Parfum


A few things occurred to me over the past weekend: 1) I am about 97.37321% obsessed with perfume making, and 2) I hide that fact in my everyday, here life. Why? I guess for the same reasons I'm not chasing down Sniffa reps and prostrating myself before them for a review, or sending umpteen gazillion samples to a single blogger so I can be rated an accomplished and acclaimed NBP. Homey don't play that . . . very . . . well.

But I do admit that I have to step up my game. And so I have. A few samples of my unaccomplished and unacclaimed fabulous perfumes are now, as I write, jetting off to be sniffed by honest, hard-working perfumistas. If this is how it's got to be done, then by golly, I guess I'll do it! Watch out perfume sniffin' world, another pesky bell ringing NBP is on her way! And I need to talk about it more here at home -- not my house home -- my city home. There are a few places I can do free seminars and drum up some interest locally. Another out-of-my-comfort-zone project on the not too distant horizon.

'Nuff of that. After hours, literally hours and hours, of editing and reformatting, adding and removing photographs, and a whole bunch of other stuff, mostly to do with FONT sizes 'n' such, the workbook is finally --- finally! done. Well, not really done done, that'll never happen -- the last time I went in for a major edit, I expanded the original puny primer by 88 pages to a full-on workbook. Why? Because questions demand answers, that's why. Once the NNAPA course got going, I was fielding questions for which the primer had no answers, so I decided to put those subjects (q&a) into the workbook. This next course will demand the same, so next year's workbook will be expanded yet again. Until it no longer qualifies as a beginner's tool and becomes a comprehensive beginning to advanced (accomplished/acclaimed/award winning/boy, aren't you just the sh*t?!) workbook.

Remember a few months back I promised to do a little labdanum lab and share the results here? I'm to do the project with a sniff'a, not a mak'a of perfume, one of my partners in perfumed crime, Ms. T -- well, maybe that'll happen sometime after the beginning of the new course as ahm booked! Got a soap primer to write, and a soap class to teach, and then there's that online thing . . . and maybe planning a little perfumed tea party for the locals scheduled for some time in the fall . . . so that labdanum lab will probably be squeezed in between early summer and early fall. But I'm going to get the jump on it and share a little something about that creticus -- it isn't as gorgeous as I'd hoped it would be, BUT, not to put it down or anything, it works into perfume beautifully. When you sniff it compounded with other aromatics, you can't distinguish it as labdanum, it just melds into the compound and creates a subtle, sweet, slightly resinous ambery push. I'm wearing some on my wrist and it's almost like a perfume alone, multi-faceted. Okay, I take it back, it is pretty gorgeous!

The other afternoon I was testing perfumes on my wrists, stuff I'm working on, and I had the resident schnozzes take a sniff, and my son, the 21-going-on-22 dude said, "It smells like you, mom." I asked him to define what he'd just said, because clearly I wasn't getting it, and he said, "You smell like a stew pot of everything you make all the time, even when you don't put on perfume, you still smell like you're wearing it. Just your skin, though, your clothes smell like nothing." I don't know if I should be upset or happy about that. I remember my older not-living-at-home boys saying that to me, that my scent reminds them of home, and my scent is distinguishable from the air around me. And I rarely put on perfume. Usually only to test it. And it's always something different, so how is it I smell like what they're talking about all the time?

I guess it's better than smelling like cow pies.

Comments

  1. Congrats on finishing the workbook. As a proud owner of some of your perfume creations, I am exicted to hear your are stepping up your game. I know you are great, now get out there and share it with the rest of the world. :) BTW, I am down to the last few drops of my custom EDT- very sad indeed :(

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  2. Awwww! Thanks so much for this!

    I still have the formulary for that edt, y'know :)

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  3. yes,better than smelling like cow pies indeed!. my son likes to say "i love you because you smell so nice" and i usually have some of your or another LPR perfumer's fragrance on!
    thanks for making that possible!
    ~lisa

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  5. You're welcome Lisa. I love when our kids "notice" those things about us. I'm thrilled you're "into" the LPR perfumer's perfumes! They're a great bunch.

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  6. Homey gots to spread the word! Your work is amazing and more people need to know about it. I'll do my part! :-)

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  7. Hahahahaha! That's hysterical!

    Thanks for helping me out.

    xo

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  8. I love being unacclaimed and unaccomplished. I mean I really adore it.

    For starters, it makes it almost impossible for me to get egg on my face unless I'm doing an oatmeal facial. Because there are no fronts to maintain or keep up, no airs to put on, and I get to inhabit a bluster-free zone 24/7. Oh, that is heady stuff.

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  9. See? See, now that's where I get worried -- the self-proclamations announcing "I'm all that and a bag 'o' chips" and then people whispering what an ass I am behind my back, and worse, that my perfume is junk. If I don't have to buy it or beg for it, I figure it's as legit as it's going to get.

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  10. What I mean by begging, because it occurred to me that some people might assume that asking and having the request accepted is begging -- it ain't. Begging is when you ask, are put off and ask again, are told no and ask again, or come back later and ask again and again -- I have first-hand intimate knowledge of this begging stuff, y'know, being that I have what? Six kids? Yeah, six kids, a dog and five cats. Begging is rampant up in here :)

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  11. Oh, begging is an artform in my household, from the cats to the chickens and back again... Offering up samples to perfume nuts is way different from soliciting reviews from possibly indifferent samplers. I'm a firm believer that the people who are straightforward and honest about their intentions and art are the ones who remain when others fall by the wayside.

    If I had to say I was all that and a bag o' chips, too, well, that'd be the first sign that all is not well. I'll say it in jest because I don't take myself very seriously, but it's not intended as street cred.

    Anyway, how long have you been at this? And you're selling more perfume now, yes? There ya go...

    And aren't you the sh*t, you've got that beautiful primer and a course to teach :) Your students are so very lucky.

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  12. Yeah, you're right, I am only offering the perfume samples for review up to legitimate perfume lovers. Of the three or four I've asked, none but one has refused, and that was because she's a direct competitor! I'd forgotten that little fact when I initially asked.

    I don't take myself too seriously either, but I do want all my hard work to pay off, and it is, slowly but surely :)

    xo

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  13. J, thanks for letting me know that you held onto the fomulary and did not toss it into the garbage declaring, "Thank Goodness, that is over!" Lol, jk ;) It is such beautiful perfume that just gets better as it ages. I still have some of the perfume strength sample remaining. I also maintain that I got the deal of the century on that item.

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  14. Oh, no, Melis, that was one of the fun ones! I love ambers. It was a joy to work on, really :)

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