Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Happy Fourth of July to my USA readers!  Any perfumery questions on this lazy, fun weekend? Someone wrote me during the week they want to continue the labdanum discussion.  Short answer:  you can't call your perfume a botanical perfume if it has animal essence in it, including labdanum.  Natural perfume is a recognized, true representation of what you should call your perfume.

Natural Perfumers Guild Associates Francesca and Kate of Pacific Perfumes were rewarded for making the long trip from New Zealand to NYC because they just won the International Green Packaging award at the HBA Global Expo http://www.hbaexpo.com/ !  The award was for their new Artisan line, which is all natural perfume.  I know Guild member Michelyn Camen the EiC of Cafleurebon loves their perfumes and she's meeting with them on Thursday.  I can't wait for the interview/report! http://www.facebook.com/PacificPerfumes http://pacificperfumes.co.nz to get a look at the packaging.

Hi Everyone!  I'm back from a semi-vacation, a staycation I think it's called, but I'm still refreshed and ready to answer your questions.  The growing season is in full bloom in most parts of the world, and if you have any fragrant plants sending out their beautiful scents now, or will soon, and want to extract their scent, ask away. Or, maybe you have another question about perfumery.  I'll be here, on and off, until 10 or so EST.

Hi Everyone: Taking a vacation for a few weeks, keep those perfume-related questions on hold, and I'll answer them when I get back.

Shall we continue the discussion on isolates?  A few posts came in last week after the forum was closed, and I received some private emails, also.  Of course, feel free to ask anything you wish, I'm just inviting the other folks to post here.

Twenty Guild members are joining me in pulling out the stopper, uncorking the stories of our natural perfumery paths. Like effervescent top notes, our stories are released, ticking our memories and sharing them as they waft out over the Internet.  I hope you love reading all of the fragrant bios as much as I do.  Links to their blogs are at the bottom of this post.  Enjoy! I grew up thinking all fragrances were natural: flowers, gasoline, floor cleaner, deodorant, lightening bugs, hairspray, dirt, and particularly, perfumes. As a child I sniffed everything, and I dabbed myself with perfumes with wild abandon. I was lucky that I grew up two blocks away from the biggest public park in the world, Fairmont Park in Philadelphia.  It gave a bucolic respite from the row houses and tiny yards of the tightly-packed streets where I lived.  The street where I grew up in Philadelphia, two blocks from Fairmont Park. Memories of roses, boxwood, iris flowers flood me as...

We're going to have a fun inter-Guild blogging event tomorrow, June 1st, to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the Guild. 21 Guild members are participating, and we're going to share our stories of our path to natural aromatics and natural perfumery. It should be a run read, clicking from member blog to member blog and taking in the bios of the members. I'm really looking forward to it! The Guild has many benefits associated with membership, from networking with others in the community to discounts on raw materials, educational programs, group buys and much more. Next week we're having an Online Marketing chat with the perfumers, and it will be archived and made available to all Guild members. I'll cover public relations, press releases, blogs and branding, and Larry Marsala will speak on google rankings, meta tags, search engine optimization and techie stuff. A 25% discount on the yearly membership fee will be given to new members who join between May 31 and J...

I wish some folks would ask me about natural isolates.  What I have to say, with my limited, but growing knowledge, might surprise you.  I'll be here, on and off, throughout the day.

21 Guild members are set to blog on June 1st, the fifth anniversary of the Natural Perfumers Guild. It's going to be a fun, intimate event to let us get to know each other better, and you're all invited in for a peek. The theme is fun and the logo is bubbly, like a fizzy, diffusive top note!

Sometimes students say the darnedest things, and sometimes those gems turn your head around when you think about the process of making thick, pasty aromatics pourable. Michael Singels, a student from California, and a longtime member of the Yahoo Natural Perfumery group I host, posted about a new, simple process in the student chat group for my perfumery course that literally made my mouth drop open.  I have read every post on the NP group for almost nine years, and I've been on many other forums, and I've never seen this. Ready for this?  What to do instead of using a bain marie process to warm up thick aromatics so they can become liquid and mobile for use, or transfer from one bottle to another? First, for those who don't know what a bain marie is, it's a water bath. It can be as simple as heating some water in a cup and placing the bottle with the thick stuff in it, or as complex as a true "double boiler" type of set up for a large bottle or containe...

Late start today due to gardening duties.  I'll be here until 10 PM my time to answer any questions you may have about perfumery.

Half way through May, and oh my, so much to do!  Still, I love to make time to answer your questions about perfumery.  I'll be here until 10 PM tonight, so ask away.

Happy Mother's Day to all the woman in the world, who, in some way, give motherly love to others.  It's in our nature, we are here to give comfort and guidance.  Each Sunday, my motherly ways come in play with this forum.  So, ask mama! ;-) ETA: The link to a CaFleureBon article on scented memories of our mothers, including one on my mother.  I just got back from visiting her at the nursing home, she's doing fine.

I got a late start today because I had to get the lilac blog posted.  May certainly is the time for lilac thoughts, and lily of the valley, too, eh?  Several bloggers are taking part in a blogging event for Natural Perfumers Guild member Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's new perfumes Muguet de Mai and Muguet Cologne (yes, two!) that are botanical accords of the lily of the valley flower, only available in synthetic form prior to this.  You can leap from blog to blog starting at Cafleurebon .