I possibly haven’t mentioned it, but I’m a member of the Etsy Trashion Team.  This is a collective of artists who reuse and repurpose materials ordinarily discarded as art, or even as further functional objects. For those of you cringing and worrying about how this works in perfumery – shhh. It’s OK. I don’t do anything scary or unsanitary. Right now I’m interpreting it as finding ways to use materials I’d ordinarily get rid of, like items sold as “natural” that were actually synthetics. But I’m also taking the trashion philosophy into my home life.

I have coveted the magnetic spice jars since I first read about them on Apartment Therapy - New York. While the rest of my apartment is roomy enough, my kitchen is roughly the size of a hall closet and it’s not really my favorite place to concoct as a result. This is a problem, since as a perfume/bath and body creatrix, a good portion of my time should be spent in the kitchen! However, I live in the land of the (narrowly) self-employed, so I have to think of and steal ingenious methods of making small spaces and limited resources really work for me.

One resource is a computer scientist boyfriend, who loathes getting rid of his computers. He always thinks he can use them for parts, and while sometimes he can, sometimes that computer really is dead weight. Since computers are in the top ten things that should NEVER be disposed of, and getting rid of a computer or two would also free up space in our home, he had a great idea:

He would remove the magnets from the defunct computers, and I could glue them onto the bottom of my spice jars.

I loved the idea- freeing up space in our shared office AND in the kitchen? Hooboy, yeahdaddyo!

The process was a bit more difficult, and my boyfriend did injure himself once or twice. He concluded that a Torx screwdriver would have been better, and so a couple hard drives still sit unopened until that is remedied.

Gluing took awhile – the magnet has to sit exactly right for the glue to take, and I actually had to pull the magnet off and reglue it when I found it wasn’t working physically with the refrigerator surface because of its shape.

In the end though, I got the spice jar up, and sticking pretty darn well. I only have two like this right now, but I’m going to hunt down that screwdriver – I can’t wait to open up that shelf.

Share on Facebook

I think that a lot of people just wander around on hearsay about what is and isn’t allowed by the Food and Drug Administration in the US. And to be fair, they’re a seriously understaffed government body that sometimes overregulates because they just can’t track who was doing what when the inevitable turnover happens in an agency that overburdened. Still, they do make plenty publically available, although all in long, boring, legal terms.

So let’s start with the basics: the FDA defines cosmetics as ” (1) articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body or any part thereof for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance, and (2) articles intended for use as a component of any such articles; except that such term shall not include soap.”¹

((Painting: Governors of the Wine Merchant’s Guild by Ferdinand Bol))

For those who shorted out at the word articles, here’s the paraphrase:  Soap is not a cosmetic. But anything else you put on your body that either cleanse you, beautifies you, makes you prettier or alters your appearance (because the feds don’t like acknowledging uglifying products), then guess what? It’s a cosmetic. If you’ve got something that multitasks by combing your hair and then spreading hair dye in it, that’s a cosmetic too. Except soap. Soap isn’t a cosmetic, it’s a social requirement.

So if you go outside and rub mud on yourself in a rainstorm, the FDA will want to regulate that if you try to bottle the mud and sell it.

Share on Facebook

1. Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act Chapter 2 [↩]

Actually, I’ve heard that Japan really has developed a coordinated scent-response for movies. But according to Styledash, there’s a whole other company making it happen online. I can’t figure if this is parody or not, but seriously, if it were real, my biggest hurdle in selling perfume online would be overcome – assuming it wouldn’t take me 50 years to be able to afford it…

Share on Facebook

I shop at the Farmer’s Market when I can manage it (OK, once, in a downpour, and since parking is horrible, not since) and at my coop (regularly, since it’s literally a walk across the street). I do buy local whenever I can; if given a choice between blueberries from Indiana or Michigan, I choose Michigan (more similar climate) and if I can get my hands on Minnesotan blueberries because they are closer. But then I have some guilt because I’m a born Hoosier, I still consider myself a Hoosier, and I’ll sometimes throw in the Indiana blueberries anyway as juicy props to my state – and then I put it back. There’s more than corn in Indiana, there’s a whole lot of industrial pollution, too.

People who live off of local food only, even in a top 10 agriculture-and-vegetarian friendly city like mine, have it tough.  Every coop in town imports vegetables from South America in the winter (though unlike supermarkets, they do tell you where it’s from. And even though it’s possible to get a lot of buffalo and fish around here in winter, resources are limited and if you’re a vegetarian you’re out of luck unless you are really resourceful with indoor gardening and have already had a talk with the police about all the plant lights in your home.

So I’m trying to imagine creating perfumes from only local products. While I certainly incorporate everything local I can, as an apartment dweller, I rely just as heavily on essential oil producers as my counterparts, and even the most informed of my client base would go through some serious withdrawal – whenever I mention, for instance, that sandalwood is an endangered species, I get a response bordering on PTS blocking.

Still, I’m trying to picture the quintessential Minnesotan fragrance. It would have to have notes from sand, silt, grass, and lilacs, I think. Given where I live there would be neighborhood drivebys where innocent citizens found that any part of the bush that tread onto a public sidewalk got clipped. I’m more than willing to hang out of a car window with giant shears in one hand and a basket in the other. There certainly is a lot of fauna I could use around here – any hardy herb that can survive harsh northern winter, evergreens of every variety, and wildflowers so long as no one caught me digging around their lawns.

But there would be so much loss, more than most I think could bear: gone would be frankincense, sandalwood and jasmine. Anything gardenia or carnation would be straight out of the question. Vanilla and cocoa absolutes? Forget it. Possibly most painful of all would be the loss of citrus – ne’er a sweet orange or tangerine note to be found. And the bases, ugh, the bases – it would pretty much be corn oil or nothing.

Also – my clientele isn’t local. Minnesotans aren’t trusting folk, and won’t buy from me until they have a store to walk into. So even if I made these fabulous local goods, the best I could hope for is to sell them to out-of-staters online. It’s an interesting challenge, even with the corn-based base limitation, and I might just try a version of it to see where it goes. But in terms of overall pragmatism, buying local only just doesn’t work in the world of perfume – not until the day that I can claim my own plantations on three continents, not counting the inevitable fields required in Grasse!

Share on Facebook

Perfume has become a lot like wine: people talk about layers, and depth, and I’m waiting for someone to gargle from a bottle of, say, Tom Ford’s Black Orchid, spit it out and declare the hue was “off” as a cheap cover for an embarrassing alcoholism-driven act. And yet, as some of the more humble – and secure – connoisseurs of the vine will tell you, all those fancy terms about acidity and body are just trappings. The same is true of layering, body, and even how long perfume lasts. Whether it’s wine or perfume, it comes down quite simply to what you like, and that has so many personal factors that it would be quite possible to create 7 billion perfumes for 7 billion people on this planet because of all the variations between body chemistry and emotive response to smell.

For the perfume seeker, defining that elusive joy can be quite the journey, and that’s why entire cultures spring up that critique art and food, wine and perfume. It’s also extremely common for someone to decide if you have good taste based solely on their own taste; just reference Blackwell, the king of declaring himself an arbiter of taste (you ask a guy his opinion once, and he thinks it counts forever…) A lot of the times, you end up buying into it because the person dictating fashion, or scent, or actual taste, is just that freakin’ convincing. Most of the time, the arbiter of things good and bad is just another ass with an opinion – but somehow, that opinion gets taken with finely ground cardamom instead of the grain of good old table salt.

I’m all about the anti-pretentious. My fragrances have a sense of humor to them, as you can tell from looking at some of the names. And because I slip into mocking the self-important so much and so easily, it still pains me to admit: sometimes those arbiters of taste have got a point. I’ve had bad wine in the past – really bad wine. It wasn’t a matter of personal taste. It was just really bad wine, so much that despite my love of all things Australian, I will veer away from any wine bottle with a kangaroo on it. If I’d listened to those arbiters on that one occasion, I would not have resorted to wasting $20 on what essentially became a method of trapping fruit flies. The same has happened with perfume. It pains me equally to admit that sometimes the arbiters of taste have been right about me – some of my blends are mediocre, but they’re incongruously popular, so I keep them, because people ask for them every damn time I try to take them off the market.

But I’m not going to tell you what those are, and I have a good, non-commercial reason for it: my reason is you. Every single person has a different body chemistry, and although I’ve been tempted to start surveying people for blood type as some whacked-out way of filing how a perfume will react on a certain person, it’s just not practical or achievable. Plus I think it would creep people out.

For instance, my autumn fragrance – on a person of average metabolism, it smells as advertised – like burning leaves. Usually the cinnamon and black pepper notes linger in particular. However, on my mother, it goes straight to wintergreen. This is OK with my mom, she loves wintergreen. But between the methyl salicylate scares and the fact that mint is rarely used in commercial perfumes, this gets a confused response from that one person in 25 who buys Autumn and winds up going, “hey, where’s the leaf?”

You are the final note in every perfume. So even if something doesn’t smell right in the bottle, it’s important to try it on your skin. There are people that can make $1000/oz perfume smell rancid and the $5 Walgreen’s bottle smell fantastic – and it’s all in the personal chemistry. It’s also important to leave the scent on your skin for awhile. First, if you want to join the club of “perfumistas” then this gives you practice for layers and unfolding. It also helps you watch for any warning signs of allergy (you try it on one wrist before you slather or spritz it all over).

This also means that you can’t always take someone else’s word for it. If they open the bottle and describe it as ”smells like 
skunk!” that’s a warning to consider. If it smells great like a bottle but goes to skunk on the skin, then you should wait and see if three to five other people, or just brave getting a sample and finding out what it does on you.

Share on Facebook

I’ve had a custom request sitting neglected for weeks now. First, the request involved materials that aren’t readily available naturally – at least not in convenient forms like essential oil. So I had to wait three weeks or so to do infusions, and since I was on a tight time and financial budget, I wasn’t able to do the thing where you add fresh goodies  to the oil daily. I relied on the sun to cook out the best of it, wrapping each jar tightly and turning it upwards to greet the morning.

One of the scents I was trying to distill naturally was white willow bark. I am remiss in that I did not break into anyone’s yard to go sniff a willow tree (hey, perfumers have duties)- instead, I bought myself a bottle of extract so I could get some neighborhood of what my likely weaker infusion would smell like.

Even allowing a couple extra weeks did not help with the willow infusion, so tonight, I turned to more drastic measures: I took the infusion I already had, added a new batch of willow bark, and made an oil-based decoction.

The give was slightly better, but not by much. First, I had the disadvantage of working on a gas stove.¹ It heats up super fast, so I had to pull the mixture off the stove really quickly lest the oil actually burn black. On an electric stove, the slower heat up time would have allowed for a simmering effect that might have imparted something more than what I was able to eke out.

There was a vague scent, but I couldn’t picture my average customer sniffing it out. So I added a couple drops of the willow extract and shook. It won’t look pretty, but that’s one of the better reasons to use dark bottles. My concern now is the alcohol-y top scent; it fades after 20 minutes, but I’m not wild about it – if I’d been thinking, I would have run the extract through a filter first.

Share on Facebook

1. Gas versus electric stoves is a subject of much debate in my household, because my boyfriend likes convenience. Anyone who works with herbs as much as I do sees much more convenience in that slow path. [↩]

Craft Magazine has this link up to a survey for a designer who wants to help us make our crafting space something other than chaos space. Stop by and help her out – you’ll be helping yourself!

Share on Facebook

The Independent argues the ineffectiveness of herbal treatment.

I’ve learned that I have to take British journalism like I do US-based journalism, on a case-by-case basis. Still, despite the severely slanted nature of nearly all Western press, I really think that British ”objective” journalism is much more prone to smug pandering and deliberately bad information, whereas US journalism bad reporting is the result of either sloppiness or lack of time for fact checking. (Brits do it out of mean spiritedness, while the US does it out of ignorance. Equally bad, IMO). The above article is one of those examples.

The slant is that “herbs don’t really work.” But when you delve into the details, that’s an inaccurate conclusion.

Says one passage of the article:

In the first systematic review of individualised herbal medicine – the sort where a customer goes into a herbalist’s shop, describes their symptoms, and the herbalist then makes up a preparation of several different herbs – the two researchers found no evidence that the complex Chinese, Ayurvedic or western European potions worked. Of 1,300 studies that they were able to locate, only three were randomised clinical trials comparing the herbal preparations with placebos. Of those three, two found that the individualised preparations were no better than placebos, and the third – of patients with irritable bowel syndrome – found that they were less effective than the standard herbal treatment, a mixture of 20 Chinese herbs. The results are published today in the Postgraduate Medical Journal.

Professor Ernst, a professor of complementary medicine who has been a thorn in the side of the alternative medical lobby, argued that the findings demonstrated that medical herbalists could no longer claim that their tailored remedies worked. What astonished him, he said, was the failure of the herbal medicine establishment to respond to their request for evidence. “We wrote to 15 professional organisations asking if they had any evidence and they came back with nothing. That was the most amazing thing for me,” he said.

First, notice the language: rather than “remedies” the writer opted for, in this context, the derogatory term “potions.” Second, there is information missing: where were those 1300 studies pulled from? And why aren’t there more genuine clinical trials of herbs against placebos?¹

Also, notably, while Ernst, the person opposed to use of herbs in place of traditional treatment,² there are scant quotes from an herbalist and none from an Ayurvedic expert, instead the author is choosing to use vague terms like “they.” There are thousans of herbal types in the US, Canada and the UK – even if the reporter couldn’t get one on the phone, a request or two in a few Internet forums should at least have gotten an email quote. So hello, irresponsible.  Particularly considering that there is a massive difference between Estern and Western herbal practice.

While it does conclude with a list of herbs considered “safe” per clinical trials, there are no links to those clinical trials, and it still ends on the isolated cases of poisoning/inaccurate treatment. Consumers face a barrage of information ever day, and it’s gotten far too easy to let the government do the thinking, especially when it comes to chemicals, whether herbal or synthetic. Unfortunately, since 100% of everything around you has a chemical composition, you’ve got to think about it. Not all herbs are safe – but contrary to the way this article is written – not all herbs are dangerous, either. Point of fact, one of the “safe” herbs, valerian, does have significant risk associated with its use since it’s the base ingredient for Valium³.

I will never be convinced that herbs don’t work, having used them for most of my adult life, and considering that “herbs” are the chemical foundation of the pharmaceutical industry. Especially after this latest bug that I’ve had for 6 weeks now – my doctor gave me Robitussin with codeine (why would I need codeine!!!???) and sent me home. The Robitussin did not work. Since there are plans afoot for removing nearly all cough remedies from the shelves⁴, this leaves me herbal remedies only since my doctor wouldn’t do a damn thing – and now that I’ve started taking herbs for the hideous cough befouling my life, it’s stopped making me miserable.

An intelligent article on the subject would have:
1. Quoted the studies, and named said studies
2. Asked why there are so few studies
3. Stayed away from the “ooh, magic spooky people!” language. Yes, a lot of us herbalists are Wiccan. Suck it up and get over it, these days that’s only interesting to the complete twit. There’s a whole lot of Christian/Foxfire type herbalists around, too.
4. Spoken to a Real Live Herbalist rather than lumping all herbalists into a group and calling it “they” and “them.” It’s Us versus Them. Oh Noes!!!!⁵
5. $20 that Jill Davies, head of the Association of Master Herbalism, was misquoted and then some. Why save her until the last paragraph unless you’re manipulating information?

Share on Facebook

1. Notably the author of this article completely overlooked that most pharmaceuticals are developed from extracts of the same plants used in common herbal treatments. [↩]
2. Magickal Realism advocates getting appropriate medical care from a licensed professional. We really believe herbs and snotty doctors can someday work together, once the doctors get over their politics and start caring about their patients again. [↩]
3. aka Dizepam [↩]
4. 10 stupid kids a year get high on cough syrup, so they ban it. Thousands die per year because of cigarrette smoking, and it’s still out there. [↩]
5. mocking. sarcasm. [↩]

While I don’t say much about it while in Etsy Forums, I do see a complaint reiterated about the promo forum ad nauseum. While the person differs, the complaint is always the same, “I posted there but it was buried in a minute!”

Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but yeah, that’s the way it happens, so if you want to succeed, you’d better adjust to it – all the whining isn’t going to force the promos forums to adjust to you. I view the requests to disassemble promos very annoying because to me, it reads as a tacit demand that Etsy do something to make marketing “easier” for the complainer, when the fact of the matter is that dicing up promos will only result in the rest of Etsy forums getting spammy.

Look at it this way: There’s around 60,000 sellers on Etsy.  Even if only 10% of them are on the forums at any given time, that’s around 6,000 people. Of that sample, 60-100 are trying to make a living at their craft, and another 20% just don’t have anything better to do at that moment in time. You are just one person in that flood.

It’s a marketing gaffe I see in a lot of newbies: they expect !RESULTS! from one single action, like making a single post in forums, or by simply listing an item and then sitting back and waiting. While sure, results are possible from the list-and-wait, post-once-and-boom corner of the universe, they’re unlikely. Very unlikely. So unlikely, that it’s safest to assume these magical things don’t actually happen. All marketing is cumulative – it takes repetition, heavy visual connection, and the establishment of a solid reputation in order to succeed.

So here’s how you make promos work for you: jump in. Leverage the other posts that are already established. Pick one or two items to promote at a given time. You can either spread wildly through several pages, or you can make use of your “topics I posted in” button to track responses and bump the already established threads. If you do a lone posting, don’t bump it more than once or twice, and do NOT complain about lack of response. If there’s a lack of response, there’s a lack of response; complaining just turns buyers off to you.

So the key is simple: use established long-running threads. Be magnanimous; it’s almost impossible NOT to post and run in promotions, so let that behavior go (it’s when you see that in other sections of forums that the behavior is unacceptable). When someone posts to your threads, continue to be generous – there is no such thing as a thread hijack in promos. What gets you bumped gets you back to the front, and that’s a good thing.

Share on Facebook

I’m seeing less of it these days, but I’m still seeing it: “We give you these perfume oils pure! Undiluted!” Countless Ebay sellers have used this exact phrasing, enticing consumers over to their particular brand of commercial fragrance imitations. These claims of undiluted oils are either false, or for reasons to be discussed, meaningless, so move on to another
seller when listings are earmarked by such hawking.

Dilution is the process by which something is made less concentrated; because this is often described as “weakened” consumers immediately assume that if a substance is diluted, it isn’t as good. This is especially true of North American consumers. The fact of the matter is not only do you not want most of
these fun-smelling goodies at full strength on your skin, having them at full strength with the wrong chemical
could seriously hurt you. Even essential oils that have no history of damage upon skin contact are less than ideal when
undiluted – just ask anyone who has to sit next to you in a car. Given the rampant allergies and asthmas people have these
days, getting into any closed space with heavy perfume on is downright mean. The French take on fine perfume is a good one: a little bit, applied lightly, goes a very, very long way.

The most common dilution-error scent is probably cinnamon. Many, many people enjoy bath and body products with this fragrancing in it, especially during the holidays. It’s warm, and lively, and stimulates lots of memories of past holidays and happiness. Properly diluted, it still gives off a potent and warming scent. But one drop of undiluted oil on your skin and you
will be in pain.¹ This needs to be diluted. Even essential oils that do not cause immediate pain need dilution to be worn safely – without it, a host of issues may occur including sensitivity to light, an increased tendency towards allergic reaction, and on the socially responsible side, smelling of something so strongly that you create an aversion to the scent in those around you.

Dilution is, also, a way of making things less affordable more affordable. Here’s where the direct fibbing comes in – sometimes a fragrance oil has the same name as an essential oil. For instance, a woman I know loves the scent of neroli. She swore up and down to me that she bought an ounce of neroli, undiluted, for around $15. Even a low quality neroli is around $115/ounce at the time I write this; if it had been true, undiluted neroli, there’s no way she would have been spreading it around her at the time pregnant belly – the cost would have been far too dear.

So when you see these “undiluted!” ads, be wary. If the owner is not directly fibbing about adding a reasonable proporition of base oil or alcohol to a fragrance mix, then what is more probable is that the “pure” oil is “pure” fragrance oil. In that case, being sold a fragrance “undiluted” means that the seller is really giving you a decant at a slight profit.²

So here’s the truth, undiluted: dilutions are good for you. If you want natural perfume, you want it diluted!

Share on Facebook

1. If this should happen, immediate neutralize it with hydrogen peroxide or vinegar. Do not use soap and water until after you have neutralized it – oil and water, not friends. [↩]
2. Decant circles are popular among fans of cult perfume houses because they can increase their collections at low cost by swapping out small amounts of fragrances with one another. [↩]