Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

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-regulatin

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

The Natural Perfumers Guild is in opposition to the Safe Cosmetics Act in the form released on July 4, 2011   image from Essential Wholesale blog Kayla Fioravanti of Essential Wholesale has been at the forefront of a group of small-business advocates, including Donna Marie Johnson of Indie Beauty and others who have visited Washington, lobbied for appropriate legislation for microbusinesses, and generally, looked out for the rights of owners of small businesses that create soaps, perfumes and body card products.  Early on, I was involved also, and had to drop out of the effort due to burn out, plain and simple.  Thank God for the women who carried on the good cause. Please read about the Opposition to the Small Cosmetics Act here on Kayla's blog and dig deeper, into her well-annotated comments on the bill.

I was pleasantly surprised to find how enjoyable and educational Flavor Creation by John Wright was.  I didn't know what to expect when I received the book for review from Allured Books , members of the Natural Perfumers Guild .  This blog post isn't the review, because I really want to do the book justice - as a resource for natural perfumers!  It has amazing information that I find valuable, from organoleptic insights to the individual flavor isolate (also a scent isolate). This post is just a jump-off to send you to Elise Pearlstine's blog about raspberry jam.  As I ate (sometimes sipped right out of the jar) the jam I got from Elise, I was astonished by the various flavors/scents that I was picking up on.  I realized that most commercial raspberry jams I've tasted have been "doctored" with natural essences, such as boronia, but I really loved the pure, un-doctored raspberry jam.  I picked up cedar, greens, florals and much more.  It reminded me of when I

I'm honored to be chosen as the perfumer featured in the kick-off of a series on American Perfumery on Cafleurebon (click on Cafleurebon to read).  Leave a comment before July 5th and you'll be in the running to receive a 3.5ml mini extrait of my RiverCali perfume.

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 I look at this photo. I

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 .

Disclaimer:  It has come to my attention that Douglas Stewart of Scentsual Antiquities has a link to this blog post, perhaps implying that he is endorsed by me.  This is not the case, and I have no affiliation with him, and would wish he would take the link down, as it is deceptive. I have taken down the entire post because the two advising me were revealed to not have the real information or research validated.  This happens sometimes, and I regret any false data that was stated.