Finishing Touches

How is it that no matter how many things get checked off, the to do list keeps getting longer. We are getting down to the wire, and are on for a sneak peek of the Acousticjus stellar oil parfums next Friday at the Open House. I have been boxing for the past few evenings and have quite a few of them finished. I also realize with the busy fall and holiday season coming on  I will not get another day off for at least six months. Thanks to my special spinach tonic and a ton of green drinks I should breeze right through it. As you can see from the images the boxes are not your typical fare. I decided early on that I wanted to flex my artistic muscle bit with this line, and do something more whimsical and original with the packaging so I ordered plain cores that could be wrapped in handmade paper. Purple was the color of
choice from day one, a throw back to the days when I had a line of bath and body products under our Peace Angel Farm label. My husband still uses the purple boxes for his gourmet garlic gift packaging, which should be available soon (I think) for the fall/winter gifting season. As it is now we are each so focused on our own things that if we are lucky we say hey in passing every day or so. But anyway that's how it is sometimes. I will also be boxing the stellar lips (gloss and lipstick/stains) over the next few days. They will  be in this same style box. The stellar body mist will be in a white spray bottle with purple label. I had a sample of a purple spray bottle, but it was too much. The contrast of the white bottle is just right. I have not decided yet on the packaging for the soaps. They are round, so maybe a  larger round core that could hold for our five bars. They are mini soaps with a dragonfly motif. The soaps will be the last thing we add so I am not so concerned about it just yet. I have been doing a little foot work, via phone as well, trying to line up a few folks as reps. for the new line. So far so good, and I still have some more to do on that. If anyone reading wants to contact me about being a rep. in your area please do so by email: liz1 at lizzornperfumes dot com. I will have more info. on this soon with press kits and introductory packets. I am off to clear my work table and start boxing lip gloss. totally love blending the colors for these. I have ordered samples of quite a few more pigments, and plan to get very creative with the lip colors as we go along. Art is the most funnest thing...

Crazy Life

It's been a wild couple of weeks. Getting ready for the launch of our new brand Acousticjus, and finally deciding what to do for the Opening at Scentual Artistry this month. The opening last night was great. A little less foot traffic. Probably due to the recent heat and all the activities in the city. At one point I was sitting talking to Mr. Z and mentioned that I should have brought my guitar. He replied with you should bring your CD's down here and sell them. I then looked around the room. My art was on the walls, my perfumes on the counter, teas.... The only thing missing was the music and  two books of poetry. All of my life I have been making things. When I stop and look around it is overwhelming. I attribute it to an early time in my life when I was dubbed a Golden Child, with a high IQ, and put on the fast track to success. I was eleven or twelve. By fifteen I was a stick a fork in me I'm done, outta here, fed up mixed up forty year old in a teen's body. Anything they could throw at me they did, and for that short period, I had no control over anything. My parents were not equipped or prepared for any of it, so they tuned out and I was on my own. I have been on my own ever since. I never wanted for myself the things that others wanted for me. My brain is wired  in a way that allows me to create entirely in my head. Perfumes formulated down to the last drop. Recipes, poems, songs. By the time I get around to writing anything down, I have lived with it in my head for weeks, sometimes months and years. I do the same thing with science and math. Formulating theories and then trying to solidify them with the math. It's a lot of fun, and hopefully the kind of thing that stimulates my brain enough to ward of senility at some later date.
But anyway: Back to present day reality.  I was happy that so many people who came in last night had an interest in tea, and my tea display. I was able to debut my latest Soivohle Perfumed teas as well. They will be available on the website soon.
Now that I have lived with the space (Scentual Artistry) for awhile I am ready to make a few changes. Including expanding my blending station, and making it more of a focal point. For the next two or three months, instead of installations and displays I will focus specifically on the perfumes in the collections, and getting back to custom perfume work.
I am still waiting for the two Lizzy clones that I ordered. Hopefully they will arrive soon, and I can put them to work.
Today I  continue to work on Acousticjus, batching out Flamenco.  It's coming along nicely. We will launch with the Stellar Oil Parfum, Stellar Lips and Stellar Soaps. Everything heavily laden with music speak. Moving on.....

Thoughtful Perfuming

My original intention for this new line was two-fold. Create a non alcoholic brand of perfumes and related products, inspired in part by the perfumes I had created for young girls. And try to keep the budget down, so they would be affordable and accessible to more people. All through the process I thought about these two components. I also felt that it would be a disservice to dumb down the perfumes, regardless of the target audience, which to me is more about being young at heart, than a number or age bracket. I wore some pretty sophisticated perfumes when I was a girl, and  well into my twenties, and no doubt there are a lot of girls today with complex taste and style.  At one point I felt that I had too much cross over from what I intended for the luxe Soivohle oils, so I had to stay focused on my goal. It takes a lot more discipline to create from a brief, than it does to wing it or create from a purely personal aesthetic. I should have learned this from creating Bespoke Perfumes. But still there is something entirely different that happens when working with another person on a perfume project. Acousticjus is like my dream job, and being a pragmatic dreamer, I have upturned every stone to find the thing that makes it tick. I wish my aunt Dee were still alive, she would have loved this. Dee was what used to be known as an Old Maid, she never married, and only left home after my grandparents died. By that time she was seventy years old. She was quite intelligent, yet had a very child like way about her. She taught me to read and write long before I started going to school. By the time I was four or five, I knew how to bind, write and illustrate a story book, make jewelery out of acorns and sew dresses from maple leaves. It was a magical time, and hopefully through this new adventure that is Acousticjus, some of that original magic will shine through.

ACOUSTICJUS

It seems like a zillion years ago that I had this crazy idea to launch an off shoot brand of ethanol free natural products. After sending in the latest Office Action on our trademark, I am hopeful that this will be the end of the nitpicking. Originally I played around with the idea of launching it as a separate entity within the Soivohle Brand, but realized that this would be too confusing so I set out on a new adventure. Unlike the labor intensive Soivohle Naturals. Acousticjus is a more mainstream natural line consisting of oil or water based products, such as body sprays and toners, oil perfumes etc.  I am going ahead with the relaunch of this line, and will have several things available at Scentual Artistry within the next few weeks.  I will also have a list of items on the acousticjus.com website, available y special request.
ACOUSTICJUS IMAGE/DRAWING: C. LIZ ZORN 2008