Pan's Midsummer Night Dream

I recently took part in a wonderful perfume competition, "A Midsummer Nights Dream" run by the lovely Amanda Feeley from  Essentual Alchemy. The idea was to create a perfume inspired by William Shakespear's play. The perfumes were then sent to a number of different perfume reviewers.
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:)

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!

Thoughts on Natural Perfume Design

The Mystery of Musk project has given me much food for thought...especially about the challenges we face designing with naturals.
So I thought I'd share a few of them with you....

Botanical or Natural Perfumery is very different from conventional perfumery.
There is the more obvious point that we use natural ingredients as opposed to the artificial chemicals used in modern perfumer laboratories of course. And this tends to lend a depth and beauty to natural perfumes that simply can't ever be fully recreated by artificial ingredients....
But it also has a number of unique challenges that many newcomers to the art don't realize are there at first.  Keep in mind that these are my own observations from over 20 years of fiddling with natural scent ingredients...and they are my own opinions, which may differ greatly from what you will read in some of the books out there. There are many different approaches, and different things work for different people. Hopefully this will inspire some more discussion on the various perfumeing lists!

Complexity:
One of the biggest ones is that each ingredient used in botanical perfumery, is actually already a complete scent all in itself.
Each essential oil or absolute, is an extract of an incredibly complex botanical scent creation, custom designed by Ma Nature to entice and delight the senses of an incredible array of insects and mammals.
Modern perfume chemistry started by attempting to copy Mother Natures ingenious complexity, primarily for money reasons. It is far cheaper to create an artificial copy made with individual chemical components, than to obtain say rose otto by the time honoured process of growing the flowers, harvesting them, useing the time and tons of flower petal consuming process of enfleurage to then obtain only a few kilos of the precious substance....
But the chemical version is never as good. Ma Natures masterpiece is simply to complex and clever to be fully re-created.
But the challenge in natural perfumery comes from this very complexity.
In the over 20 years I've been playing with natural perfumes, I've mixed so many blends that looked lovely on paper...but that turned out to be muddy, unpleasant or even downright nasty messes once I'd actually combined the ingredients! And there's very good reasons for this:

When you start to blend say rose otto and jasmine absolute, you are combining not one or two scent molecules, but what amounts to two incredibly complex and complete perfumes!
Think about this for a minute......
Each time you add another natural ingredient to the mix, you add not one note, but a complete complex array of hundreds of scent layers, each with the potential to harmonise or clash with any of the other hundreds of scent layers already at play in the mix!
It's a bit like playing ultra-multi dimensional chess.
You have to understand and somehow keep in your mind, each of the many many scent layers each indivisual oil or extract is made up of, and see how they will combine and work with each other.
Add to that that once the ingredients are combined, they go through a further chemical combining process, and often change quite substantially as they interact with each other.
I've lost count of how many times I'd created something that smelled lovely...only to come back to it after a week or so to find that it had somehow morphed into something 'orrible!
The reverse can sometimes also be true of course, and sometimes you accidentaly create a beautiful scent that was not at all what you originally had in mind...But usually it's the lovely turning into crap that happens.

Top Middle and Base Note classification
This is one of the primary ways that scents are classified and designed nowadays. You will find mention of the concept in most perfume reviews and technical perfumery handbooks. and even the books on I have found on Natural perfumery contain lists that attempt to place all of the imany essential oils and absolutes we use in one of these three categories.

The problem with this (in my experience), is that it simply doesn't work.
As I said before, each and every ingredient we use in botanical perfumery, is in itself a complete perfume creation, with top base and middle notes all of it's own.
Some of course contain predominantly top notes, others more base notes, but this in itself is not enough information to be able to work with it. Realistically you need to understand and know the various top middle and base notes that each ingredients contains so you can marry them to the appropriate combination of top, middle and base notes that make up the other essential oils or absolutes you are useing.

Designing with Accords
This is another concept that is basic to conventional perfume design. The idea is to first create perfume notes or "accords", such as "Green grass", "Oriental" or "White Flowers" and then combine them to create a Smokey, Oriental perfume with a White Flower heart.
Sounds good eh? Trouble is, it often doesn't work. Once you have combined the three accords, you suddenly end up with either a muddy mess, or completely new sharp nasty notes sticking out at various layers which don't seem to have been present in the original individual accords!

There's two reasons for this:
Firstly with creating an accord. If you go back to what I wrote further up about complexity, you can see the difficulty this presents. Of course it's not impossible, but it can be a very involved and trial and error process.
And there are many "notes" that are close to impossible to create, simply becuase the individual ingredients are so complex that you cannot create anything "pure". For instance, I crave "Green Grass", which was a perfume oil favourite of mine as a teenager. You cannot buy "Grass" essential oil, and tincturing it doesn't seem to give you a real "grass" scent". And I have not been able to find a combination of other naturals that gets anywhere near the fresh cut grass scent I'm searching for. (At this point of course any number of other natural perfumers may chime in and tell me I'm wrong...I'm hoping they do! And that they will be nice enough to tell me how!!)
But it's a good example of the problem.
Realistically, you have to work with interesting notes, that do not fit clearly in any simple category because they are simply too complex to resemble any one clear note or accord. Your "White Flowers" may have many other subnotes to it that are neither white, nor very flowery...but still really pretty overall.

The second stage of the problem comes when you start to combine the accords you have created.

 Taking the White Flowers accord idea, once you combine it with another accord, you may well find that the woody acrid note that was originally just barely perceptabley in the the background, has suddenly become a totally in your face blast of burnt plastic. This will have happened because it ganged up with another sweet plastic note from the oriental blend that you didnt even know was there! Or maybe the slightly decomposing background note in the Green Grass accord that just added that touch of "natural" when you created it!
Often it would be just one oil or absolute that was destroying the plan...but the sheer number and complexity of the ingredients would make it almost impossible to track down which one it was.

I started out working with accords, but in the end I took a few steps back, and nowadays will usually add ingredients one by one, and take detailed notes on the effect they have on the overall mix. Which means I end up with a whole collection of trial blends of the various layers and stages of each perfume in tiny bottles!
My latest creation for the Mystery of Musk project is a perfect example! It's various stages fill up a whole shelf all on their own, not to mention the myriad of tables, notes and scribblings I wrote in the process.
(If you're interested in hearing more about this,  Monica Miller of Skye Botanicals will be writing more about the trials and errors in the botanical perfumeing adventure soon!)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading a bit about how I approach botanical perfumery....(And yes, I am writing a book on the subject...I'll be posting more bits and thoughts as it grows!)

Happy Sniffing!

Mystery of Musk-Craving Reviews as Art

Well, this competition is becoming more and more interesting. First there was the incredible challenge of trying to create a decent natural musk perfume in a tight time limit, then the fascinating experience of smelling what everyone else had come up with...
And now the feedback!
What amazes me is the artwork being created by the perfume reviewers! They are writing poems, creating slide views of visual artworks they find reminiscent of the scents, and now even creating completely new paintings of their impressions! I'm just in awe!

This lovely watercolour was painted by Pat Borow, 

who publishes her thoughts on a lovely blog "Olfactorama"

She writes: "First impression? Chocolate. Deep, dark and rich. With incense underneath. An opium den of a scent. Well named, too: who doesn’t crave chocolate? And one or two other things?

The perfumer, Ambrosia, has created this elixir out of essences usually used in bases. She lists them as Hyraceum (a cruelty-free animal product), two kinds of vetiver, aoudh, ambrette seed and Australian sandalwood.

If made in an oil base, I think this would make the best massage oil for lovers on earth. Unisex, dark, sensual, a perfect Valentine’s Day gift.

I did this painting with cravings in mind. I thought it was just a vessel, with an incense burner heart, but when I was photographing it, my husband said, “It’s a face. A surreal face.” This is not an image for the timid. “Craving” is not a fragrance for them, either." 

Lisa BTB of "The Blossoming Tree" writes:

There's a thin line between confidence and conceit. Even the most confident person may take a step back away from Craving, giggling before finally building up enough nerve to try it. This perfume makes a bold statement and anyone wearing it better be ready to walk the walk. Craving announces "I am here! Let the fun begin!" This potent potion opened with a boozy kick that caused me to draw my head back. It teased my nose with a hint of chocolate before giving in to a delicious cocoa delight and buttery caramel. Honestly, I'm not a fan of gourmand fragrances but Craving has captured my attention. It is rich and decadent bringing out the wild side. It is warm and honey sweet demanding closeness. Craving is beyond enchanting, beyond seductive. With notes of cocoa liquor, roasted nuts, Australian sandalwood, vetyver, ambrette seed, oud and hyraceum, it is lusciously hypnotic.

one word: Lust

Mimi Gardenia from Basenotes absolutely made my day with her stunning review: 

"The name of this fragrance is very fitting …believe me. An immediate question came to my mind. "Can I stop sniffing this fragrance long enough to write something intelligent about it?"

 Occasionally, you meet and sniff a scent that you connect with because it reaches subliminal levels. Craving is one of those. (I wonder if there are any pheromones in here…………) Although this fragrance is so open, embracing, gives up many of its olfactory secrets easily and comfortably – what is the X factor that makes it undeniably addictive, attractive and compelling?  

Craving is the aroma that reminds you of all that was and is good in your world.  

As the perfumer has said…there are no top notes, no flowers, no chypre notes. This is ‘honest to God’ goodness. It strips away all the frivolities and gets down to the serious business of just smelling ‘damned good’. So there is all this gourmand love goodness playing on my skin, around me and the musk just enhances all of it. Discreet and supportive of the entire fragrance . It increases the sexiness and takes Craving to deeper levels again. Subliminal, subliminal, subliminal and delicious.

An immediately intimate gourmand the scent is rounded, chewy, warm, butter cream, amber -deliciousness and that wonderful aromatic cocoa .It’s chocolate vanilla nutty goodness – rich and complete decadence. Dense, smokey –sweet with purring musk . Quite a linear fragrance, the aroma is long, powerful and deep. It’s never overpowering but satisfyingly lasting. As time goes by, hints of smoke, honey and sweet wood liquor arise. There is allure and passion in this. The sillage from this is surely heaven-like.
“You are not the food that I need,
you are the nourishment of my soul……” A Wedding Vow
Craving is deeply good especially if you have a sweet tooth. Inhaling this perfume is like savoring an excellent piece of artisan chocolate praline or the memory of sharing an intimate evening in front of a fire with only chocolate, toffee, roasted nuts and sweet wine for sustenance.
Craving is love, warmth, embraces, passion, desire, emotion, comfort, sex, lust , good memories and the making of memories to come. I love this perfume. It has Soul."





And Skye Miller from Cafleurbon has written a poem that is just....wow!

It’s happening again
the craving
craving the blessed boy
it’s a chemical reaction
no one can understand
a biological impulse
that sets fire to my insides
it’s the craving
craving the blessed boy
the sweet animal musk of his hair
curling around his ear
and the hazelnut scent of his sun warmed skin
butterfly kisses
barely touching
eyelashes against his cheek
my blessed boy
yes, its happening again
the craving
I’m craving my blessed boy
his tongue that drips with honey and caramel
I could never get enough
And his penetrating eyes the color of dark chocolate
Telling of a world that I will never understand
Of Kings and Princes
Magical mountains with snow capped peaks
And a struggle for life
He cannot express
To a woman from a different world
My blessed boy
I’m craving my blessed boy
It’s happening again
The familiar fire The craving
Remembering
The vetiver grass mats wafting their scent
without thought or guile
through the window breeze
remembering
the dark chocolate of his eyes
looking into mine
remembering
the honey drip of his tongue
with deep wet kisses
remembering
the sweet caramel of his lips
pressed against the softness of mine
remembering
the warm hazelnut scent of his skin
On that blessed blessed night with blessed boy…

 

The Mystery of Musk-Craving

The Mystery of Musk
"Craving"

Well, here it finally is. My personal Musk offering to the Perfume World.
To celebrate the 8th anniversary of the Natural Perfumers Guild, they are running a competition amongst us renegade Natural Perfumers to see what we can come up with in the way of Natural Musk Perfumes.
(see my post on the Mystery of Musk Competition) .
The whole undertaking has excited and terrified me all the way through in equal measure...the whole concept of creating a perfume under a very short time limit, to be submitted to a panel of people who spend their lives reviewing perfumes from the most famous perfume houses in the world...

Why am I doing this to myself?
How could I possibly think I could do this?

I have been through so many different versions, cried, torn my hair out, obsessed over little bottles with smelly sticky substances and finally ended up with one large bottle of deep chestnut coloured glass clear liquid sitting on my workbench.
It sits there glinting in the late afternoon sun like some kind of mysterious alchemical liqour....which I suppose it is really....

It's a Gourmand Perfume...a perfume that combines all the things I love and crave.....Cuddles, Sex....and Food.

It's got all the animalistic base notes you'd hope to find in a decent musk perfume, with middle notes of warm roasted hazelnuts, sweet caramel and dark sultry cocoa liquor.
OK, so I'm a food head. I can remember someone asking me years ago wether I prefer Sex or Food...and I honestly couldn't say!
My idea of a perfect afternoon involves lot's of sexy nakedness...pheromones and wild passion....with intervals of chocolate cake, roasted nuts and more......
Hey, why not make it perfect and combine them both?!

So that's EXACTLY what I've done with my perfume!

There is however even olfactory method to my madness:
Cocoa absolute to my nose is one of the sexiest base notes in perfumery..it has a deep bittersweet magic to it that hits you right in the groin....roasted nuts too give off one of those smells that give you that warm, safe at home in the kitchen kind of feeling...and caramel, while sweet, has a smokey honey depth to it that is very very sexy....

So what are the other ingredients you're probably wondering at this stage?

Well, right at the very base, you have the King of natural musk ingredients: Hyraceum. this wonderful stuff has an incredible lions den kinda musky funk that is SO King of the Wild! And on top of that, it's one of the very few enviromentally friendly cruelty free animal musks you can get! On it's own it just hits you in the face like...well, just like a well slept and mated in lions den I guess....but in "Craving", there's just enough to give you that sense of "Gee, I'm an animal at heart" at the very base of the scent to make it "Real".
With it, you find 2 kinds of Vetiver, Queen of the herbal root aphrodisiacs. Sexy, Smokey, sultry and deep.....
Costly Oud, worth more in weight than Gold, traded by the Arabian Empires for hundreds of years and still famous throughout the world for it's mysterious and sophisticated magic.
Ambrette Seed, gentle and subtle, and undeniably the clostest thing to the chemical counterparts you nowadays find in musk perfumes...It's one of my favourite ingredients, buttery soft with a deep sandalwood touch that develops only once applied to the skin....
Australian Sandalwood, grown in sustainable plantations in my favourite country, deep woody and buttery smooth with just enough bite to give it a bit of a kick...
There's more of course, but these are the dominant musk notes in the Potion.

It's turned out to be an interesting perfume. No top notes as such, no floral notes, or fruits, no fancy ozones or clever chypres or other fancy things.....instead a deep, sultry brew of warmth and yumminess....
You start off with the mouthwatering scent of the roasted nuts, warmed with honey and caramel, and then it goes deeper and the Vetiver and bitter Chocolate rise to embrace you.....and as the scent warms to your skin, the animal musk that is so close to your own begins to spread over you.....

It's one of the sexiest scents I've ever made. Yet at the same time it's almost subtle, clinging close to your skin, a private scent, shared only with those who snuggle close enough to become entranced by it.....
I put on a jacket yesterday, that I had been wearing 3 days ago while I was working on the perfume...and was immediately enveloped in the scent again....

It's been a long journey to here. 21 (yes, twenty one! I counted!) different musk versions, until I finally almost had it...but there was an acrid bynote to it I just couldn't get rid of no matter what I added to soften it down. And it was only a week ago that I finally worked out what the problem was! Which meant making up a whole new batch minus the offending substance! (It was actually one of the more expensive Oud extracts believe it or not!)

Will others like it too?
that remains to be seen...at the moment 30 little bottles are winging their way accross the ocean into the waiting arms of 18 perfume critics and 12 other proffesional perfumers.

And if I think about this too much I'll start biting my nails all over again....

Creating a perfume for a Faerie part 2

The process of custom designing a Scent is a complex challenge....and one of my favourite things to do in the whole world! I think my approach is a bit different to that of many other perfumers, because I combine a number of different arts and disciplines...
First and foremost of course, you want to create a perfume that the perfume who has commissioned it will love. So you look for scent notes that the person likes. But beyond that, to create the "perfect" scent, I want to know more about the person I am creating for, so I can match the ingredients I use to their personalities.
Being a visual artist as well, I tend to associate different scents with different colours, so I often look at the persons favourite colours and the clothes they wear for inspiration too. My whole workshop is actually colour coded, and it never ceases to fascinate me how accurately you can translate one sense to the other....Music, food preferences, whether a person prefers the forest, quiet meadows or the bustle of busy cities, all of these things for me form a pattern that is the unique fingerprint of a person...and it is this unique pattern that I look for when I'm creating a perfume for them....And once I have a feeling for this pattern, you can then work with your client to find which aspects of the pattern they want to accentuate, which parts of themselves they would like to strengthen, maybe hidden sides they would like to bring out into the open....
Or maybe they want a complimentary note, something wild to inspire them...or something soothing and calming to help them to relax....
So the secret is to marry what the person wants to be surrounded by, to who they are.....

When Helen Wells asked me to create a perfume for her, my first inspiration was the woman herself.
Helen is a delightful Fey creature, small in stature with delicate elfin features.....the clothing she wears are as artistic as her beautiful paintings: Long Victorian style skirts and bodices in earthy browns, burnt orange and red....soft comfortable natural materials. Her paintings are also an incredible insight into her being: detailed, exquisite and always highlighting something special, brave and strong in each of her subjects....
While I was speaking to Helen about her Perfume, the very first thing that came to mind was Mimosa.
It's a perfume ingredients that has fascinated me for some time. The flower itself has such a "Will'O the Whisp" quality about it...delicate, intricate and amazingly beautiful...mimosa blossoms always remind me of Dandelion fluff...but it's elegant Dandelion fluff, designed by a Fairy artisan, with intricate colouring and cleverly designed architectural features.....The scent of Mimosa is just as special: It is soft and floral, gently elegant with a distinct honey like depth to it...much like Helen herself.
Helen sent me a detailed answer to the perfume questionnaire I send out to all custom design clients...it was a joy to read, and part of why I love custom design so much...it's a bit like being invited into the persons private sitting room, where you get to know and appreciate the person....a bit like a private portraiture sitting.
And from this perfume brief, I then began to construct her Scent:

"I want the essence of my inner self to be expressed in a scent.
The essence that I want to bring forward is this:
My womanhood and passion for life. I want to feel safe, confident and uplifted, inspired and hopeful in facing my life. To celebrate the fact I am a woman, one who is sexy, wise, strong and gentle - flowing with life’s current. A hint of fun and cheekiness would suit me also."

The gorgeous Mimosa needed a more solid base to hold it, and Helen had requested "Something that would make her feel "like a woman, and also safe, confident". I found a lovely deep incense resin accord that echoed the honey like depth in the mimosa, and accentuated some of the elegant floral notes even further... the ingredients also had the added therapeutic effect from an aromatherapy point of view, of being both calming and grounding as well as aphrodisiac, which was exactly the effect Helen was looking for.
To give the perfume another level, I then added some exquisite Orange Flower absolute.
Now this to me is one of the Queens of floral notes. It fascinates me because it has a quirkiness to it that gives it a surprising and unique character, along with an incredibly feminine beauty and again, a sweet honey like depth...which married perfectly to the honey in both the mimosa and the incense resin base accord.

So what we now had was a gentle, exquisitely feminine perfume with sweet, honey and incense depths which was also unusual and interesting, without being loud or brash in any way.
I think it is one of the most beautiful scents I have ever created....and it is entirely due to the guidance of Helen herself.

It was such a joy to be invited to paint a scented picture of such a lovely person!
I couldn't resist creating a custom label for the perfume. For me, the packaging of the perfume is just as important as the content: The visual beauty is part of the experience of the perfume!
So I "borrowed" the latest of Helen's beautiful paintings off her website and printed a special label for her "Faerie" perfume!



If this has sparked your interest and you'd like to know more about custom designed perfumes, you can email me at info@perfumebynature.com.au