A Scented Adventure - Frolicking in Anya's Garden of Perfume

Thank you, Donna Hathaway, for the lovely reviews posted today on Perfume Smelling Things

How do you choose a perfumery instructor?

I've rewritten some of the homepage for my online natural perfumery course at Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute, and I've added some Q & A about how to choose an instructor. Not many potential students knew who I was, or my credentials before I began teaching online in 2007, but I had some independently-reviewed perfumes to my credit, and five years of helping aspiring perfumers for free in the Yahoo group I host. I also had about 15 years of experience with a perfume line - Anya's Tropical Essences - and both private label and custom perfume creation.

I'll soon be admitting students year-round, due to the high demand for a place in the class. After I cut off the registration in February, more than a dozen students wrote in the week following that, and, at first I was going to begin a new semester in October 2010, but after speaking with other veteran online instructors, am going to allow the open admittance policy.

Here are some of the benefits of my online perfumery course:

• There are no prerequisites
• Study with an award-winning perfumer who has seven years experience mentoring perfumers
• Sign up at any time, start your studies immediately
• Take up to one year to complete your studies, and stay enrolled for one additional year
• Coursework based on the methods and techniques of French perfumery schools
• Have 24-hour access to the online course
• Study anywhere - even on vacation
• Network with students from around the world
• Have access to the website and chat group for one year after studies finish.
• Ask questions in the forum of the instructor and receive answers within 24 hours 
• Six professionally-designed and edited Modules, plus a Bonus Module
• Recorded lectures
• Online fun perfumery quizzes, hundreds of books and articles and more......

Ask The Perfumer - Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Just a reminder to everyone - post your questions to me in this thread.

Anya's Garden Perfumes MoonDance and Fairchild Reviewed on Cafleurebon

I created this graphic collage for Fairchild Perfume when it was released.

When I remember back to 2005 and the resistance among perfumistas to natural perfumes, I can only smile at how we're being accepted now by mainstream perfume reviewers. As many on the forums say "I don't care now if a perfume is natural or contains synthetics, I only want a perfume to smell beautiful."

Mark Behnke, who writes for Cafleurebon and Basenotes, and who has reviewed 500 perfumes in his career, is definitely someone who keeps an open mind about natural perfumes. I am truly awed by the power my first release, Fairchild, had over him. I'm so happy it brought back memories of walks with his father in Fairchild Gardens, which was the real world place I based this perfume upon.

The other review on Cafleurebon today is by Rodney Hughes, a Professional Perfumer in the Natural Perfumers Guild. Rodney creates gorgeous perfumes himself, and imagine my surprise when he declared my MoonDance perfume "his lover". Wow!

You can read the reviews here:


http://www.cafleurebon.com/the-fragrances-of-anyas-garden-part-1/

and

http://www.cafleurebon.com/anyas-garden-part-2-fairchild-memories-of-my-grandfather/ 

And many thanks to Michelyn Camen for making Cafleurebon a reality, a salon where lovers of high-quality, artistic perfumes can gather.

"Ask the Perfumer" - a Feature of Anya's Garden Perfumes - Sunday, May 16, 2010

Hi Everyone:

I'll be here for questions about perfumery until 9PM EST USA tonight. I've had to put the blog on moderated comment status because of Chinese spam, so there may be a delay between your posting your question and me OKing it for the blog.

Anya's Garden Perfumes RiverCali and Temple Reviewed on the Savvy Thinker blog

Karin of Savvy Thinker has reviewed two of my perfumes, RiverCali and Temple and she will be reviewing the rest over the next week. Thanks so much Karin. It sounds like Temple really reached you. It's my aromatherapy perfume, the only one in my line, created with the intent to calm, restore and bring peace to the wearer.

"Ask the Perfumer" - a Feature of Anya's Garden Perfumes - May 9, 2010

Hi Everyone:

Hope you're all having a nice Mother's Day - and if you have an questions about perfumery, just post your question and I'll answer them.

The Solution for the Perfume Crossword Puzzle of Apr. 28th

Here's the solution for the perfume crossword of the other day. In the future, I'll try other ways to post the puzzle, maybe with the questions shown in a sidebar, or add the ability to print it out and work on it on paper.

"Ask the Perfumer" - a Feature of Anya's Garden Perfumes - May 2, 2010

Just a reminder to everyone - post your questions to me tomorrow, Sunday, May 2, 2010 in this thread.

When you have a head for perfume.....

...................when you have a head for perfume, it shows! My $5 score at an antique store today.
She is officially Ms. PerfumeHead. Funny thing is I've been thinking about the phrase PerfumeHead a lot lately, probably due to the influence of Natural Perfumers Guild member Aromahead, and I just registered the domain. I guess I'll just build a fun little domain around her. Maybe stories of perfumeheads. Oh, I'm in a silly mood!

FTR, she's 5" tall. Probably pewter. No labels on the base.

Here she's vamping with some just-picked peach-scented frangipanis from the garden.

I just had the background clipped out: