then  experiment with combining them in different ways to achieve different effects.
 The idea is to give you a real understanding of how to approach the process of creating a perfume useing botanical ingredients.

Each participant will go home with a hopefully much better understanding of the process of perfumery, notes and hints on the ingredients we've used and some little bottles of the perfume blends we've worked with to further work with at home.

The cost for the workshop is $490 which includes all of the materials used in the class and the finished blends to take home.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, send me an email at

ambrosia@perfumebynature.com.au


Or you can book your space now:

Perfumery Workshop ticket    $490

book here

Workshop: The Mystery and Magic of Perfumery

After an inspiring phone call the other morning, I'm finally going to be running the first of the promised workshops on perfumery on the 4th of July here in my Byron Bay studio!

People have been asking me for ages when I'm going to be running classes...but it's taken me a while to work out what I can actually offer.
Teaching perfumery is a BIG project.  Realistically, trying to condense my 30 years of experience into a few one day workshops just isnt possible.
But what I can do is offer lessons in where to start, and give people the opportunity to talk, ask questions, and above all to play with some of the essential ingredients and bases used in perfumery in a real perfume studio.

So that's what I'm going to do.

We're going to look at the basic way a botanical perfume is created:

 -the difference between aromatherapy and botanical perfumery
 - the different types of scented ingredients (essential oils, absolutes, CO2 extracts, alcoholic tinctures)
 -the different bases used and how to choose whether to work in oil or alcohol
 -how a perfume is actually made
 -the basics of scent design
 -what top middle and base notes are
 -how to classify different oils

  and most importantly:
 -how to evaluate individual oils to see how they will work in a perfume

As part of this,we'll be looking at a number of commonly used ingredients and I'll be talking about the botanical and aromatherapy effects of each oil, their historical and spiritual uses, as well as their qualities from a perfumers point of view.
And we will then  experiment with combining them in different ways to achieve different effects.
 The idea is to give you a real understanding of how to approach the process of creating a perfume useing botanical ingredients.

Each participant will go home with a hopefully much better understanding of the process of perfumery, notes and hints on the ingredients we've used and some little bottles of the perfume blends we've worked with to further work with at home.

The cost for the workshop is $500 which includes all of the materials used in the class and the finished blends to take home.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, send me an email at
ambrosia@perfumebynature.com.au

A perfume for Chikii

Annette, the lovely owner of the Australian online eco cosmetic store "Chikii" popped into my studio the other day for another "custom fitting" session for her new perfume!
We've been working on a signature scent for her business for a while now...and it looks as though we may finally have it!
It's such a beautiful scent...and concept...
What Annette wanted was something elegant and calming, a beautiful womanly scent that would give the wearer a sense of peace....a feeling of space, which women so desperately need in their daily busy loves in our culture!
It's based around the energy of the eastern Goddess Kwan Yin, deity of compassion and mercy. 

We've chosen some beautiful ingredients to build it with:

Neroli, the delicate queen of bitter orange flower, fresh and elegant and calming
Orange Floweritself, giving the scent a warm honey floral depth
Labdanum:  a soft woody vanilla like basenote made from the Rockrose that grows in Crete. One of my favourite ingredients as it has a sweet woody gentleness to it that is understadely supportive in a perfume....a true skin scent
And Indian Genda attar, a traditional indian oil distilled from marigold flowers. This is the rarest ingredient in the perfume, as it is incredibly difficult to come by real traditionaly made natural indian attars nowadays. You can buy cheap fake copies in any indian knick knack shop, but the real thing is rare and costly...and I've been lucky enough to be able to source some of the real thing. It adds a lovely green,

exotic and magical element to the scent...... It's going to be one of the most elegant perfumes I've ever created. Such a beautiful soft, understated floral....I'm totally in love with it! It reminds me of jade...cool, soothing, strong and yet gentle at the same time....

Adventures in Gardenia Enfleurage

Gardenia Macadamia oil Enfleurage

One of my experimental projects this year was in the making of Gardenia Enfluerage. As some of you know, a few years back I managed to track down a small amount of real Gardenia absolute, and made a small batch of a perfume I called "My Gardenia". Which sold out. And to my horror, the supply I had for the absolute dried up and there has been no more to be found ever since!
And I was living out in the bush in Nimbin, norther NSW Australia near a rather large crop of organic gardenias...
So I thought I'd have a go at seeing if I could actually extract the scent myself.
And not wanting to muck around with toxic solvents out in the bush, I decided to try "Enfleurage".
This technique was developed in France a century or so ago, and it involves covering glass plates with a solid oil or fat and laying the petals on them over and over again...each time waiting for up to 24 hours till the scent from the flowers has infused into the fat, and then replacing them with new flowers until the fat has become thoroughly saturated with scent.

gardenia coconut enfleurage

Now the problems I faced were many fold. For starters the Gardenia flowers needed to be picked at exactly the right time of day when the scent was strongest. I started off picking them in the morning, but quickly realized the scent was far stronger in the evening. Which meant making sure I was home at the right time to be able to pick them before it got too dark to see both the flowers and any stray snakes that might be slithering around (remember this was right out in the Australian bush). Then it rained and there was no point picking wet flowers as you need them to be as dry as possible while still young and fresh. Then I found out that the bushes were growing right over the nest of a particularly unfriendly form of jumping ant. But eventually, dressed in jeans tucked into sturdy hiking boots and a long sleeved shirt I managed to harvest enough flowers for the first run (with only a small number of ant bites).
Back in the mountain chalet, I hit the next hurdles. Australia is hot in summer. Very hot. And where I was living there was no air conditioning. So any of the fats I tried simply melted off the glass within about 15 minutes.
So I decided to simply immerse the flowers in the melted oil in jars...
Which worked...but I discovered after the first 4 batches failed that I had to immensely careful about timing. If the flowers were left in the oil for too long, first the water content would begin to seep into the oil, and then the whole melange would begin to ferment in the heat. the french instructions of 24 hours were definitely too long!
It was more like a couple of hours with the jars being left in a nice cool spot of the stone floor!
The first batch I did was in coconut. Which worked...but the smell of the coconut was very strong and tended to over power the gentle delicate gardenia, and I was trying to get a strong pure gardenia note all of it's own for my perfume....
So I ended up using a beautiful scentless locally produced macadamia oil which is light and beautiful, plus being environmentally friendly as it's produced in the same hills.
I ran into the same scent strength versus fermentation timing problem over and over....the oil would go from a lovely clear jar full of glowing white flowers dancing in suspension...to a cloudy yellow tinged mess with a distinct fruity smell overpowering the delicate floral gardenia. Which was particularly heart breaking if it was the 4th of 5th run of new petals in a jar.
In the end I ended up with a mere half 500mls of perfect clear delicately scented Gardenia oil! About half of which I have decided to share with my perfumer friends...the other half will be further transformed into "My Gardenia" perfume oil.
So if you'd like to have your own share in this olfactory adventure:

click to buy some Gardenia Enfleurage

perfume questions on ABC radio

 ABC radio rang me the other day to ask if I'd be willing to answer a few questions about perfumery on their afternoon random questions show...."can you bruise perfume by rubbing your wrists together?", "what are perfume notes", "which are the best places to wear perfume?",
And nerve wracking it was too....there I was pacing up and down the courtyard in front of my shop trying to hold the mobile phone steady in my shaking hands...
Hope you enjoy it!