The Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute Basic Course February 2010 is full.

 

Ah, I'm sentimental for the image I used on the old website. It was easy to visualize the international body of students gazing at this ;-)

I forgot to announce that the class was full a few weeks ago, that we had reached the class limit on the number of students  and two additional students actually got in the door after that ;-) Very interesting students, too - a medical doctor from Germany and a former Marine now working in Kuwait. It's going to be a very exciting, fast-paced course, and everyone is gearing up for the professional experience of sharing and learning the wonders of natural perfumery. In this economy, I was wondering if the class would fill up. However, as one student wrote: "I took the time to research what instructors had recognition from bloggers and great reviews for their perfumes, and your reviews and awards stood out above the rest." That made me blush, but on reflection, she's right. Why study with somebody who hasn't made perfumes that recognized by independent bloggers? I know I'd look for that criteria, too. ;-)

 

I used orchids in my rough draft for the new http://perfumeclasses.com website. There are no orchid natural aromatics, but in the bonus module, I'm going to give the students some tools to create an orchid doppelganger!

Once again I have two students from Taiwan, and the rest are from Australia, the USA and Canada. I'm busy finishing up the kits, the webmaster is tooling up the website, and the editor is putting the finishing touches on the textbook. It's all good and wonderful!

When I started teaching online natural perfumery classes (note it's perfumery, not perfume classes, since it's the actual study of many elements ;-) ) I quickly put out a Primer (that I didn't have time to edit very well) and it linked to supplemental teaching modules on the website. A Fall 2007 student offered to edit it, and that helped a lot. The two sources of information really worked rather seamlessly, which was great, proving it could blend as I had foreseen it. Several dozen successful graduates later, and I had the time to hire and work with an editor to combine the Primer and the online information into one document, and it is fabulous. Illustrated with photos and drawing, and with the forms, charts, and study sheets, it will also function for the offline students who will study on their own. I'm tweaking the offline aspect, so that version won't be available for several months.

The Moodle platform I built the original website on is obsolete and clunky, I found out. Boo, hiss Moodle! Full of bugs and slower than a horse and buggy in the turbo age, I ditched it. After conferring with several savvy webmasters, I moved the site to a new quick, easy-to-use platform and I'm delighted with it. It's beautiful, loads swiftly and is easy to edit. I also redesigned the 'architecture' behind the website, and it is just how I want it, and I'm sure the students will love it.

Back to labeling the kit aromatics. My students receive 20 undiluted and 5 diluted aromatics. I only dilute five very pricey aromatics so they can use them throughout the course. They get 4ml bottles of the aromatics, and will have the option of a supplemental sample kit from Eden Botanicals for Module 2. They'll be in 2ml bottles. There's a firm reason for providing undiluted aromatics: there is no way they're going to learn the organoleptic properties of the aromatics without experiencing the undiluted ones. They'll blend with diluted materials, after they learn how to properly dilute them in the first Module. Ah, the process I've worked out in the three previous courses really works, and I'm stoked. Can't wait to see the students in class!