Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Hope you have a nice holiday with your families. We have the first sweet peas of the season blooming here today. Unfortunately we have rain for Easter, but it’s been so lovely here that we can’t complain.

My youngest niece is sick, so we are postponing the Easter egg hunt until next weekend. We did get to have lunch today with family visiting from Sweden, and that was fun. I’m always amazed how well the rest of the world speaks English (and feel guilty for not knowing other languages myself). Hope you have nice family time for Easter too.

Update, and a note on international shipping

I have the final Spiced Citrus Vetiver formula done and am working on batching it. This is the stage I hit a few weeks ago when I opened that new bottle of vetiver and had to reconsider. I’ve now reduced the Sri Lanka vetiver a little bit and added a vetiver CO2 oil. I like it!

A note for international customers: the 17 ml bottles of the boutique collection are back on the site at Sweet Anthem, which is a Seattle boutique that does ship to some international destinations (you can email to inquire about your country).

And some perfume news that might interest you: Olfactif is a new sample service for niche and artisan perfumes that is now accepting subscription sign-ups, and the first month is free to try. The service would make a great gift for someone you know who is new to niche. The first sample sets start shipping any day.

I’m looking forward to Easter with my family. My brother’s family will be up, and we’ll also have family in town from Sweden. Hope you have fun plans for Easter too.

All bottles back up…

Just a quick note to say that the Exclusives bottles are now back up too, so everything is available again. I hope to add the new natural vetiver in a few weeks.

Spiced Citrus Vetiver review and update

Thank you, Neil, for your beautiful review of Spiced Citrus Vetiver
on The Black Narcissus! I agree that it’s a softer take on vetiver. Glad you enjoyed trying it! You have a lyric way of writing that makes visiting your blog a treat. 🙂

Neil’s review was actually helpful to me coming at this moment. I opened a new bottle of vetiver several weeks ago (a larger bottle that will last longer), and it’s a bit stronger. I’m having to find the right dose to be equivalent to my previous batch of Spiced Citrus Vetiver. I’m finding that I like a range of options and need to pick one. I’ll try to keep the scent pretty close to the previous batch because that one received good feedback, but it would be easy to make it edgier by adding more vetiver.

I’m also starting to play with some natural florals. I have a number of things I’ve been wanting to use in formulas. I got lovely new tuberose and neroli oils last year, and a ylang complete. I also have a gorgeous mimosa that I used in Nostalgie and I’d like to highlight it in a natural. I also just got a new rose essence that is extra special. Lots to play with, but not all in the same scent, lol.

Boutique Collection Bottles Back Up

I put all the Boutique Collection cart buttons back up, so the only thing left to restore is the Exclusives bottle cart buttons. I’ll wait until later this week to do that so I can stagger the orders a bit.

I think I have the Spiced Citrus Vetiver formula back on track and hope to add samples of that to the site soon. And I’ve not forgotten about a little drawing here (that was postponed, but we’ll get to it).

Cocoa Sandalwood Review on ScentHive

There was a lovely review of Cocoa Sandalwood posted today on ScentHive, a blog that specializes in coverage of natural perfumes and body products. Thanks, Trish! It’s good to see you writing again!

Last year I posted photos of the plum tree in spring so I didn’t want to do that again, but I snapped a few spring pics today in the garden: daffodils, brunnera (with flowers that look similar to forget-me-nots), galanthus (snowdrops), and cyclamen (which is on the way out but has beautiful leaves and blooms all winter). Thought I’d try to spread a little spring cheer. 🙂

Samples back up

I put samples of everything and bottles of Cocoa Sandalwood back on the site today. I will wait a few days to put the rest of the bottles back up. I’m hoping this strategy will stagger the incoming orders a bit to avoid a burst.

I don’t have samples of Spiced Citrus Vetiver yet, but I’m working on it. I hit a frustrating bump because I had to open a new batch of vetiver (same supplier, same organic vetiver from Sri Lanka), and this batch has stronger smoky topnotes. I’m having to adjust the vetiver level down a little bit. I may consider blending two vetivers together, but I’ve not decided yet. Anyway, it will be a bit longer for this scent release while I sniff and adjust the formula. The ingredient variability is one disadvantage to all-natural scents, but I think the positives of naturals outweigh the variability issues.

I took samples of Cameo down from the site. Bottles will still be available for a short time, but as I mentioned last fall, I will be retiring Cameo since it does not sell as quickly and I need to keep my list manageable in length.

My plum tree has pink snow beneath it from all the dropping blossoms. It has had an explosion of pink puffy blooms for a bit over a week (wish it lasted longer!). The roses are leafing out, the daffodils are in bloom, and it feels like spring here already. I think my brother’s family will be up for Easter, which will be nice. Hoping you have signs of spring soon too, but I know many areas are still deep in snow. Don’t forget to change your clocks this weekend for daylight savings!

Shopping Cart Update

I’m making a couple small (consecutively larger) batches of the new natural Spiced Citrus Vetiver, and as soon as I have enough to offer samples, I will put all the samples back up on the site. I’ll also put bottles of Cocoa Sandalwood up because I know not everyone had a chance to buy that one since it was only up for a week before my break. I’ll try to do that within the next few days (I had been shooting for today but didn’t quite make it). I’ll wait a bit longer before putting the rest of the bottles up so I can ease back into things. I am doing better but not back to my normal self yet.