Resurrection

After receiving an email from Nathan Branch, I have put this blog back online. He made a great point about incoming links from other blogs, and I had not even considered all of the angles. So I will keep it up. Sorry for any inconvenience. Best, Liz Zorn

Journeyman

Today is the day. I will be taking on the task of creating a new Journeyman parfum. The original was one of those in the moment ephemeral compositions, that was build on feel, not precise measuring. The original was set into an infusion of Indian Agarwood Oil. It also contained one of my amber bases and a lot of different things in small measure, that when combined amounted to a warm leather accord. The new one will have all of those elements, but upgraded a bit. The agarwood will be from my Laotian stash, and the amber and leather notes will  be rebuilt from scratch.
I know a few folks will be happy to hear this. I get a lot of emails asking about Journeyman. And finally, it is time to put the pieces together in a permanent formula.
Sleeping under an open window, with a chilly breeze blowing in last night has regenerated me. I love this time of year. That first cool wind of autumn reminds me of that mystical wind in the movie Chocolat, symbolizing a time for change and moving on.  And it is, indeed like a magical gypsy swirl that spins me around and points me in the perfect direction.
I will be glad when they get that clone thing worked out, I would love to be able to paint all day as well. Fiercely stabbing at a canvas, slinging paint and channeling the energies of found metal, or heading up river with my guitar. To do it all at once,now that would be the thing.
But anyway, before I let this thing get away from me, I am going to go sling some scent. Sling it with authority into the bottom of a wide mouth beaker. LZ

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.

Soivohle, Week In Review

It's raining, and my plan to have my tea by the pool this morning was a bust. My favorite thing about summer is my morning meditation and being able to sit by the pool while engaged in the so called process of enlightenment, getting in touch with the now, etc. etc. etc...
This past week was a busy one as we are getting ready to launch three new scents in our Studio Collection. I had expected to have our new snap closure boxes this week, but received an email Friday telling me that they had not come in yet, so it's up in the air.  We receive so many compliments on those snap boxes that I went ahead and ordered them in two new sizes, and will continue to use them for the Natural Collection, as well as the new Vignettes (oil parfums) coming out later this year. I thought long and hard about the bottles for the oil parfums and instead of sourcing something new, decided to go with the tapered HeinzGlas bottle that we use for our Natural Parfums. It is such a striking bottle, and the perfect size for an parfum. I plan to use this bottle for all parfums in the future.
Scentual Artistry - Wow what can I say, our new studio/boutique in the city is just lovely, and the first two scent installations were very well received. I have been invited to create a scent installation for an arts event next summer, and am very excited to be putting this new art form on the map. I have thought about applying for a grant, which would give us national exposure for scent art if we could get the funding and take it on the road. I have a couple of friends who are Arts Administrators, and can help with the grant process, which is a bear. Filling out tax forms is child's play in comparison. Otherwise we are doing well in all areas and have several new customers. The teaching question still comes up a lot, and as I have said in the past I am not a teacher, at least not in any organized way. I see people all the time and am always sharing information about perfumery. I have thought about creating a series of perfume making kits with instruction, but have not found the time to devote to it. I do however have several of my accords ready to launch as a series, and will be adding these soon.

Soivohle in the news: The launch of our Lilacs & Heliotrope and Lilacs & Roses was a huge success. There have been two reviews of the L&H, one by Abigail of I Smell Therefore I Am and One by Patty at Perfume Posse. If there are any more I am not aware of them. I love big beautiful floral notes and find that Lilacs are perfect for peddling my tendencies to excess. At the same time I have been secretly (no secret anymore) working on a Lilac version of the Violets & Rainwater formula. A lot depends on the hyacinth note that I am adding to the mix, but all looks promising and smells divine.
New online retailer: For those who like one stop shopping, many of our Soivohle perfumes are now available at Rei Rien They also have a sample program and ship internationally. Speaking of samples, we are going to revert back to the small tube vials for most of our samples (online) and reserve the use of the screw top minis for the small Coffret that holds 16 of the tiny bottles. We will also be adding a 5ml pocket spray to the Studio Collection, and offering a slight price break on all of the 5ml sprays. With the purchase of a new 5ml bottle at a savings over the one we were using we can pass on this savings to our customers. Look to see this price change in the near future.
That's about it for now, everyone have a safe and fulfilling weekend. ZZ