Another sales post

I'm closing my shop on December 1st - temporarily. I'm spending that month off in Vegas, getting hitched and doing honeymoon things with the new-minted husband. But that means I have to bust-a-move this month for those of you with perfume plans for the holidays.

So for the month of November, I am offering free shipping worldwide at my Etsy shop. As long as your country will accept fragrance, I'm happy to send it, shipping on me!

Fall Giveaway Winner!

The fall giveaway prize was a full skincare set from The Scented Djinn Etsy Apothecary. The Haseki Skincare Kit, part of the Harem Skincare line, was chosen for the giveaway. It includes Haseki Soap, made in a base of extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil and loads of organic cocoa butter, and scented with lots of really beautiful essential oils ~ pink grapefruit, bergamot (bergaptene free), frankincense b. serrata, petitgrain sur fleur neroli (neroli!), tangerine essence, lemon essence, fresh ginger, lavandin abrial, ylang-ylang and lemon petitgrain. The neroli/floral aspect really comes through this lovely citrusy soap. Also included is Haseki Skin Elixir, made with virgin organic coconut oil and organic jojoba with just a hint of that bergaptene free bergamot (no phototoxicity to worry about), more of the gorgeous petitgrain sur fleur neroli, and just a hint of lemon essence from the juice, and Haseki Scrub, a simple, simple, simple, but oh so good scrub made with organic cane sugar, ground raw almonds and ground organic coconut shreds.

And the winner is ~

Jolyn Trewatha of Portland, OR!

Congratulations, Jo.

It's my Etsyversary!

Normally I try to only post once a week, but this one snuck up on me: I've been in business on Etsy as Magickal Realism Perfume Arts for three years now. If I knew what that meant, I'd tell you, but mostly I'm about continuing to create new explorations in fragrant experience, and no, that's not a tagline, that's really what I'm angling for. The above is our October sampler pack - for a discounted price you can try some of your yummy fun scents, and the pack will change monthly.

So squee with me for year three!

A language of scent

www.flickr.com magickalrealism's Textures photoset

I'm rethinking smell. Perhaps not rethinking, exactly - smell is smell, technically one of the five senses but also somehow more involuntary. We can take steps to block out sights and sounds, even block out physical sensations by wearing gloves and thick clothing - but with smell, well, even nose plugs have an odor.

While we mainly associate smell with taste - because the next closest similarity we have in the layers of information we get from smell is by inserting something in our mouths - I'm starting to reconsider smell as an extension of touch. First of all, the comparison of smell to taste belies a few assumptions: coffee in no way tastes how it smells, for instance. While I haven't run around tasting my essential oils (an experiment bound to end with a hospital visit at the very least) I'm reasonably certain there's no way they taste like they smell, either.

I've also found that certain scents and their quality might possibly vary based on cultural experience and geographical location. There is no one scent that smells good to everyone. There's a filter going on. Also, if you create a perfume that to the knowledge of your scent-memory isn't comparable to anything else you've smelled, what then?

This is why I'm experimenting a bit with my perfume listings on Etsy. I'm completely reconsidering not just smell, but how I describe it. Right now I'm experimenting with the language of texture: rough or smooth? thickness: does it feel light, or heavy? Does your mind conjure an image of a clogged pipe? Speed: this isn't just sillage and evaporation rate, this is how fast it hits your olfactory nerve and whether it makes you go cross-eyed (some people like that.)

Is it a perfect system? Probably not. But it seems like, especially amidst the challenges of online sellers, it's the way to go.

If I were a perfume . . .

If I were a perfume, I would be like blood
Necessary for life, unaware of self

Magickal Realism's garden adventures

- image by Diana Rajchel of Magickal Realism Perfume Arts.

I'm a very DIY kind of girl. This is partly because my own perfumery is a bootstrap effort - no debts, no loans, no credit cards used ever. And this means that fancy things like tuberose and ottos come by way of gifts, and are sparse. Nope, my perfumes have a garden feel to them because often, major components of them come from someone's garden.

So, even as I advance my art form from the familiar safety of oil based mixtures to complex things like tinctures, I have to resort to a sort of guerilla harvesting from time to time and I am a girl who relies on the kindness of trusted friends.

This year's treats have been generous indeed: scores of lilac flowers, moving me into year three of the seven year tincture I'm working on. Tomato leaves, thanks to a dear friend's garden going completely bonkers. And, to my delight...roses.

Unfortunately, I had no idea roses were so uncooperative in tincture. I'm sure someone could have told me if I'd asked, but I do like to learn things the hard way. That said their stems and leaves behave very nicely, and I've got some lovely herbal greens to play with this winter as a result. As for the petals...well, the alcohol is very strangely pink/brown now. I might be able to do something with that...

the slowest infused etoh in history

Imagine my surprise when I scored a Jasminum sambac at Home Despot earlier this summer. I mean, we have a conducive climate in CA and all that, but this flower is the stuff of fantasy and is an atlas missile in any perfumer's arsenal, given its qualities as a crack-filler-inner, a crappy-blend-corrector, and certain something that works wonders in 'masculine' blends. It was like winning the lottery and it was also Christmas morning, at the same time :)

The plant is slowly growing and thriving, being a plucky little guy. I repotted him into a much larger vessel, into some hand-blended planting mix comprised of clay from the side yard where I excavated something like 50 square feet of clay (and then filled in with a measly 20 square feet of purchased planting mix, gah), wood shavings and shredded straw from the chicken coop/run, and then fresh-ish compost. He's throwing lots of blooms at a time now.

And of course, those blooms are getting plopped into etoh, and ending their days of freshness happily inebriated, soaking until they get crunchy, and I replace them with fresh blooms. It looked futile at first. 100ml of etoh, and two blooms. Three blooms a few days later. But, one keeps at this sort of thing, and over three months one gets a reward, or at least the preview to a reward.

(Still kicking myself for not bugging the Despoteers to order more plants for me in June.)

No clue what I'll be using this precioussssss for, when it's 'done', or when the plant decides he has given me enough flowers. It was a reflex getting into the habit in the first place, and I figured at the time that I'd better just do it or regret not having done it when I finally have time to start blending again.

Sometimes life feels like a marathon of stages of prep work, eh.