Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Ask the Perfumer will return next week.  Today is a day spent remembering 9/11.

I hope everyone is enjoying the long Labor Day holiday weekend in the USA.  I'm relaxing and working in my garden, which isn't really work at all, especially when I'm harvesting a variety of fragrant flowers.  Enfleurage and tincturing are my methods to capture the scent, and nothing could be easier. I'll be checking in to see your questions throughout the day, so drop me a line and let me know what's going on in your fragrant garden, or whatever is on your mind.

The Internet is very quiet this morning. Hurricane Irene is impacting tens of millions of people in the mid-Atlantic to NE USA.  I'm watching the minute-by-minute coverage on TV and feeling the stress of those in the path of the hurricane.  Here in Florida, we have PTSD two ways: pre-traumatic stress disorder (the wait for the storm to hit) and post-traumatic stress disorder, which is the emotional hangover. My thoughts and prayers go out to the folks up north.  If we can find some fragrant levity today to alleviate the mood, let's go for it.

Project Boxgasm Announcement: If you are an artisan who makes perfume, bath & body products, aromatherapy products, candles - you can now make your own custom boxes! The Natural Perfumers Guild wishes to share this discovery with everyone, so please share the link to this blog with other groups, forums and chat places you may frequent.  The more the merrier - let's upgrade our products to the next level, with lovely, custom boxes!  I am the President of the Guild, and I like to roam social media sites and check out, and "like" the various projects and announcements of the Guild members.  Little did I dream when I visited a Facebook page of one of our members, a page that only had 21 followers, since it's new, that I'd discover something that can help all artisan small business owners. But there it was, an iconic image out of South Africa - custom perfume boxes! When I called some members of the Natural Perfumers Guild and told them about the discovery th...

Slept late, but I'm here now to answer your perfumery questions.  Today my cohort in the most exciting project I've ever worked on is coming by later to, well, work on the project.  We may be able to blog about it, with photos and links, in a few days.  I predict that within one month or so we will see aromatherapists, perfumers, soapers, bath and body manufacturers and allied arts using this "thing", this great discovery.  I'm soooo excited, and you will be, too!  Can't let a word of this slip out yet, but just subscribe, or check me on Facebook, or in the natural perfumery yahoo group, and you, too, will be in on the ground floor.  Oh, did I mention, I have no financial interest in this, and I won't make a dime from anybody on this?  But if you have a business mentioned above, you will be able to upgrade your business to the next level, with something you dreamed about but could never find. Stay tuned.

I discovered this by accident, just because of my natural curiosity, on August 6th.  Historic day.  My jaw dropped, I was totally stunned by the simplicity and availability of a "thing" that will take all of our small businesses to the next level.  Everyone I've shared this secret with either yells or moans with excitement. When I teased one of the recipients of this good news that everyone sounds like they're either a screamer or moaner orgasmic type (she was a moaner), she said well, yes, it's "-------gasmic".  And it certainly is. So a few of the Natural Perfumers Guild members are in R&D right now, myself included.  We're holding off a little blogging event until we've got some good stuff to present to everyone.  I already have semi-good stuff, but there's tweaking that needs to be done.  I'll provide links, tips and more to get you on your way.  I have no financial interest in this, and I know it'll be affordable to most fo...

The Natural Perfumers Guild is dedicated to protecting the identity of what a natural perfume is in the eyes of the public. On Friday August 12, 2011 the Guild review committee met and voted to terminate  suspend the membership of DSH Perfumes. This action was necessary because of complaints received about the website. It was found that several pages and declarations were in direct non-compliance with Guild code. This was a difficult decision, but we wish Dawn well and continued success. The public can now be assured that all Professional Perfumers on the Guild website use only 100% natural ingredients in their perfumes. To read the Guild Code, please visit http://naturalperfumers.com/code.htm An international Guild committee was recently formed to review and revise the terms of the Code to make it more stringent in the definition of natural aromatics and natural perfumes, application requirements to join the Guild and other important factors that will allow us to be self-regul...

Hi Everyone - it's a lazy, hazy, hot Sunday. A fragrant scent cloud hugs the ground in Anya's Garden. I'll admit I'm intoxicated by the fragrances blooming all around me and I hope I can answer your questions in a timely manner. Have you ever been overwhelmed, in a good way, but the fragrance of summer blooms? Magnify that in the Miami summer, blessed with a Full Moon radiance. Yawn. Stretch. I think the narcotic blooms are taking me over!

I had blender's block really bad last week. Just one comment from a perfume editor (Michelyn Camen of Cafleurebon) that wasn't even related to my block, since I hadn't told her about it, turned me around, and the new mods I created are gorgeous!!! Have you ever had blender's block? My problem was I let my ego get ahold of me. You can't fit a square peg into a round hole, and you can't make an aromatic be diffusive if the other aromatics are dampening it. Any blending problems? Let my bruised, yet happy, ego be your guide.

July is over! Here at Ask the Perfumer headquarters we all wonder if there is a place of endless summer, without the severe heatwaves and droughts, where the jasmines bloom all year. Oh, wait, we're living here. It's like summer here 11 months of the year, so we're going to stop and smell the frangipani today. And the Chinese perfume tree, and the Costa Rican mint, etc. Hope your gardens are doing well and that you are harvesting some of the fragrant beauty for scent extraction, potpourri or some other alchemic delight.

It was 100F at 9 a.m. here in Miami today. Most of the USA is in the midst of a terrible, long scorching heat wave. I hope everyone's gardens are surviving. Luckily, we started to get rain, after a drought of two months, starting July 1st. The flowers in my garden are blooming in overdrive! I feel very fortunate. If you need to vent about your toasted garden, or loss of flowers, leave a message. Of course, perfumery-related posts are much appreciated, too ;-) I'm just offering a sympathetic ear to readers who are having their summer hijacked by this heat wave.

A question that frequently comes up is: how long do I have to age my compound before mixing with alcohol to create the juice, and then how long do I have to age the juice? Or, do I mix the compound with the alcohol and then age? Let's discuss.

It's over 90F this morning in Miami, and my flowers are blooming wildly, with total abandon. The Jasmine auriculatum vine, which I posed with by my front door, is threatening to take over the entry area - and I'm not complaining! The Aglaia odorata - Chinese perfume tree - is on my front path, fragrancing the entire end of the street. What's blooming where you are? Are you being an alchemist and harvesting the fragrance and transforming it into a usable form for your perfume making, such as tincture or enfleurage? In the past week, the Clereodendron lutea and Tahitian jasmine were blooming, so I captured their rare and gorgeous beauty in a tincture. Life is good.

It's been a very busy summer, between celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Natural Perfumers Guild on June 1st with a group blogging event, and now welcoming all the new members! We're also very happy at all of the renewing members, the professional perfumers, the associates, the suppliers and the friends. With a strong history of defending our business rights in the face of restrictive legislation, promoting the Guild members on various media, and moving forward as the only trade association devoted to real natural aromatics, the Guild is now a magnet for both established companies and non-commercial devotees of pure and natural fragrance products. In the true spirit of the Medieval Guilds, the enhancement of professional products by peer evaluation and the protection of our rights to have standards for our businesses and to defend them, the Natural Perfumers Guild is staying the true course of the Guild concept. In the past, we had an apprentice program, and we m...