Natural Perfume

Normally at this time of the year, the Natural Perfume Academy goes on a two-week break, but we don't shut down the school. This is the time of year when students mostly catch up on their assignments and ask me questions 'off the record', but this year we've shut down the site to perform a major overhaul. By 'we', I mean Ruth. I don't have the foggiest notion of how to do these things, but she's a pro. With the site shut down, I feel lost. Part of my daily routine was checking emails, orders, and courses, with the courses taking up the bulk of my morning work. Without them, my morning feels empty. Which is probably the real reason I hopped back on here - ha!

Sales at Etsy are way down this past year, and right now it's crickets and croaking frogs over there. I should actually have a stockpile of funds to get me through the sales desert of January right now, but I don't. Twenty-twenty-three has been an absolute sh*t show for retail. But I'm not complaining. Not much. The mindset is creativity and instruction rather than the sale of goods. I taught a few live classes with my friend Cher Grosse of Essential Oil Apothecary fame, and that brought in a little money. The classes were great, but the venue was changed on us midstream, so that threw us for a loop, but we managed to put on a couple of good classes. Oh, we have a FB page, and possibly soon will have a website called The Rebel Perfumers where we will offer classes, live and on Zoom. The classes cover all the fragrant art topics, from incense to enfleurage. And a podcast is coming as well. We don't live too far from one another, and it hasn't been a rare occurrence to visit one another for a few days at a time studying, setting up our calendar, drinking far too much coffee (Cher is also a master roaster, one of the few women master roasters in the US, and she operates Soul Side Coffee Company), and playing around with aromatics. Our first podcast recording is just us introducing ourselves, and if anyone tells you podcasting is easy, they're lying. It took three hours just to get a simple 30-second intro recorded. 

Evaluations are on the way. I am so far behind in the evals, it's embarrassing. It may have been a slow sales year, but it certainly hasn't been a slow year anywhere else -- I'm receiving student perfume submissions more frequently than in past years, even students who officially finished their course years ago are starting to turn in their work. I've got a long, long, long line of perfumery and incense material evaluations to conduct, and the writing, which, I'm not going to lie, is very hit-and-miss as new work comes in to distract me. I should be able to kick out a book on incense much more quickly than I am doing, but I'm doing a lot of research, and getting side-tracked by the other stuff I'm behind on. I wish I could say that my New Year's resolution is to be more organized, prioritize the work more effectively, and stick with that plan until I die, but we all know that won't happen. 

I will wrap this load of nothing info post with something useful. EOA, Essential Oil Apothecary, has brought in a few new items for evaluation -- namely, some of the most beautiful floral waxes that I have ever experienced. Cher is quickly becoming the floral wax Queen with these rare and unusual offerings.

Lavender Floral Wax ~ peppery, sweet coumarin, lush lavender, a lot-a lot like the absolute, but intensely sweet. Unbelievably intense, in-yer-face floral. Has a slight musky note way in the back. 

Clove Bud Wax ~ warm, sultry, soft clove bud without the sharp edges. This one is sexy. Those sharper notes emerge on the skin, you know the ones I'm talking about -- the notes that make you salivate and tingle. 

Black Locust Floral Wax ~ this one is a bit of an outlier. I must have sniffed it a half-a-dozen times before I realized what it reminded me of -- a helichrysum wax I received from Christopher at White Lotus Aromatics circa 2007. The black locust wax is warm and soft with slight vanilla notes and warm earthy tones. It's very unusual. The more you sniff it, the more you find, cycling through floral, sweet, earthy, warm, everlasting, softness, and on and on. 

New Frangipani Abs. ~ this, and possibly the waxes too, may not be listed on the website yet, but when all of these are, get some! Or find out if you can pre-order. The frangipani absolute is stunning -- it is fruity, floral, sweet, tropical, exotic, warm, and buttery. Simply gorgeous. 

Students from the 2023 soap class trying out strawberry rose syrup